{"id":11234,"date":"2015-08-19T07:21:11","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T12:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11234"},"modified":"2015-08-19T07:21:11","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T12:21:11","slug":"to-till-or-to-spray-that-is-the-question-for-dryland-grain-farmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11234","title":{"rendered":"To till or to spray, that is the question for dryland grain farmers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/theblisspoint.org\/2015\/08\/17\/to-till-or-to-spray-that-is-the-question-for-dryland-grain-farmers\/\" target=\"_blank\">To till or to spray, that is the question for dryland grain\u00a0farmers<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><i>I am\u00a0traveling from Seattle to London by bicycle and boat.\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/grist.org\/living\/can-the-sharing-economy-get-this-guy-from-seattle-to-london-by-bike\/\"><i>Read the intro to my\u00a0travels on<\/i>\u00a0Grist<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On Montana\u2019s northern plains, some organic growers\u2019 neighbors reportedly began referring to them as \u201cweed farmers\u201d a few decades ago. These organic pioneers\u00a0had started to seed small, green plants in hopes of strengthening their soil. These little leguminous\u00a0plants were\u00a0nitrogen-fixers,\u00a0species whose roots host nodules of bacteria that bring nitrogen from the air into the ground, converting it to a form usable by plants and thus fertilizing the soil without industrial chemicals. To conventional grain farmers, though, it seemed peculiar, perhaps pathetic, to\u00a0intentionally grow plants\u00a0that looked like the ones they tried to eliminate from their fields. In an agricultural culture that glorifies pure, unblemished waves of erect-standing grain, raising puny legumes and purposefully intercropping multiple species in one field appears unmanly, an affront to the dominion over nature that God has granted humanity. Or at least that\u2019s what I learned reading Liz Carlisle\u2019s book\u00a0<i><a href=\"http:\/\/lentilunderground.com\/thebook\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lentil Underground<\/a><\/i>while taking a break from bike touring.<\/p>\n<p>Neil Baunsgard and I are exploring this world of organic grain farmers as we cross Montana\u2019s north by bicycle, part of a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/grist.org\/living\/can-the-sharing-economy-get-this-guy-from-seattle-to-london-by-bike\/\" target=\"_blank\">west-to-east transcontinental journey<\/a>. At our\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2015-08-04\/buying-organic-isn-t-just-about-local-veggies\" target=\"_blank\">first stop<\/a>, Rick Winkowitsch\u2019s farm just north of the town of Cut Bank, the immense scale of grain production took us by surprise. How our grains are grown affects a lot bigger land area than, say,\u00a0the organic veggie farms we support at the local farmers market.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">But whether organic methods could make dryland grain growing truly sustainable remained unsettled, in my mind. Chemical-free farming is clearly a lot of work, both in terms of human labor and fossil-fuel burning. Leaving more variables in nature\u2019s hands meant a lot less guaranteed success, it seemed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To till or to spray, that is the question for dryland grain\u00a0farmers I am\u00a0traveling from Seattle to London by bicycle and boat.\u00a0Read the intro to my\u00a0travels on\u00a0Grist. On Montana\u2019s northern plains, some organic growers\u2019 neighbors reportedly began referring to them as \u201cweed farmers\u201d a few decades ago. These organic pioneers\u00a0had started to seed small, green [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[8276,8273,299,6013,1091,1536,8275,8274],"class_list":["post-11234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-chemical-free-farming","tag-dryland-grain-farming","tag-farming","tag-organic-farming","tag-soil","tag-soil-fertility","tag-soil-spraying","tag-soil-tilling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11235,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11234\/revisions\/11235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}