Tiller

By Cheryl Jahn

Battling Climate Change

New farming practices to fight climate change

Jun 17, 2019 | 3:47 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – A local farm has joined forces with the Forage Council of BC to look at ways to stave off the effects of climate change.

“I’m trying to bring up my organic matter and to build soil,” explains Blake Goddard of Goddard’s Farm and Market. “That’s ideally what my farm is, soil and microbes. If I can get them going and firing together and I have this cover over the ground, it will stop the drying out and hopefully retain water longer and allow things to grow as we get through these hotter and hotter summers.”

So rather than tilling the soil and then planting, he is digging shallow trenches with a special piece of equipment and planting different kinds of cover crops, such as radishes and vetch. That will help to loosen the clay soil while adding nutrients.

He has the support of the Forage Council of BC, which is tapping into some funding from the Province’s Climate Change Initiative. Serena Black has four farms, including Goddard’s, doing different projects all with the same goal in mind: Rejuvenating the land to better withstand the impacts of climate change.

“It’s not that we’re saying, as a Forage Council, that any one practice is wrong,” says Black. “There’s always going to trade-offs. When you use no-till, perennial weed management becomes a significant challenge. So are the kinds of questions we’re trying to address in our research.”

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Goddard is in Year Two of his project and he hopes in another two years, all the elements will be back in play to create a healthier soil.