Once More Around

I'm not sure if the image here is sunrise or sunset. If I got curious enough, I could look at the metadata, the information saved along with the image by the camera when the photo was taken. But it's not important. Because this image is just a fraction of a second caught by the sensor in my camera when I pushed the shutter release and let the light in. The earth kept spinning, the sun appeared to keep moving, and life went on.

I'm writing this on New Year's Eve, a holiday celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of another. Except, you know what? Nothing is actually ending, and nothing is actually beginning! This is just a point in time that we have selected to celebrate time passing. And as is with many things, we all don't agree that this is the correct time to celebrate. See here to find out about Chinese or Lunar New Year.

Humankind has felt the need to mark off time since...well, since time began. We hear of the Mayan calendar, the Julian calendar, and the Gregorian calendar, but actually all are just ways to delineate the cycles of the earth, the passing of the seasons. In days of yore, when the majority of people lived on farms and grew their own food, these cycles were critical knowledge to correctly time planting, livestock breeding, and other tasks to  ensure that harvest and food supply was successfully completed with timing to aid in storage, safeguard the survival of livestock offspring, and so on. The Old Farmer's Almanac is an example of marking time with these purposes in mind.

The year 2019 has been an exceptionally challenging year for many people involved in agriculture, and I have seen many social media posts saying, basically, "good riddance!" But tomorrow won't be better just because we start writing 2020 in the date box on our checks (gah! even that reference doesn't apply any more!) The sun will set tonight in the west, rise again tomorrow in the east, and life will go on as it has for however many millennia. The most that we can hope for is to make it better and easier for those around us. Love will always win.

So no matter if 2020 is good or bad, easy or challenging, it will be what it will be, it's in our Maker's hands, and we'll be along for the ride. Let's make it the best ride we can.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Those of you familiar with me know that I'm not a small man. Never have been. I often refer to myself as the "Wide Body" model. (A dated reference that hearkens back to days of yore when certain airline companies touted their newer model of jets as wide bodied; meaning they could carry more payload...people.)

For years I have read advertisements for clothing that used the phrase "One Size Fits All" with a very healthy dose of skepticism. I knew that in all likelihood said apparel would not fit me. No how, no way. More recently, I have seen ads that have toned down that language. More common these days is, "One Size Fits Most." Still not convinced. I have attempted to try on too many stretch clothes and struggled to get them off of my multi-XL body to be taken in by these universal clothing terms again.

Recently I attended a meeting for Certified Crop Advisors (CCAs) in Springfield, IL. To maintain certification, CCAs are required to accumulate continuing education credits in several categories. This time of the year is (usually) a good chance to pickup CEUs, and this meeting was the Illinois CCA Board's annual conference. One of the sessions was a presentation on Nutrient Management for Water Quality. A worthwhile topic, even if I wasn't needing the hour of  Soil & Water credit.

The presenter did a fine job of outlining various tactics to prevent nutrient loss from agricultural land (non-point source pollution,) and detailing how effective each of these tactics is in the grand scheme of improving water quality. Soon, however, he went from giving us data and facts, to preaching to us about his favorites.

This was where I parted ways with him. He talked about no-till, then he said this: There is never any reason to till our soil. We are operating under mistaken beliefs that tillage is necessary. It isn't. He used no qualifiers, no room for any discussion. I didn't hear any dissent from the other 150 or more CCAs, but we're not a rabble rousing crowd.

I think that no-till can be a positive tool in many farmers' arsenal. But this presenter's One Size Fits All agronomy isn't a thing.

A fellow agronomist says that all agronomy is painfully local. I say that every field has its own story. We have spent too many years trying to use generalized tactics and practices to address specific challenges and problems in crop production. Each farmer's operation, each crop, each field, and to a large extent each season has its own needs, issues and challenges that have to be addressed specifically.

For hundreds (thousands?) of years, farmers didn't have the tools necessary to analyze and enumerate the variability between and within fields. In the 21st Century, we are being deluged with technology,  algorithms, and solutions to these issues. Even Watson, IBM's supercomputer wants to advise farmers.

The point of this rambling missive comes down to this: One Size Fits All in agronomy doesn't work any better than it does in hat size. If someone tells you that you absolutely can't or shouldn't do something, be sure to take pictures to show them when you do it.