Rather than calling it organic farming, which requires miles of red tape, Brendon Rockey prefers to call his technique biotic farming.
The Colorado potato grower, whose operation is 7,600 feet above sea level, uses such techniques as putting different crops together, planting cover crops, and using livestock, flowers and bees in place of synthetic fertilizers and chemicals in his crop production.
Anything with “-cide” in its name, including fungicides and herbicides, by definition, means “death,” Rockey said. As for his technique, “it’s all about life.”
Rockey was the featured speaker at the seventh annual Soil Health Symposium last week at Four Rivers Cultural Center in Ontario, Ore. The event was hosted by the Natural Resource Conservation Service and area soil and water conservation districts. Speakers during the event presented successful farming practices that use fewer or no chemicals than conventional products.
In using chemicals such as insecticides, fungicides and herbicides to kill pests in the field to protect crops, growers often kill beneficial insects and organisms that serve to protect the crops. While there are damaging insects, there are beneficial predatory insects that feed on them, Rockey said, as well as beneficial fungi that kill nematodes in potatoes. “Fungicides kill defense systems,” Rockey said.
Having diverse plants as cover crops can help build up defenses against pests, he said, as well as build up soil. He quoted an older family member who said, “You have to take care of the soil before soil can take care of you.”
Planting flowers in his fields helps attract beneficial insects such as ladybugs. A visitor at his farm interested in setting up beehives pointed out how the flowers were attracting and building up the numbers of pollinators, Rockey said.
More than 150 people attended this year’s symposium, according to Linda Rowe, manager of the Malheur Soil and Water Conservation District in eastern Oregon. She said she was happy that many attendees stayed long enough to hear Rockey’s talk, the final one of the day.
“This was more practical knowledge,” Rowe said of this year’s program, compared to previous presentations, which were more scientific.
Source: The Argus Observer