{"id":4582,"date":"2015-09-14T21:25:03","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T21:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/?p=4582"},"modified":"2016-04-06T13:27:23","modified_gmt":"2016-04-06T13:27:23","slug":"farm-focus-topsoil-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/farm-focus-topsoil-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"Farm Focus: Topsoil Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"As we drove to the farm this morning, we were bewildered by the brown\u00a0foggy haze all around us. We could see barley more than 15 feet in front of us.\u00a0At first we wondered, could this be smoke residue from the wildfires? Then we\u00a0grew near the neighboring farm, and saw the massive tractor barreling through\u00a0the field, stirring up a cloud of soil.\r\n\r\nFrog Hollow farm is surrounded by miles of commercial farms, most of\u00a0which cultivate the fields in a very different way than us. This time of year, the\u00a0hundreds of acres of conventional corn, tomatoes and peppers have been harvested, and now the remaining plant residue is being tilled, ploughed and disked\u00a0in. Upon observation, one might assume that the fields are being prepped to be\u00a0re-planted. But because of the lack of available water in the winter, most of the\u00a0fields will sit fallow until they are planted in the Spring. To avoid topsoil depletion, it would be best for the plant residue to be left behind until just before\u00a0planting occurs. Better yet, the fields would be planted with a winter cover crop,\u00a0ideally a nitrogen fixing legume, which would prevent erosion and replenish\u00a0organic matter and soil nutrients. However, instead the fields are tilled and then\u00a0sprayed with an herbicide that ensures nothing grows at all.\r\n\r\nMost of you are probably aware that due to deforestation and agriculture, we are losing topsoil much faster than we create it. Volkert Engelsman, an\u00a0activist with the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements,\u00a0reported on Monday that \"we are losing 30 soccer fields of soil every minute,\u00a0mostly due to intensive farming.\" According to another UN report this week, as-\r\nsuming current rates of soil degradation persist, \u201call of the world's top soil could\u00a0be gone within 60 years.\u201d\r\n\r\nAt Frog Hollow Farm we make a concerted effort to combat the loss of\u00a0soil. We practice no-till agriculture that leaves the soil undisturbed and with our\u00a0compost program we actively create new soil daily. Coupled with these practices, we leave the rows between our trees growing with a lush native cover crop,\u00a0ensuring that we do our part to protect California\u2019s topsoil.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we drove to the farm this morning, we were bewildered by the brown\u00a0foggy haze all around us. We could see barley more than 15 feet in front of us.\u00a0At first we wondered, could this be smoke residue from the wildfires? Then we\u00a0grew near the neighboring farm, and saw the massive tractor barreling through\u00a0the field, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-farm-focus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-1bU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4861,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4582\/revisions\/4861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}