Article for the Winter edition of “Intelligent Horsemanship”
by Land Management for Horses with Dr Lisa Schofield
In the process of leading a land management for horses learning group, I’m often asked about the most economical and natural way to manage our land that is also good for the environment. Many want to dive in with questions such as: “Which grass seed do I need to buy?”; “How can I eradicate buttercups?”; or “When should I apply fertilizer?”. I hope to cover these types of questions in future articles, but firstly we need to take a step back and look at the soil in which we are expecting our grazing to flourish. Let’s think about the composition of soil, and what type of soil is needed in order to promote the growth of a healthy and diverse sward to provide optimal nutrition for our horses. Whether we are grazing the grass we grow, cutting for hay, or growing our sward up as standing hay, it is important to start with knowing what constitutes healthy soil.
The Soil Food Web
The soil food web is a network of interconnected biological systems that work together to keepsoil alive. It is that part of the soil that lives and is made up of burrowing rodents and insects, such as ants, centipedes, millipedes, mites, earthworms and grubs. Also, we need to note the presence of microscopic organisms such as different types of fungi and protozoa. These microorganisms interact and communicate with each other and the plants in a way that is truly magical as I will explain below.
The soil food web can be interpreted as a form of soil “biome”, like that found in horses or our own human gut. This means it is a “process” which turns organic matter into nutrients, which can be used by plants to make them grow and flourish in a self-sustainable way to provide good nutrition for our horses without the need for herbicides or pesticides. These processes, whichhave existed in nature for billions of years, are responsible for plant growth. The major components of the soil biome are fungi, bacteria, protozoa and nematodes. When in balance,they work together with plants to create what is known as an ecosystem. There are many different types of ecosystems. Forests, for example, are the most effective ecosystems in the world, and these exist without the need for the addition of any fertilizers or pesticides. With a healthy biome,the soil can provide the plants with all the nutrients they need, but that’s not all. The added benefits that a balanced system provides are protection from pests, disease, drought andflooding. As horse owners we too have an ecosystem in which we grow our grazing swards. When our grazing system biome is out of balance, our grazing cannot flourish or withstand extremes of weather, pests or disease that otherwise it may be able to. Recent summers in the U.K. have been very dry ones with many horse owners being in despair about the effect these continuing droughts have had on our grass plants and our plant diversity. One reason is because our soils just aren’t holding the same water capacity that they used to or are holding too much water in only the top layer. Consequently, our grass plants may die off, allowing weeds to set seed and take over. This happens when our soil microbiome is unbalanced. The effect this has on our grazing, is disease, lack of growth, together with weak and fragile root systems, easily snatched out of the ground by the root during grazing. A healthy biome actually protects plants against much damage caused.
The soil biome is nature’s operating system. Different types of microbes in the soil, such as bacteria, actinomycetes, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes all have their own very specific and mostly unique functions. While some microbes work to make certain types of nutrients more readily available for uptake by the plants, others may work to improve different plant needs. Staying with our example of weather damage outlined above, mycorrhizae, for example, is a type of fungi that improves a plant’s ability to receive and retain water. One of the most important roles of soil organisms is in breaking down some extremely complex substances in decaying plants and animals which can then be recycled to feed the existing living ones. Therefore, soil organisms can be viewed as pivotal stimulants in lots of natural cycles, such as the carbon, nitrogen and sulphur cycles. Without these cycles we cannot grow grazing material.
Threats to the Soil Food Web
Modern agriculture, with the extensive use of heavy machinery, has not helped our soil biome. Ploughing, for example, destroys the largest microorganisms such as fungi and larger insects and this leaves the soil food web out of harmony. This leads to an undesirable breakdown of the system because nutrients are no longer available to plants, and protection from disease is compromised. The symbiotic relationship is thus destroyed, inevitably leading to an overuse of chemicals which further exacerbates the problem. As horse land managers, we often lookdespairingly at our compacted lifeless “dirt”, and in utter desperation we decide to buy whatever fertilizer exists in the local tack store or agricultural merchants in the vague hope that our grass will grow. This practice is self-defeating and is sometimes performed without the vital soil testinghaving been done. Bags of pre-blended, often pelleted fertilizers are often applied randomly in the desperate hope of improving grass growth. Fortunately, many horse owners are now becoming far more aware of the importance of testing soil for pH levels, and then making the necessary adjustments through applications of carefully measured “pH adjusters” such as lime and sulphur. Measurement here is crucial. Think of it like baking a cake, too much or too little of any ingredient has a knock-on effect disastrous to the outcome. However, the point remains, we cannot grow healthy grazing plants in dirt that is inert, no matter how many chemicals we add. We need microbial rich living soil that has a self-sustaining permaculture.
Restoring the soil biome means less money will be spent on herbicides, pesticides and fertilizerswithout sacrificing grass yield. This is because the soil food web provides plants with access to a constant supply of nutrients from soil organic matter and the soil particles themselves. Sand, for example, contains more essential nutrients than you would think. Bacteria and fungi can break these nutrients down and make these available to the plant. What is even more astounding is that through a symbiotic relationship of chemical release, the plant can control this process by exchanging nutrients with the soil around it.
The benefits of having a healthy and balanced soil food web cannot be underestimated. The planet is facing many ecological threats, with arguably the biggest one being soil erosion. This is where desertification occurs which can wipe out entire civilizations and displace people and their animals from the land. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimatesthat we only have about sixty years left until all our topsoil is depleted, with some other estimates being as low as thirty years. The soil food web prevents soil erosion caused by the damaging effects of wind and rain through a process by which it builds up a robust soil structure, with clumping particles. The key is to provide organic matter back to the soil so that the biome can develop and thrive.
Ecosystem Collapse
Another issue high on the current agenda is ecosystem collapse. Insect populations are estimated by the FAO to have declined by twenty five percent each decade since 1989. Those who, like me, are the other side of fifty, will remember having to clean bugs from the windscreen with regularity when driving, but that doesn’t happen as much nowadays. There are some estimates that bird populations too have declined by at least one third in some parts of Europe. The FAO has again, been instrumental in bringing it to our attention that this is primarily due to the overuse of pesticides. Simply put, there’s very little for them to eat in order to survive which has a knock-on effect on diversity and bee populations, which in turn affects pollination. One could argue that nature’s operating system has a built-in mechanism through the biome of protecting plants from pests, thereby eliminating the need for pesticides.
However. there is more to it than this, farming practices which work against carbon sequestration by ploughing and removing animals from the land to factory farming types of organization have created artificial boundaries in farming practices which work against soil regeneration and encourage climate change by releasing carbon from the soil where it is needed into the air where it is detrimental. These practices are damaging, unethical and are changing our planet for the worse. There is now, however, increasing ecological awareness of what is happening right under our feet and there are movements to attempt to counter this through education and encouraging change in farming practices towards the regenerative, such as those outlined by Gabe Brown, Alan Savoury and Elaine Ingham, or the practice of rewilding huge areas of land to restore our ecosystems.
Improving our Soil Biome
So how does all this information affect us as horse owners who want to develop good ecological practices and graze our horses in as healthy and self-sustaining a manner as possible and what can we do to improve our soil biome?
I argue that the answer lies in improving our land management by nutrient cycling and the building of a robust soil structure. This leads to natural weed suppression because most weeds do not thrive in soil that has high fertility and although some weeds are healthy, necessary and contain much nutrition, others are toxic, invasive and a nuisance in our pastures.
We must reduce our use of herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilizers. Instead, we must placeour organic matter back into the soil in order to “feed” the soil life. We can do this by mulching (both as a form of weed control and as a form of adding organic matter), topping and composting to nourish our land and in turn, our horses. Fortunately, as horse owners, we really don’t need to look far for the free and somewhat inexhaustive supply of natural organic waste that our horses produce for us to help us do this too. This can be utilized to make good quality compost, our “black gold” that we can spread onto our fields to create the most nutritious grazing plants but let’s leave that for a future article!
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