| | At the recent Site Specific Management Conference (SSM) in Edmonton, the message about the potential for SSM to benefit the environment came from many directions. "Both speakers and participants recognized that although the focus of SSM has primarily been economics, other benefits such as the environment, are also very important," explains Sheilah Nolan, Research Agrologist with Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development and Conference Organizer. "It's all about improving management for environmental and economic benefits."
Conference organizers were thrilled with the response, but disappointed they had to turn people away because it was oversubscribed. A total of 320 people participated in the conference, with about half the attendees farm managers. "About 40 percent of the participants are currently practicing SSM, which is certainly up from the estimated 5 to 10 percent who were using SSM technology at the last conference held in 1998," says Nolan. "We heard the message many times throughout the conference that SSM has the potential for environmental benefits, and to emphasize the message that farmers are doing things right."
Dr. Les Fuller, Chair, Environmentally Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Alberta, addressed the importance of environmentally sustainable agriculture (ESA) and SSM in his presentation at the SSM Conference. He notes that there is a clear link between ESA and SSM, because both are driven by the desire for long-term environmental quality.
SSM is fundamental to ESA. "If ESA is the destination, then SSM is the pathway," says Fuller. "There are three primary reasons why the SSM pathway leads to an environmentally sustainable agriculture." First, environmental processes operate at a different scale than the scale of land management of current industrialized agriculture. Environmental processes tend to act more at a local scale than at a field scale. Therefore, managing the field based on average conditions with a uniform management strategy ignores local variation in key environmental processes.
Second, ESA demands efficiency, which in turn requires recognizing and working with site variability. Over-application and under-application of nutrients is common when 'average' soil nutrient status is used as the basis for nutrient recommendations for an entire field. Understanding soil and site variability and its influence on nutrient and water use by a growing crop is essential to increasing fertilizer use efficiency and eliminating wasted input dollars. It also ensures excess nutrients are not allowed to accumulate and be subject to loss to the environment.
Third, a landscape performs multiple functions, making uniform management strategies ineffective. SSM provides some improvement in terms of recognizing variations in processes, such as variable rate fertilization and spot spraying. "However, SSM must go beyond agronomic function and incorporate other landscape functions that are vital to human health, wildlife and resource quality," says Fuller. For example, a wetland is viewed as having little agronomic value, but it plays a key role in hydrological processes that are critical to water quality. "SSM must strive to achieve overall landscape management systems that include both agronomic and environmental functions. The SSM pathway will ultimately lead to environmentally sustainable agriculture," he adds.
Dr. Les Fuller speaking at the Site Specific Management Conference in Edmonton
Photo credit: Kerrianne Koehler/AAFRD
The preliminary evaluation results indicate that many of the participants support Dr. Fuller's approach to SSM and ESA. From the evaluation, 92 percent of respondents felt that technology could be effective in giving environmental benefits and improving management. About 80 percent indicated that SSM was an appropriate direction for agriculture to head in. However, only half thought that research was current with the state of technology. About half of the participants were already using some SSM technology, including GPS, GIS, yield maps, soil mapping and consultants. "Overall, participants were pleased with the conference, and indicated they would have liked more time for the trade show," says Nolan. "There is a demand for another conference, participants are looking for more on-farm research, more information, more education and more links to SSM."
For more information, contact: Sheilah Nolan. |
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