Mills doesn t need this input in her warmer climate, but also because she markets through a CSA in which it doesn t matter if the living mulch between rows of her tomatoes cools her soil such that her tomato crop is later than other farmers . In addition, her higher land costs requires a narrower bed spacing. I make the row-middles wide enough to get through them with small motorized equipment, because labor is hard to recruit and expensive. Our soil health focus is unavoidably attached to where we farm and how we market. The tendency for farmers to focus on conditions of their own farm is an indication that every agricultural system is unique.
Farmers are usually very good at identifying interactions unique to their agroecosystems.
Where we farmers are limited is by this very tendency to be provincial and by the lack of methods, both statistical and analytical, to examine why the things we think we are seeing work. Using these tools we can better study our own unique agricultural systems and move towards the development of environmentally specific and temporally flexible strategies.