Manitoba Agriculture and Food Knowledge Exchange

Peter Frohlich:0:05
Hello and welcome to the Extraordinary Students Doing Extraordinary Research podcasts. This podcast explores how students at the University of Manitoba are contributing to research that enhances the sustainability of food production in the province and beyond. My name is Peter Frohlich. I am the research development coordinator for the National Center for Livestock and the Environment, located right here at the Fort Gary Campus at the University of Manitoba. Today I am joined by Rachel Teller , who is working on her degree in agroecology. I must also add that Rachel is working with Dr. Martin Entz, who is a professor at the Department of Plant Science. Dr. Entz and team explore agroecology, organic farming, natural systems , agriculture, crop, livestock integration, and much, much more. Welcome, Rachel. Before we discuss weeds and perennial crops and agroecology, please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Rachel Teller: 0:52
Sure. Thank you Peter, and thank you for having me. I grew up in Winnipeg, so I've always lived in the city. I've always been curious and eager to learn, especially about science. I'm lucky to have had that curiosity nurtured by teachers and family, a number of which have science careers. So it's probably where that came from. But no one really expected that path to lead me to agriculture yet, you know, here I am in my final year of my agroecology degree and I'm minoring in soil science.

Peter Frohlich: 1:22
So what piqued your interest about science?

Rachel Teller: 1:25
So I had no exposure to agriculture necessarily growing up, but a lot to science through mostly my family and agriculture had never crossed my mind as a career. So I was thinking I might do, you know, environmental science as a career, but there were some ag related field trips and teachers that put the idea of agriculture into my mind. So I started looking at programs that the U of M offered and came across agroecology, which is really the thing that got my foot in the door of agriculture at the time. It just seemed like an alternative way to do environmental science. So I went into it quite skeptically actually. I took a lot of courses to keep the door open in case I wanted to move somewhere else within science. But evidently I ended up loving it and quickly developed a passion for agriculture and, you know, felt that it was the right path for me.

Peter Frohlich: 2:21
Can you talk about agroecology? What does the term mean? We hear more and more about it these days and I think it's been around for a while , but now it's sort of more dominant than discussions about science and agriculture.

Rachel Teller: 2:31
Yeah, what does it mean? Yeah , it's a very big concept. Generally, it aims to achieve sustainability through the application of ecological principles. For example, if we take the ecological principle of nutrient cycling. How can a farmer use the signs of nutrient cycling to minimize the amount of fertilizer they have to use? While they could plant nitrogen fixing crops, or they could minimize nitrogen runoff by planting cover crops. It's a very holistic approach to agriculture. You have to consider the health of the crops, of the soil, of the animals. If there's animals of the ecosystem and the things that connect all of that together. And it's also important to mention that it's not a new concept by any means, kind of like you alluded to. It originated with indigenous people and modern agroecology, if you wanna call it, that not only takes its inspiration from indigenous people, but a lot of the actual principles and practices are from indigenous groups around the world.

Peter Frohlich: 3:34
That's a great answer. So your project is part of the Create Climate Smart Soils Initiative. Can you tell us a little about that?

Rachel Teller: 3:41
Yeah, so this is a program for undergrad or graduate students at a number of participating universities around Canada. And students get the opportunity to do a research project alongside some other training. There's the main research thesis that they present at , um, an annual conference in April. And then students also complete equity, diversity, and inclusion training. You do a science outreach piece and a science communication training piece as well. So students are not only, you know, getting to do a research project, but they're also learning how to communicate their research to a wider audience.

Peter Frohlich: 4:18
Very cool. Not to let the cat out of the bag, but your project is about weeds. So we study how crops grow and all this, but why would you want to study weeds?

Rachel Teller: 4:27
Well, weeds are, you know, one of the biggest things that farmers have to contend with. All of a farmer's choices of their management practices will affect the weeds that come up in their field. For a program about soils, it might seem like a strange subject choice, but because the management practices of the farmer affect the weeds, they also affect the soil. So if a farmer is choosing to till to get rid of weeds, that's affecting the soil health. So it all, like we talked about with agroecology, it all sort of is interconnected.

Peter Frohlich: 5:00
So what is the objective of your project?

Rachel Teller: 5:03
Weeds? I'll talk generally about weeds first. For anyone who isn't familiar, and I'm sure most people have a general concept of what it is, but in agriculture, weeds are anything that is not the crop that the farmer is planting. Farmers wanna get rid of them because they take nutrients and water from the crop. They can carry diseases. They're very good at spreading seeds so they can take over the field if they're not dealt with, the management practices of the farmer, whether they till, what chemicals they use, how much fertilizer they use. It's all going to affect the weeds that come up in the field. That is what I wanted to explore is how different management practices are going to affect the weeds that come up in the field.

Peter Frohlich: 5:42
There are several parts to your study and part one looks at...

Rachel Teller: 5:47
Yeah, part one is looking at how the addition of a perennial crop to a rotation affects the weeds by perennial crop. I mean, instead of the farmer planting something every year where they plant in the spring and harvest in the fall, they are adding a crop to the rotation that will stay in the ground for multiple years. So how does this affect the number of weeds and the type of weeds that we see?

Peter Frohlich: 6:10
Do you see a difference between weeds found in perennial crops versus annual crops?

Rachel Teller: 6:15
The results of my experiment showed fewer weeds above ground and fewer weeds in the weed seed bank for the perennial rotation.

Peter Frohlich: 6:25
So why would you have less weeds in the perennial crop versus an annual crop? What is the mechanism involved in that?

Rachel Teller: 6:31
Perennial crops, most of their benefits come from the fact that they're in the ground for multiple years, which means they're able to develop more extensive root systems. This can help suppress weeds just by occupying more of the space in the ground, as you might imagine, because they're staying in the ground for extended periods of time. This prevents weeds from being able to come up in the in between time. Whereas an annual crop, you might have weeds that can come up after they're harvested or before a new crop is planted in the ground. So it just minimizes the windows of time when there's bare soil, because weeds are very good at taking advantage of any empty space or any extra nutrients.

Peter Frohlich: 7:13
Right. That's a great explanation. So in part two , it deals with organic farming. I think organic farming is fascinating and I just love the concept of it. Can you tell us the difference between organic and conventional farming?

Rachel Teller: 7:26
Generally organic is a certification within Canada and within different countries. What it means is that farmers are not able to use synthetic fertilizers or synthetic pesticides. Which means fertilizer that was purposefully made through chemical processes to have a very precise nutrient composition. Same thing with synthetic pesticide. They were manufactured to kill very specific weeds or insects or whatever it is, because you can't use those things In organic farming. There are different strategies that farmers have to use to deal with weeds and to fertilize their crops. This can be through tillage to disturb the soil and kill weeds. The addition of organic fertilizers. So the plots that I looked at in the organic rotation had a manure blend of cattle manure and insect manure. So different strategies for accomplishing the same things as conventional farmers.

Peter Frohlich: 8:20
So what happened in the organic fields when you tested crops where there was nutrients added versus crops where there there weren't nutrients added,

Rachel Teller: 8:29
This one told an interesting story compared to the perennial rotation. So I think I'll start by mentioning that I measured wheats in three different ways. I looked at them above the ground at the beginning of the season in June, I just counted them in the field and identified the species. And then second I looked at them at the end of the growing season, I cut them and weighed them something called biomass. And then the third metric was the weed seed bank where I took soil samples, put them in the greenhouse, gave them some water, waited to see what would come up. And this shows you the weeds that were there in previous years. It's almost like getting to go back in time and look at the previous weeds. For the organic rotations. At the beginning of the season, I saw a lot more weeds in the plots that received nutrients. But then when I looked at weed biomass at the end of the season, it had really evened out between plots with and without nutrients. And then my third metric, the weed seed bank , there were fewer weeds in the plots receiving nutrients. The story this tells is that the weeds at the beginning of the season were really taking advantage of all those nutrients in the plots that got the manure. But then the crop in those plots became stronger and better able to compete against the weeds than the crop that didn't receive any nutrients, which is what we saw in the weed seed bank, where there were fewer weeds that made it to seed production stage in the plots that received nutrients and were able to return seeds to the soil. So in summary, we saw a great benefit from the added nutrients to the organic plots.

Peter Frohlich: 9:58
Those are really great results. Can you summarize your results into like three sentences?

Rachel Teller: 10:05
I guess generally, relating it back to soils, there was a benefit to weed management in practices that also contribute to soil health. It being perennial rotations as well as organic nutrient addition .

Peter Frohlich: 10:22
Can you tell us when the study will be over and how can farmers find out about the results from this study?

Rachel Teller: 10:28
I have already completed the research component and presented at the conference this past April. So there's a clip of that conference on YouTube, but it's hours and hours long. So the easiest way is that I will shortly have a piece published on the Climate Smart Soils website where people can see my research. But I'll also mention that, especially because I did my project at Glenlea. It's really just a piece of the puzzle. The super interesting and applicable results come from the bigger picture of all the research that's been done there. There were colleagues of mine who did projects on the exact same plots as I did the perennial and the organic ones. But they looked at, you know, water, soil, water or nutrients or, you know, different aspects of these plots. And that's when it becomes applicable, when you look at this big picture of how all of our different projects interconnect. So I would suggest that producers or anyone interested look at cool the Glenlea website and look at sort of the bigger research that's come out of there.

Peter Frohlich: 11:34
Glenlea is, is located about 15 to 20 minutes south of Winnipeg. One side of the highway is the livestock facilities and the other side is crops. Can you tell us what's really special about Glenlea?

Rachel Teller: 11:48
It's one of the longest running organic rotations in the world. Which is incredible. So this gives... there's the research that happens there on the various rotations, but it also acts as a place for graduate and undergraduate research. As well as a place for education for the public or for producers. They can come and see the different research that's going on there. They can see what an organic rotation looks like if they've never seen that before, or the different equipment that is used in different rotation.

Peter Frohlich: 12:21
And once or twice in the summer there are crop tours. Where the public can come and get on a tractor with a trailer, see the research and talk to students and talk to the researchers. Very great facility. So how has this experience shaped your view on sustainable agriculture?

Rachel Teller: 12:38
I think it's just reinforced to me how complex it is because I was doing a project on soils also about weeds. And then hearing all of the different research from my colleagues, it really just drove home how interconnected agroecology is and needs to be in order to achieve sustainable solutions.

Peter Frohlich: 13:06
So we have some young listeners from high schools, elementary schools, these are kids who are learning about agriculture and, and hearing about how our food is made. What would be a message to them that maybe some opportunities they can, they can look into when deciding on their future?

Rachel Teller: 13:22
Yeah, I think my advice would first and foremost just do consider agriculture regardless of your background. I know some people might think it would, you know, set them back, but going into university studying something that you're completely unfamiliar with might set you back. But I found it actually to be an asset because everything I was learning was new to me. And was fascinating. You know, there really is something in agriculture for everyone too. Maybe you're not necessarily interested in science. There's the business component of agriculture. There's research, there's field work, there's so many different directions you could go within agriculture. So yeah, I'd really consider people to consider agriculture regardless of your background or your interests. 'cause it's a fantastic field that can take you so many different places.

Peter Frohlich: 14:19
Thanks Rachel. It's been a pleasure to chat with you and to hear about your project. We're certainly looking forward to hearing more from the University of Manitoba researchers about perennial crop organic farming and weeds, and how projects like yours contribute to creating sustainable agriculture systems in Manitoba and beyond. A quick shout out to Warren and Crystal for editing and for managing the University of Manitoba podcast. And thank you all for listening in. Please stay tuned for upcoming podcasts on University of Manitoba Extraordinary students doing extraordinary research that enhanced the sustainability of agriculture and food production.

Rachel Teller: 14:52
Great. Thank you for having me, Peter.