Project Overview
Commodities
- Agronomic: buckwheat, peas (field, cowpeas)
Practices
- Crop Production: drought tolerance, fallow, intercropping
- Education and Training: extension
- Natural Resources/Environment: soil stabilization
- Pest Management: physical control
- Soil Management: soil analysis, soil microbiology
- Sustainable Communities: urban agriculture
Abstract:
Given that 81% of the US population lives in urban areas (2010 census), urban agriculture represents a key sector for increasing food security and improving quality of life for urban communities. However, urban soils often pose issues that limit agricultural productivity: including compaction (~50%), high pH (~8), and contamination with heavy metals (Lead, Arsenic) caused by hotspots of industrial activity and unregulated waste, often at concentrations definitively toxic to humans. This is especially true in Detroit, where, for example, 4 neighboring oil refineries have created the most polluted zip code in Michigan. As a result of uniquely severe soil issues like these, urban farmers, such as those in Detroit, often need to import topsoils and/or compost, which can be prohibitively costly, but is often the sole option for soil remediation due to city-level regulations on maximum urban compost pile sizes. Ultimately, importing organic soils does not represent an ideal nor feasible strategy for the sustainability of crop production by urban farmers. This project addresses urban soil compaction issues by evaluating the effects of biochar application, alongside legume mixtures, on soil structure, nutrient retention, soil biological activity, and plant growth. We found that biochar significantly lowers bulk density of fine-textured soils, improves organic matter and nutrient concentrations, holds more soil water, and affects soil invertebrate communities.
Project objectives:
To complete this project, we engaged collaborative participation with several farmers, and analyzed soil responses related to soil structure, nutrient retention, and invertebrate community structure, and from this project produced scientific articles and seminar presentations about biochar's effects on (1) soil aggregation, structure, and theoretical background, (2) nutrient concentrations in an urban Technosol, (3) microbial community composition variation by biochar amendment treatment, and (4) invertebrate community composition and diversity in bulk soils.