Resuscitate Soils with Biologically Enhanced Compost
By Thomas Skernivitz, Senior Editor, American Fruit Grower
The build-it-yourself Johnson-Su Bioreactor creates biologically enhanced compost, allowing growers to resuscitate their lifeless soils.
As a first-generation farmer (and late bloomer, at that), Troy Swift has no trouble taking contrarian approaches to growing pecans on his Texas ranch. Regenerative agriculture agrees with him just fine, even if the philosophy, he believes, is just as much about common sense as it is new age. “Smart farming” is how he puts it.
“Farmers have paradigms they grew up with,” Swift, 65, says. “I'm a little bit lucky in that manner because I'm a first-generation farmer. I don't have the paradigms that my dad and granddad had when it comes to farming.”
In turn, risk tolerance runs through Swift River Pecans and its 266 acres of native and improved pecan trees, split between two orchards. The original farm, where some native trees range between 200 and 300 years old, sits on the banks of the San Marcos River in Fentress, TX.
“If I make a mistake and lose a crop or get less of a crop because of a decision I made while trying these regenerative techniques, I'm not going to fire myself,” Swift says. “But a farm manager that's working for a big business may get fired if they make a mistake like this. So, a lot of people are reluctant to change because it's risky.”
Swift River Pecans boasts two orchards – 200 acres in Fentress, TX, and 66 more acres in Staples, TX. Credit: Isaac Miller
Credit: Isaac Miller
Increases soil carbon sequestration
Increases crop yield
Increases soil nutrient availability
Increases soil water-retention capacity
Produces biologically diverse compost
Produces nutrient–rich compost
Results in a low-salinity compost
Improves seed germination and growth rates
Regenerative Ag: Restoring Degraded Soil
According to Regeneration International, which takes credit for starting the worldwide regenerative movement in 2015, “regenerative agriculture describes farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity — resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle.”
Swift, then a manager with aerospace manufacturer CFAN (he retired in 2016), bought his farm in 1998 and planted his first pecan tree a few years later at the age of 41. It took more than two decades, but he eventually warmed to the importance of soil health.
“We changed our farming strategy about four and a half years ago to this regenerative farming, which, that word by itself, there's all kinds of definitions and eco-arguments about it,” Swift says. “It doesn't matter to me what you want to call it. I'm trying to use the tools that Mother Nature has run this planet with for the entire history of plants and animals, and I'm trying to use those in coordination with Mother Nature rather than fight her. And in farming, that can be very difficult.”
Typically, Swift says, farmers adopt regenerative techniques a few acres at a time to “get comfortable.” They do not, he stresses, “put all of their eggs in one basket early.”
“I put all my eggs in one basket pretty early,” he then jokes. “But, again, I'm not going to fire myself.”
Hello Johnson-Su: Recipe for Success
One of several regenerative techniques that Swift now swears by involves not baskets for eggs but homemade bins for compost.
The Johnson-Su Bioreactor, designed by University of New Mexico Molecular Biologist David Johnson and his wife Hui-Chun Su, creates compost that teems with microorganisms, which improve soil health and plant growth and increase the soil's potential to sequester carbon.
“If you haven't heard of a Johnson-Su Bioreactor, then look it up,” Swift says. “This is how you make compost — fast — out of high carbon material.”
While compost is generally considered as a way to apply nutrients to the soil, the Johnson-Su Bioreactor produces biologically enhanced compost by creating an environment in which beneficial soil microorganisms thrive and multiply. When the biologically alive compost is applied to the soil, the microorganisms inoculate the soil and work in harmony with growing plants to improve soil health and increase the amount of carbon drawn out of the atmosphere and into the soil.
Swift builds his own bioreactors. Anyone can do likewise, professional grower or not. Instructions are available in this Johnson-Su product manual and video. One bioreactor can be built in four to five hours by one person, using simple tools and about $40 of readily available materials. The design is scalable for home, farm or commercial settings.
Once built, the bioreactor can be used many times over. The lone stipulation: All of the compost in the bioreactor must be within 12 inches of ambient air (made possible by the spacing of 4-inch-wide PVC pipes inserted vertically in each bin or cylinder before the feed material is added).
You take high-fungal compost extract made from wood chips; you spray it on the ground; and then you cover it up with wood chips for it to eat.
“You put six PVC pipes vertical in the cylinder, and then you saturate your wood as you fill up this cylinder,” Swift says. “After about two or three days, the hyphae of the fungus that's growing on the wood chips hooks it all together. You pull the pipes out, you water it one minute a day, and it makes super high-quality compost.”
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Swift eventually takes his finished compost and turns it into a liquid — Johnson-Su compost extract — that he sprays on the ground cover beneath his trees.
“You take a handful of compost and put it in a bucket of non-chlorinated water. You stir it up, and it almost all dissolves,” he says. “You can then filter it and spray the liquid as you would a compost tea.”
Next, on top of the extract — literally — comes wood chips that are applied by a manure spreader.
Credit: Swift River Pecans
Reduces water usage up to six times
Reduces composting labor time by 66 percent
Requires no turning and little manpower
Is a low–tech process that can easily be replicated
Can be made using a diversity of compost materials
Produces no odors or associated insects
Materials generally cost less than $35 and can be used for up to 10 times
No leaching or groundwater contamination
Here, pecan grower Troy Swift boasts six cylinders (right) that he used to perform side-by-side comparisons of differing compost materials. A Johnson-Su Bioreactor turns such materials into compost with the help of six vertically placed PVC pipes and then irrigation, all of which promotes the growth of hyphae in fungus (below).
“You take high-fungal compost extract made from wood chips; you spray it on the ground; and then you lightly spread wood chips over the orchard floor for it to eat,” Swift says. “That's what we're doing to improve our soil health in addition to having a good ground cover all the time.”
“We want to keep our beneficials healthy. How do you keep beneficials healthy? You have a biodiverse orchard floor."
Of note, Swift has evaluated six different compost materials or “recipes,” as he calls them: wood chips, wood shavings, sawdust, pecan shells, and grains from both beer breweries and whiskey distilleries.
“The easiest one was the best one, which was just the wood chips,” he says.
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Beneficials: The Bioreactor Bonus
While the Johnson-Su Bioreactor achieves its primary goal of improving soil health, its ability to apply beneficial microbiology provides added benefits — to beneficial organisms, for one.
“We want to keep our beneficials healthy,” Swift says. “How do you keep beneficials healthy? You have a biodiverse orchard floor.”
Put another way: Beneficials gotta eat.
Swift repeats the story of renowned entomologist and podcaster W. Joe Lewis:
“You go buy that card of those parasitic wasps, and you put them out in your garden or in your orchard. That female wasp hatches. She decides she's got to go parasitize an egg or larvae. She does that, and then she looks up and goes, ‘Guess what? I need something to eat.’ Well, she doesn't eat bugs. She eats nectar from flowers. And if your orchard floor doesn't have any flowers, she hits the road because she has to.
“So biodiversity is a big deal in and around your orchard.”
And, oh, by the way, Swift says, “We eliminated herbicides four years ago. Herbicides are widely used in pecan farming, and we completely eliminated them.”
Moving Forward
Swift River Pecans is participating in a six-year soil health research study to better understand sustainable agriculture in pecan orchards. Conducted by the Noble Research Institute in Ardmore, OK, the study includes 31 other orchards from Texas and Oklahoma.
“Trees actually have living organisms in them. They’re called endophytes, and they can be good, or they can be bad,” Swift says. “If you have healthy soil, the root sucks in particular species of microorganisms and, with superoxides, strips the cell wall off, steals the nutrients from the organism, kicks it back out into the dirt, and says, ‘Get well and come back.’”
“That's what we didn't know not very long ago. So, this science is going really fast.”
True to his surname, so is Swift when it comes to “smart farming.”
