{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgrowing-the-future.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Fs3-episode-16-jbvzXnW8","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"Most of Your Organic Matter Is Dead Microbes","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/1fa356cd-6e54-41a2-bbf4-99a91ee4ce68/ef172e5d-5088-4dbd-b451-2098f359d28e/cropped_1788892065019.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"<iframe src=\"https://player.simplecast.com/d6be254e-2ee3-4bde-affc-654ba299952f\" height=\"200\" width=\"100%\" title=\"Most of Your Organic Matter Is Dead Microbes\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"></iframe>","height":200,"description":"Lana Shaw manages the Southeast Research Farm at Redvers, Saskatchewan, a farmer-directed research organisation, and has spent twenty years running replicated crop trials. She makes the case for what rigorous trials can answer that a single on-farm test cannot, then works through soil health from the ground up: why bare soil is starving rather than resting, why topsoil is still being lost even under reduced tillage, and why the current understanding is that most organic matter is microbial biomass rather than broken-down residue. The back half is a long producer question round on intercropping, where she is candid about storage, separation, disease and the trials that did not work. Her frame throughout is that agriculture is a craft rather than a recipe, and that control is largely an illusion."}