continued on page 8 ONTARIO GRAIN FARMER COVER STORY 7 The Living Lab–Ontario innovation cycle ADDRESSING KEY CHALLENGES While the program is geared towards finding practical, science-backed BMPs for both crop and livestock systems, these BMPs always keep climate change challenges in mind, namely GHG emission reduction and carbon sequestration. The BMPs being developed and tested in this program include: • Cover crop grazing – developing BMPs by assessing the agronomic and environmental benefits of livestock grazing. • Nitrogen efficiency and use – evaluating and developing 4R strategies to enhance nitrogen efficiency and mitigate environmental impacts. • Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) – changes in SOC as a result of implementing BMPs. • Manure storage management – reducing methane emissions from liquid manure storage. • Field edge practices – evaluating beneficial effects of restoring marginal lands to native vegetation. • Decision support tools – a farm-level financial and economic evaluation of BMP adoption. REGIONAL DIVERSITY To ensure that the program’s results will be applicable to a broad range of farmers across Ontario, the program cooperators targeted various farm sites across Ontario’s agricultural communities. These sites represent a variety of climate and soil conditions and allow for the implementation of the identified BMPs. TRANSFORMING AGRICULTURE ONE FARM AT A TIME Selected farmer cooperators have begun to engage in various practices, which will continue to be implemented in 2025. In addition, OSCIA recently announced the inclusion of four more Living Lab–Ontario cooperators, whose focus will be on comparing cover crop planting methods following corn or soybeans, using, among other options, drones to seed cover crops. The project is reviewed annually, and adjustments are made to the site-specific projects and targets as needed, along with the addition of more cooperators and projects. The Living Lab–Ontario 2024 site distribution Images and graphics courtesy of OSCIA.
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