Good Fruit Grower: Elevating soil algae

“Growers often see algae as a nuisance, a green slime that clogs sprinkler heads and valves. One company aims to change that perception.

Buoyed by soil health grants and a broad interest in regenerative agriculture, Arizona-based MyLand Co. is expanding a service that extracts native microalgae from farmland, cultivates the right strains and then reintroduces the live algae to the soil from which it came.”

Article highlights MyLand growers:

• Martori Farms of Arizona, the largest vertically integrated melon producer in North America.
• FarmTogether, an agricultural investment firm with $209 million worth of land in its portfolio, most of it in Western specialty crops.
• “I signed up for the program when we had to pay for it, and I would do it again in a hot minute” – Jered Carlson, Skone & Connors Produce orchard manager, granny smith & gala apples.
• Soil health is a long game, said Bill McCombs, vice president of orchard operations for Washington Orchard Management. So, clear empirical results from MyLand will take time to show up. “It’s got a lot of benefits, but it’s not a one-year deal,” McCombs said.
• In one Honeycrisp orchard with three years of MyLand service, packouts went up by two packs per bin, compared to a control block, McCombs said.