Episode 6:

Afua Mante

Transcript

Jay Whetter  00:12

Hi Jay, hey Toban, welcome to the podcast.

Toban Dyck  00:15

Thanks, thanks. How’s it going? How’s your week?

Jay Whetter  00:17

Well, it was, you know, productive. You

Toban Dyck  00:20

get you do a whole bunch of things with your with your work. I’m always, I’m always impressed.

Jay Whetter  00:25

I like variety.

Toban Dyck  00:26

Yeah, variety is the spice of life. So I hear

Jay Whetter  00:32

what’s your favorite expression?

Toban Dyck  00:36

I think we’ve had this conversation about, you can’t corner me on things, because it is, like, I’m just gonna, it’s for its variety. Is the spice of life. That’s my coincidence.

Jay Whetter  00:46

That’s why we get along, so that we we both like the exactly the same expressions.

Toban Dyck  00:52

I love it. I love it. So I’m gonna tell you right now. So I think we’re gonna, I think we’re having, we’re about to have a conversation about soil again, one of the things that, like, I desperately want to understand soil one one day, the message will come, will sink in. It’ll be like a huge eureka moment, and I’ll probably write about

Jay Whetter  01:11

it. It’ll sink in like a nice, gentle rain over non compacted soil with high infiltration value. I thought, oh yeah, I don’t know. I’m just those things I hear about with soil. I thought you were going to talk about your grandmother’s favorite swear words.

Toban Dyck  01:29

Oh yeah, no, I can’t. I can’t. My like my family. I might listen to this. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. Oh,

Jay Whetter  01:34

my, my, my, my grandmother swear words are very PG. And her favorite, my favorite, one of hers was good night.

Toban Dyck  01:41

Well, I like it. You say that, you say that correctly, and it drives home, for sure. It does. My grandma was always the family narrative was that she cheated at playing cards, like, if you play like skip, like skip, with her, she cheated. I’ve no idea how. I don’t even know if it’s true. It might not be true, but that was like, watch out.

Jay Whetter  02:01

So that was the life lesson you learned from your Grammy, to get ahead. Cheat to

Toban Dyck  02:05

get ahead. Yeah, but I could never, I never caught her. Oh, wow, she was stealth, very stealth. How

Jay Whetter  02:12

did you know she was cheating? I never. She won every single game.

Toban Dyck  02:17

No, she, I think she threw enough games just to kind of, you know, keep keep you guessing, right? Yeah, yeah. To keep it interesting. And I actually don’t even know if she cheated, but that was always the that was always the thing.

Jay Whetter  02:28

Anyway, should we move on? Let’s get this going. All right. Welcome to the podcast. We’re got a fumonte today from the University of Manitoba.

Toban Dyck  02:42

Where do doing extension because we we

Jay Whetter  02:44

value it. Farmers are still looking for information, even while governments have pulled away from the job of extension so that so, like you said, yeah, the needs there, and there’s fewer people actually doing extension. And so we thought we’d, we’d jump into that, and we hope that sponsors recognize that the service that we’re offering and give us some support.

Toban Dyck  03:04

As much as we are doing that because, because we see a need and we have a passion for it, we’re also doing it because we see a need among some of the groups that could be sponsors, and we see that they are also looking for new ways to extend you

Jay Whetter  03:16

know, if anybody else wants to step forward, we’d welcome their support as well. This is the extensionists, and our guest today is Afua Monte. Afua, can you tell us where you work and what you do?

Afua Mante  03:32

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Soil Science at the University of Manitoba, and I ran the soil physics program there, and

Jay Whetter  03:42

we’re going to get to soil physics, but I want to talk to you about your early introduction to agriculture. Do you mind telling me so you grew up in Ghana. Your mom’s family were farmers. What was that like?

Afua Mante  03:58

Yeah, yeah. So I grew up in the city. I was born and raised in the city for the first nine years of my life. And I’ll say, of course, life happened, and we had to move somewhere. The first place we moved was village one, I’ll call it village one. And then, of course, things didn’t work out there. So my mom’s brothers and my grandma were like, Why don’t you come back to the village, which I’ll call village two, it’s like, and they were like, well, if you come, at least there will be plenty of food and you don’t have to worry about food anymore. And that sounded really nice. So we just jumped at it, and we packed ourselves and we went to my mom’s village. So when we went, of course, my uncles are farmers that that that has been the occupation for most part. And so of course, we were part of it. And everybody in the family is part of agriculture. There. So we go to these fields, and, of course, we prepare the land. And it didn’t initially, they didn’t have tractors or plows or how it was more of a fiscal work. So yeah, with that, well, usually my, my portion of the task was to cook. Okay, so I would join some of the ladies in the family, and we will cook for the helps and also for other family members. And I like doing that part of it, because I didn’t have to be the one, you know, raking and hoping, and so it was the best part of the farming activities. But then I realized that, okay, that is what was really feeding us and making sure that we were able to go to school and get what we needed right. So one at one time, my uncle and I were sitting under this big tree in the field, and he had actually gotten one tiny tractor and a plow and a harrow, and it was like his life savings invested into that, and it made him so happy, because we were able to get to the field and do all the field work on time, because it was strictly rain fed agriculture, so you had to really meet the reins. So if you delay because you didn’t have the right labor and do things on time, then you miss the whole first race. And it’s like, yeah, you are heading towards losses. So when he got all of that, he’s like, we’re sitting on that this tree and having this discussion. And just you could see the smile on his face. He was just beaming, watching these equipment working and doing all the job right? And then he said, Do you know that people study this? I’m like, Oh, okay. I was just watching. I was just amazed, seeing how all of these things. And I was in junior high school, probably second year. So when I went to senior high school, I right, right from grade four, I wanted to be an engineer, and it was more of civil and electrical. But then, when I went to senior high school, one of my early mentors, he had come to visit our school, and he asked me, of course, we’re about to graduate, what do you want to do after graduation? I said, I want to study engineering. And he said, What kind said civil or electrical? He said, What about a cultural engineer? I’m like, oh, there is a thing called agricultural engineering. And from that day, when I he explained to me. I said, Okay, what is it about? He said, Oh, we make farming a little less difficult. Yeah.

Jay Whetter  07:35

Where did you meet this person?

Afua Mante  07:36

Right on my campus, in my senior high school, in your high school, yeah. So he would come every vacation, because the family was living in the village there. So he would come from, that’s my alma mater, Kwame Nkrumah, University of Science and Technology. So he would come every long vacation. He was in our cultural engineering program there. So he would come and then help my class, the science class, know to catch up.

Jay Whetter  08:00

Was that his hometown, your school, that was, he would come back home, and then he would pop into the school and try to recruit students into

Afua Mante  08:08

he was, well, actually, that was what was happening, yeah. And actually, interestingly enough, my school was, don’t go from agricultural Senior High School, okay? Because it’s agricultural. And, like, everybody is into farming there, right? So, yeah, when you talked about that, I’m like, okay, that’s quite interesting, yeah, and I could connect that to what was happening with my uncles. And it made sense to me,

Jay Whetter  08:33

is this the same school where you got suspended for a month? Is the same school.

Toban Dyck  08:43

What did you do?

Afua Mante  08:47

Well, some of us decided to let a demonstration to make that school better.

Toban Dyck  08:52

I love it.

Afua Mante  08:55

So, yeah, that is the same school really.

Jay Whetter  08:58

Well, you of course, have to tell us what the demonstration was all, yeah, you

Toban Dyck  09:01

do well, you

Afua Mante  09:03

know, well, my uncle as when they were trying to convince us to come back to the village. That one of the reasons, oh yeah, there will be food, that was great. But then the other thing, yeah, we know education is not really going to be really that great, because, of course, we had poor resources. Teachers were not coming. Was far removed from the city, so teachers were not coming. And so it happened that when you go to that school, and I wanted to be an engineer, so I had to choose the general science course, and you didn’t have teachers, you didn’t have enough resources, test books, so it’s just so when you get in there, your failing is really assured. Was like, you fail before you start, right? So it’s like there is actually no hope. But then it’s like, I still want to do science. And I recall my mom would say, Nana. My other name is Nana, Nana. It’s not about where you are. Is about what you are, remember whose child you are, and know where you are going. So she will say this almost every day, wow, almost every day. So I knew the possibility to just fail was huge, but there was this thing at the back of my mind ringing all the time. Know who you are, know whose child you are, and know where you are going. Because my mom believed in my dream of becoming an engineer. He was the one who really emphasized that to me, that you will be an engineer. I’m like, Okay, so, like, she was always, you know, having that voice, yeah, and whenever I went to school, of course, I was one of the best students in the school, of course, of course, yes, you put in all that effort and trying hard to not fail. And luckily for me, I in my third second year. Actually, there was this policy in my alma mater, Kwame Nkrumah, University of Science and Technology, and that was facilitated by the late question Professor Christiana. He was the vice chancellor. So there was this time that we wanted, they wanted to empower the rural folks, right? So they had this policy that would support any student who would at least pass all their subjects without any field, then at least they will get admission into the university. It faced a lot of pushback, but we had, the first year, we had one student from my school who could go through that program, and then I’m like, Yes, I am going to try hard not to fail. I knew I wouldn’t get the best grades, but then I knew that if I put in the effort, I won’t fail. So I worked so hard to not fail. And surprise, surprise when it came, when the admission came, guess what was on it? Agricultural Engineering, yeah. So it was me. To me was like, the stars were aligned. Yeah, it was a gift for me. So that’s how I go into agricultural engineering. And I, I don’t know, probably in my class, I was the only one who saw agricultural engineer. It’s like everybody was in there for, like, Ah, I don’t know. Maybe it was a mistake. I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t choose it. I’m like, Well, I did not have a choice, but this is what I wanted to do. So it was given to me, but it was a gift.

Jay Whetter  12:26

But I don’t want to leave the protest because, because it’s really key, I think it was, you told me better about it on the drive over, yeah, but you, you were, you led all the students up and down the village and and it was very effective. It was but you were fighting for, like, supplies and food

Afua Mante  12:49

and teachers doing their job. So, yeah, it was like, teachers, because it’s a farming community, teachers wouldn’t come to class, and they will be farming, and even using the students on their farms, wow. And so they won’t come to class. So we realized that that was not helping. I mean, that was the only senior high school that was functioning in the district, the whole district of the quail north. So it’s like, okay, if, and I knew this is the only place I could be. I mean, we can’t afford my all the fancy schools that I wanted to go. We couldn’t afford that. So this is the only school that I knew my parents could afford. So yeah, it’s mine. There are some stakes here. So when we decided to do that, it was to make sure that we get what we needed already. It’s a less endowed school, at least the little that we had, we wanted it to be effective at least. So yeah, we got what we asked for. So

Jay Whetter  13:48

you were saying before that there might be one or maybe even three students who would go on beyond high school, yeah. But after you protested, then it was like, then it was into the 10s, and then it just kept growing and growing. So you look back on that as so even though you’re suspended for your role in this for a month, it was, I think it was a very pivotal moment in your life, and you helped so many other students who came after you, it

Afua Mante  14:14

was and I look back and I’m really proud. I’m really, really proud of what we did. It was a very peaceful demonstration, and we made sure that each Cotters was really did have what we were trying to do, like we sent letters to the police, to the board, to the district assembly, to the education service, to the chiefs. It’s like we wanted them to know that this is a real problem. And we were telling them, do not stop us from doing this. And we walked from the school about three miles to the center of the village. It was a market day too, so a lot of people were there. So yeah, it really got their attention, and we were invited over that one month period, we’re suspended to be invested. Get it and, yeah, it worked well. Eventually the headmaster then was asked to leave, and we brought, they brought in a new headmaster, really, yeah, which was, we just changed the life of the school. It brought life back into the school. Students were eating well, teachers were teaching, and now we have that responsibility in our students to learn.

Toban Dyck  15:23

So does that? Does that legacy continue at that school? Oh

Afua Mante  15:25

yes, yes. Students are doing very well, and before my group, the only person that I knew had really gone far was someone who had finished the school and went to different schools and different schools to make it. But then after that incident, it’s like, yeah, we have students going to tertiary, several of them to the university right away.

Toban Dyck  15:48

Wow, yeah, that’s a real technique. That’s a really strong it’s a really strong message about kind of driving change and having kind of clarity of vision and sticking to it. So having done this once, led a peaceful demonstration and protest. Did you ever do things today? Ever get you to that point? Or do you think about kind of, I’m not going to ask you what things I’m just going to say in general. Do you kind of think I did this once? I could do this again?

Afua Mante  16:17

Well, if it’s possible, maybe we shouldn’t, because if we had dialog, then that might not happen. But then I realized that usually it takes a lot of energy, and it’s that you have to, you know, fight for something to happen. You try to sit down to have a conversation. It’s like people are not hearing so you have to really get the attention. Yeah, right, yeah. So that is what I have seen now. But then now I’ve tried hard to when I need something, and I think there’s someone in authority who could help. I walk to the office and I ask for it, right? And usually I know you have to be respectful and kind and gracious in your ask. So when you do that, oh, they you realize that they had no idea or you were going through. So now you help people to understand, right? But when that avenue is not there, then you have to use a different avenue to get the attention, yeah, but then I hope that we will be able to have those dialogs so that we don’t have to waste energy walking three miles on the street. It doesn’t

Toban Dyck  17:28

sound like it was a waste, but I agree. Are there soil

Jay Whetter  17:33

related things happening in Canada that are worth a protest or at least a dialog.

Afua Mante  17:42

Yeah, I think what are they? You know, I realized right from high school that I’ve become a strong advocate for farmers, because it’s personal, very personal for me. And it started when I, you know, when I was invited to this podcast, I started reflecting on my life, and I’m like, Damn girl, you’ve been doing this for long. So I actually look back and I realized when, when, after I had talked to my mentor, but then he had introduced me to a cultural engineering later on, there was this teacher in my school. What the question, what do you want to do? Is like a thing when you are towards the end of your high school? So I want to do agricultural engine. That I was very sure and certain that I want to do agricultural engine. Then he said, Really, you want to do farming? Well, why do you have to go and waste three, four years to do that? Maybe you should just get a piece of land here. Why don’t? Why do you want to waste your time? Oh, I did not talk to him again. No, the rest of the year, nope, I did not talk to him again. I felt so offended. Yeah, and I have never forgotten that incident. So right from there. Okay, this is so personal to me. I’ve taken it so personal because food means a lot to me, right? So when I came here and I joined our cultural community. One thing that I realized is not really heard is farmers. We do not hear farmers, and they hold a lot in their hands to make us safe. One, give us food to eat, and two, they are the ones who are working our soils right? And it’s not just about the food that they produce. If you look at the ecosystem services that we talk about, like hydrologic cycling, nutrient cycling, carbon cycling, all those other stuff that happen in the environment, the soil holds that the soil is able to do that for us. But here’s the case. We have farmers who are doing trying to feed us. That is one, and now we throw at them all the time, yeah, saw hell. Saw this. All that, and now they have to go extra mile to do the extra things for the rest of the citizens, right? So if one person is putting in so much air. For it to help the rest of us, almost 39 million people, and we do not compensate somehow or reward them somehow. That is not first like being volunteers and being overworked, you burn out, and we hear a lot, oh yeah. Farmers are angry. They push back and all that kind of stuff. Now, if you have been doing this, or you try and it’s like, oh, my input cost is going up, but then the price of my produce is like, stagnant, yeah. But here’s the case, we are at a point where we want food security, yeah? So do we increase the food prices or the produce prices, maybe not so that we can all afford good meal, right? But then in between where the farmer starts to grow that seed or put that seed in the soil, and where that produce is at, who is taking care of the farmer to be able to make sure that that soil is healthy enough to sustain all the other ecosystem services beyond the food that we get. So is that part that I believe is worthy of peaceful demonstration? Yeah, so that we can actually bring that conversation to the table. I think it’s about time Canadians ask that key question, how do we support farmers to help us to thrive, right? So,

Toban Dyck  21:24

do you have some ideas for how to, how to do that? How to, oh, I’ve

Afua Mante  21:28

got lots of opinions.

Toban Dyck  21:31

Here is the place to air them. I would love, I’d love to know, because, I mean, I agree, I agree with you. I think, like I think soil issues are very important, but I also think they’re very complicated. You know, you have a PhD, you are a cultural engineer. You’re obviously a very intelligent person. Me, simple farmer, I mean, B, okay, scratch the simple part. B, farmer, I would love to understand soils better. And I think I’m guessing I’m not alone. I’m guessing a lot of farmers have a difficult time kind of wrapping their heads around the complexities of soil, and so when they get kind of information thrown at them from various angles, it’s kind of hard to piece that all together, into, yeah, into into into a system, into an approach. So, yeah, how would you how would you respond to that?

Afua Mante  22:24

Well, currently we’ve been forced, as researchers, to really do knowledge sharing, which is great. So as part of whatever proposal that that is really key component of it, you have to have a plan to make sure that is done, and that starts with our farmers, because we had this research, or whatever they are, we are doing it so that we can support farmers, right? But then, usually we would come up with some of these strategies and do all the research on it, and then the adoption is a problem, and it’s like, who is going to adopt it, and all of that dynamic. But when we start from the scratch with farmers and CO design these experiments or the research, then they’re already part of the conversation, so their inputs are already integrated into the design of the research. So it might be complex research that we may think it is, but when you start a conversation, they have that input, and they know what’s going on, yeah. So you don’t wait till you get the results and publish it or go to a conference or a meeting before you spring it up on them. They are very aware. And when we have farmers being involved right from the beginning, then there is that peer peer training. They start talking among themselves, yeah, about the importance of what is going to happen and when that happens, one person or 234, people may be involved. Now we double that number exponentially,

Jay Whetter  23:52

right? Yeah. Well, can you, can you give us an example of of a of a case where this happened, where you involved farmers in the work. And like you said, two farmers involved and four and then it just spreads. Can you? Can you think of an example, actually,

Afua Mante  24:08

as a current project supported by MCA canola and impulses. We have the cover crop. We’re trying to build soil resilience using cover crops. And when we sent that out, we had Dr Ivan Lawley, we had the opportunity to meet some farmers, to have that discussion, and listening in, you could gather a lot of information from that conversation. And personally, it changed the approach that I was going to adopt. Oh, and well, so when it comes to cover crop, we have say, cover crop, we know is great for soil conservation, and we want to encourage farmers to adopt that, especially after they harvest. But then listening is like, oh yeah. We tell okay, it can help with nutrient cycling or something like that. So that is actually the main. Goal that people are adopting so that they reduce nitrogen use, right? But then listening into the conversation is like, Oh, maybe I didn’t see that much of nitrogen improved from the cover crop. And it’s like, it’s kind of frustrating for them. But then when you start to listen, okay, so what happened? Then you start trying to analyze the situation, then you’re like, oh, maybe we didn’t get enough biomass. Maybe we didn’t get enough to do the work that we were expecting for it to do before it froze, we started experiencing our winter conditions. Then spring came, then you have to kill the crop, right, or get it out so that you can have your cash crop in. So that kind of conversation really helps for you to really think deeply into what you are trying to design. And of course, when they we were trying to talk about, okay, using the cover crop for trafficability, which is the current project. And so the question is, oh, how then you started having that conversation, okay, maybe cover crop during the spring time. It will help, it will transpire, and it will take up some of the moisture. Then it would your soil will dry faster, then you can get onto the field and move on it without much resistance. So it sounded great, and to realize that, okay, that is not actually what is going to happen, because you have this tiny little cover crop during spring time, and it’s not going to do that magic. And when you look back, you realize that, okay, what is the recommendation for when cover crops should be sown? It’s like around 15 September, moving forward, and usually farmers are late to see that, because when there could be no moisture to support that, or it’s just the cash crop is taking longer for harvest to happen. And so when you seed your crop and the cover crop, and you don’t have enough time, maybe six to 10 weeks, for it, for you to build up or have that enough biomass, and then it starts to freeze, we get frost, and it’s like it’s dormant now right until spring. And it might not necessarily help you to do that work, but I realize there is more to having the crop to help you with trafficability, because at the end of the day you get those cover crops. They protect your soil, but then it protects those channels that you created with your actual crops during the season. So what it would do is, with time, you end up getting water moving down. Because during the spring, you want water to go down because there is very high relative humidity, which is stopping or impeding water, evapotranspiration, right? So you want water to go down, and if he’s able to go down, then during the drought period that we experience here, the water there will be floor reversal, then that water can support your crops. So it might not necessarily help you significantly. During the spring time to traffic here, you have to still wait it out, right? It will serve a purpose. And when you let this happen for a longer time, then you are restructuring your soil structure.

Jay Whetter  28:05

Well, f well, you talked about soil physics, or that soil structure as a house. I like that. Oh, yeah, that So, and that’s, that’s the physics of the soil. So mean, the chemistry, which is like the nutrients, etc, the biology, which is all the microbes and physics, those are all related. But why is the structure of the house so important?

Afua Mante  28:30

Yeah, the house is very important.

Toban Dyck  28:32

I’m really excited about this analogy. I feel like it’s really gonna hit home with me. I’m hoping

Afua Mante  28:40

so. When you have a house, you have multiple rooms, right? Yeah. So, so imagine that you have rooms of different sizes, right? So depending on how the minerals, the clay, the silk, the sand, they come together and attach themselves with one another, it will create that kind of rooms that you are looking for. So in a saw, you want a wide range of those rooms, which we call pores. You need a wide range of that. So we need that. We have the macro pores, the mesoporous, the micro pores, and there are two others below, but we will leave that one out. Thank

Toban Dyck  29:16

you. So for now, we’ll come back to that. When

Afua Mante  29:19

you have the macro pores, what that helps you to do? It helps water to move through the soil. So water movement is enhanced under gravity, going down and then in the meso pores and part of the micro pores, you are able to retain the moisture against gravity. So this is where your water holding capacity is very critical. Okay, so if you have the muscle part of it, the lower end of the muscle parts, and then the microbe, you retain moisture, and then when you’re in the micro, the same way. But then again, if you have these houses, then it helps you to know, oh, how much bacteria do I have in my cell versus how much. Fungi do I have in my soil? And we know that having bacteria and fungi influences how nutrients are going to be available to the plant. So assuming you squish the bigger rooms, then you are going to impact the fungi. They are not going to have a place to play. And when you have too many of the tiny rooms, guess we’re going to have lots of bacteria that you may not necessarily need, so that nutrient availability is going to be compromised, so the plants will not have access to that, right? So if you have, say, nitrogen fertilizer applied to your so you need some kind of bacteria to convert it from there to nitrate, so that your plants can access that. So if you don’t have enough of that, then maybe that will not happen. But if you have too much of that, then maybe it’s going to do some, of course, other detrimental effect to your crops, right? You’re going to have too much. And then when you convert to nitrate, guess what is happening? If the plants don’t use it, you have your end tools going or you have leaching to ground water, right? So depending on the houses you have and the number of it and the rooms you have in the house, and the number of rooms you have in the house, and the sizes of the rooms that you have, it influences a lot of the dynamics

Toban Dyck  31:20

it sounds like, almost like a village or a town. So we have multiple houses with various rooms. So it takes a village. Is that the good analogy?

Afua Mante  31:28

Exactly, yeah, because that is actually what is happening in there. Yeah, they saw the complexity of this as, like village, lots of rooms and different dynamics happening. So

Jay Whetter  31:41

if you drive heavy machinery all over the village, it squashes. Yeah, and are you? Are you a proponent of controlled traffic? So the control traffic is like the streets. How about

Toban Dyck  31:58

municipal government

Jay Whetter  32:02

protesting? In the underground, but compaction is, is, is an issue, and that it, it, it makes it more difficult for the soil to achieve these, yeah, these natural objectives. Yeah,

Afua Mante  32:17

you’re right, because when compaction occurs, all adult soil processes will be compromised. It’s a huge, huge problem. So when you compact your soil, of course, you are closing in on those houses, on those rooms, right? So you are crashing though, so you don’t want that. And if you crash those macro pods, that tells you already that your water is not good soil, and then you may end up having the mark the micro ones being dominant. And if the water ends up getting into the soil, it retains it. But here is the case, those larger ports, or the macro pores, also help with what air circulation, right, air exchange between the atmosphere and the soil. So if that is crashed, then your soil is going to have a lot of carbon dioxide buildup, because those bacteria are going to be very busy. The microbes in there are going to be very busy respiring. And if they don’t have enough oxygen to take then of course, there will be too much of carbon dioxide in there. So your soil becomes anaerobic, right, which makes it more acidic eventually. So you don’t want that to happen. You don’t want to crash the larger rooms in your house. You want to keep all of them open and active. Do you study

Jay Whetter  33:31

compaction? Yes, it’s one of the key so if we’re going to, you know, extend a message to farmers or anybody operating heavy equipment on the land, is there? What is your message?

Afua Mante  33:46

It boils down to what is the moisture content of the soil whenever you are using these equipment, it could be as tiny as the hoops of a cattle, and it will still compact if the soil does not have the right moisture, right? So even livestock, exactly, oh, yeah, they do a lot of compaction. We forget about them, because not a machine.

Jay Whetter  34:08

What is the what is the moisture? Yeah.

Afua Mante  34:12

So the moisture message is that we have to conduct what we call the lower plastic limit analysis so that we can determine at what level of moisture is it safe for the soil to be able to resist the weight that is coming from the machinery. So if we determine that, then you have the value. So if you have soil moisture sensors installed in your field, and you are monitoring and be like, Okay, it’s at this level, so I can go, if it’s below this level, that that means I can go, and the most critical part of the soil that we have to consider is about the top 30 centimeters of the soil. Because if that’s that part of the soil is having that moisture we are talking about, it provides protein. Protection for what is and dye. So if that surface soil is not strong enough, then you are going to transfer all that weight from the machinery to the deep alias. And that is where the problem is that we transfer to the deep alias. Because if you are into, say, conventional famine, for instance, you go in there, and then you can till the soil, and it breaks things down, so you don’t necessarily see what’s happening down. But then that all that weight is at that depth, right the sub soil, and it’s like you don’t see it, so you don’t necessarily know it’s compromised until you want water to move, and it’s not moving ever, and it just stays there. So that

Jay Whetter  35:44

info, so that deeper area that gets compacted, yeah, you lose your water infiltration, yeah. And so

Afua Mante  35:51

the water, the top pad may still infiltrate, but then it will create like a water bath for you, it would just stay there, right? Because it’s going to take longer for the water to keep going down. And the other disadvantage is that when you have your crops in place, the root development, we expect it to go down, but then if that sub layer is compromised, then the roots will rather go laterally instead of going down, so they end up competing for moisture, in that tiny little space where they have nutrients. And nutrients exactly so that.

Toban Dyck  36:26

So the houses need to have basements. Oh yeah,

Afua Mante  36:30

yeah. So, right, yeah. So yeah, that the critical layer is very important, like at least the top 60 centimeters, you need to keep it open, right? Yeah, you need to keep it open. You need to make sure things are moving in and out, so that water and nutrients, things can really flow and even heat, right? Because how the heat transports, or transfers from the surface to the deep alias, if it’s compacted, the thing is, so imagine you have walls right two walls, and if the walls are very close together, it’s easy to transfer heat from one side of the wall to the other because they are very close. That’s conduction. But then if it’s farther apart because of the air space in between, it takes longer for the heat to move from that one wall to the other so for you to have good soil heat, you need to make sure you have all those rooms still available. Otherwise, your soil just heats faster, yeah. And when it heats faster, whatever moisture is left, Eva prays it’s gone, yeah. And then if there is drought condition, guess what? You’re going to have a lot of drought problem, and if there’s heat stress, the crops are not going to be happy.

Jay Whetter  37:45

How does the farm know they have compaction?

Afua Mante  37:49

One of the simplest approach you can use is using what we call penetrometers. So there’s like a probe that you can insert, and then it tells you the pressure, the resistance, right? So this simple tool is based on, of course, action and reaction Newton’s law, right? So you push it in, it’s and a lot of people will be like, Oh, well, that kind of it’s like, it’s based on the person’s strength. But then really, if you start pushing it in, depending on the resistance you are getting, that is how much you can push it. So it’s like, when you you try to insert it in a very open space, we’re just going, it doesn’t matter your strength or whatever, it will just move right in because there isn’t that much resistance. So when you have that much resistance, and it takes a lot of energy and effort to push it down, and then it records that for you. So in the top layer, we expect the penetration resistance to be about three, 3.5 mega Pascal. And then when you go to say, below the 30 to below the 30 to about 60, we expect it to be around four to five mega Pascal. And with these, because when the seed, when you place the seed in your soil, and it’s germinated, you want it to be able to come out, so within the top layer, and it’s within the top layer, so you want that to happen, but then as they build stronger roots, they can be able to penetrate deeper. So we, we are a little bit not so conservative about what is happening down there. As long as you are within that four to five mega pascal, then the crops are doing well. So that simple, tiny probe can do a lot of magic.

Jay Whetter  39:23

And what do you have to probe every few feet or depending

Afua Mante  39:26

on your activities, right? So if you are into conventional farming practice, because you have all these going, what you call operations happening, and depend on the moisture to you, you had gone to your field before the moisture was right. Then definitely there’s some smearing, or you were doing some deformation somehow, right? So if you can, if you suspect that you did something like that, you want to check right. But then, if there is no till, if you are doing no till, then. Naturally, it’s like you are not breaking it down so and then not, of course, we are all under the effect of the atmosphere, right? It acts on us. So that weight and all of that, that dynamic is still happening. So when you have no till fill, depending on the kind of minerals you have present, you may want to check that as well, and especially when you have situations in Manitoba, for instance, where we experience a high intensity rainfall. It’s like you have all the wetness, and in the springtime, then all of a sudden you have the drought period. And we pray for rains, and the rains come, we get significant portions of it, and it’s just a lot in a short period. And when that happens, because the soil is dry, it causes deformation, and it breaks those tiny aggregates, and those houses that are on the surface, they begin to collapse. Right? So those aggregates collapse, and then they fill those spaces that were supposed to be on the surface. And when that happens, then of course, you create that hardness on the surface as well. That’s what we call soil crusting. Right, right? Yeah. Is

Toban Dyck  41:15

there? Is there something that you see in your experience that farmers do kind of routinely, that you’d like them to stop when it comes to soil?

Afua Mante  41:24

Well, I’d rather say I would like them to add Sure. So that would be making sure the soil has cover all year round. Is that right? Yeah, all year round, not just during the season. And I know some people, some farmers, do the off season when they Fauci that cover crop. And I know, but during the season, depending on the kind of crop you have, you may also have some parts of the field exposed, right, depending on that’s where intercropping becomes very critical, right? So if we can do that and protect the surface, that would be great, because that was, Well, Glenn Lee, I don’t know if you know about Glenn, yeah, you have these salt is heavy clay, sorry. And then it just rains over just a few, a few hours, and you go back and the soil is so hard on the surface. So yes, we want water to be able to go down, but the water can only go down if it goes through the surface first, right? So, if we are able to protect the surface of the soil from the harshness of the rains that come, especially after a period of almost near drought condition, then that would be great.

Jay Whetter  42:38

Glen Lee is just south Winnipeg, for people who don’t know, right, in the Red River, Red River Valley, but at

Toban Dyck  42:44

a research farm and a research farm? Yeah, yeah.

Jay Whetter  42:48

Would like crops double and residue count as cover. Or do you need? Like, there’s this whole notion of the living root, but that’s not always achievable in the prairies with our long winter and short fall. So I’m just wondering if, if leaving stubble and crop residue is is enough, like

Toban Dyck  43:08

as you drove down the driveway here, you saw canola stubble and volunteer canola and cutting green living roots and some green living roots, absolutely, that’s how I refer to them, too. Yeah,

Afua Mante  43:19

I would prefer the living plans being available, because it depends on where you are, if you are in Saskatchewan a little bit, or maybe the stubbles may be useful because it traps the snow for you, and then you’re able to retain some moisture. But looking at the moisture condition that we have in Manitoba, it might not necessarily be useful, because you want to get to your field as early as possible. So when you are trapping the snow, then it’s like it’s taking long for the dryness to happen. But then, if you have the living room, the advantage is that one it will keep growing during that time, and then it will transpire. So you are removing the moisture and also helping to continue to create those channels deep down. But then the other thing is, if you have some of the leaves, it also covers the surface as well. And then, because it’s active, you have all those biological stuff happening. You create those soils around the root mesh. It forms those aggregates around there so it holds the salt together, makes it more stable, right? So, yes, the the stubbles may be great when you want to leave some, you know, build your organic matter and all, but then you have to understand the climate you are dealing with to see if it’s going to be useful or not, but I would say that I would rather go with the living plants. And it’s not just the water aspect, but then you are also promoting those activities that you need in your soil, right? Increase the soil carbon, and it helps to bind things together as well. Because. Those are very, very important. I

Jay Whetter  45:01

think, I think this is one of those cases fo where have farmers involved in that research? Because there’s this notion that this regenerative agriculture movement is not really driven by agriculture. It’s driven by people outside who don’t really understand the complexities of farming, especially on the prairies. But if we, if we could have these conversations with farmers and come up with solutions that work in Manitoba and the Red River Valley solution, like you said, will be different from the the drier plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan,

Toban Dyck  45:36

yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m really interested in that, like that relationship between extension and kind of empowering, empowerment and participation, like the Yeah, because I agree with you. I’ve seen some of the like the on farm research programs that you know, Manitoba, pulse growers and other commodity groups have have initiated, and that gets a lot of favorable attention from farmers, if they’re brought in at that early stage, and they can see the results for themselves, and they can participate in it from the from the get go, like, that’s such an effective way to drive home the value of research. And so is there, do you but give a sense of like? So you talked about that being successful at the university level, is there a sense of like, can you scale it up? Could you do more of that kind of farmer participation? And how does that look?

Afua Mante  46:28

I think we don’t have a choice. Yeah, that is how we should approach things. Because I always say, farmers know the soil, they know the land. They tell the land. They really understand. They can’t even talk to the land, so they know what they are dealing with right there and then. So yes, I may have had some famine background, and I’ve studied for a long time to understand what goes on, but I think that collaboration is really key to our advancement in the agricultural industry. We need to continue to do that, and I’m really glad that it’s a required thing for us to do. Sometimes scientists are like, Yeah, I don’t want to talk to people. Yeah, especially if you’re an engineer, you’re like, Ah, I don’t want to talk to people. But no, I’m happy that we are forced to do that, bringing agronomists, bringing the farmers, bringing all these people, arrive, from the get go, to have that conversation. And

Toban Dyck  47:23

it’s good for farmers too, right? I mean, it’s, can see it being valuable for researchers 100% but, you know, if I think of it, a good analogy would be like, say, I’m at with a group of people, and I haven’t been talking for like, 1015, minutes, and you just kind of, you sink into yourself a little bit. You kind of started analyzing this group from from a distance, and you think, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to participate. Blah, blah, blah, until all of a sudden you’re forced to participate, and then you’re brought into a discussion, and then you’re in it, and then it’s different. Everything just changes, right? And I can see that being the same for for research, where, if you’re not involved, putting my farmer hat on, if I’m not involved, and I can take that bird’s eye view. I can think whatever I want from it, like of it, I’m like, oh, that’s useless. I’ll never see a return on investment, or I’ll never understand it until I’m forced to participate. And then all of a sudden, I’m in, I’m into, I’m in this. And I could see that being a just a night and day difference. Yeah, that’s a very

Afua Mante  48:19

Yeah. I mean, when I started buying position, I of course, you have all these wild ideas, and then I was very fortunate to be part of the canola research camp, the first group cohort, and it all really opened my eyes and changed my perspective. It’s like, oh, okay, I need to reimagine things, and that really helps shape what I’m doing right now. So yes, I’m doing I really love basic science research, because we need that information for us to give to those who want to do applied research, to do that effectively, right? I know there is always that contention applied versus basic size. They are all very, very important. We cannot do without the other especially in this time that we are in. I mean, we may have had some signs going on, maybe 50 years ago, 80 years ago, the times have changed. The Climate now we have longer summers and, you know, it keeps going. So if we were relying on information from 6080, years ago now, we need to update that science to make sure it’s relevant now. So yes, we may have what you call funding agencies, sponsor in particular, having certain priorities, but we cannot drop the basic science. We need to bring them together. Even if you are doing armed farm or whole farm, whatever we want to call it, we need to make sure that the science, the basic science, is there to be able to explain all the phenomena that we’re going to see when we step into that big field.

Jay Whetter  49:56

So before we talk for a long time where we could. Then we’re not going to about funding of science, because that’s a whole other topic. Yeah, we

Toban Dyck  50:03

need to talk about food, though. We do need to talk about food. I do want to one quick thing. There’s always one more quick thing, but it’s going to be super fast, I swear. So when we talk about moisture. So this, this year is this year is interesting, right? Because it’s been quite a moist year in Manitoba, and we had late season we had late season moisture this year. So, yeah, I guess. How does science kind of account for these? I don’t even know if they’re I don’t know if you can call them outliers seasons anymore, because it seems like every season is so we’re talking normal. That’s right. So there’s no normal. So we start making plans, like soil plans, or, you know, surrounding your soil, as a farmer, cover cropping, all this stuff, taking into account moisture or lack thereof. And you have, you just coming off of a year like this. How do you it’s hard to think about, right? Like, it’s a challenging thing to it

Afua Mante  50:58

is, and it’s very frustrating. Yeah, it is very frustrating, because, of course, you have your plans. You imagine how the season is going to go, and then the rains won’t stop. It just keeps coming, and you keep waiting. And maybe you may have planned, maybe later April, then frost, you know, even May, sometimes you so it’s like things just it’s, you can’t do that one you cannot. It’s the weather. Is the climate you can’t change unless we can go up there and switch something off. Then that would be great. But what we can control is where we are, right here on the earth, standing on the soil, right? So the practices that we put in place to help regulate that moisture becomes very, very important. Yeah, that’s

Toban Dyck  51:44

a good, that’s a good way of putting, putting it regulating the moisture. Yeah, yeah. I like, like that. You wanted to talk about food. You hungry? Are you hungry today? Is it lunch time? It’s great. It’s getting there. Yeah,

Jay Whetter  51:57

for you, we talked a little bit about Jollof rice, which I’m looking forward to making some of that for me, which is like organi. And I don’t know whether it’s the national dish, but it’s a well known dish from but that’s not your favorite food, your favorite food, or your comfort food, is something different. Can you tell us what that is?

Afua Mante  52:13

That would be Bangkok with either oku sauce or just pepper with tomatoes ground together, sauce, whatever, sauce with

Jay Whetter  52:23

Banku, yeah, it’s

Afua Mante  52:25

made with corn, corn, like

Toban Dyck  52:27

a sweet, corn, like a no, okay,

Afua Mante  52:30

not sweet. So you, you you ferment it, and then you mill it, and then, Yo, you mill, actually, you ferment first, and then you mill, and then you ferment again, very fermented, yeah.

Jay Whetter  52:41

What does it taste like?

Afua Mante  52:43

Very fermented. It’s sour, very sour, yeah, very sour. And

Jay Whetter  52:49

then you put okra. And then

Afua Mante  52:51

when you So, you make, like, porridge, but had had one, so like, make balls out of it. And then you use that with with SARS, with meat, like a

Jay Whetter  53:05

meatball, like a falafel, sort of like a ball. And then would you fry that, or just eat it like a ball,

Afua Mante  53:11

just as it is, like, you stir it up, and then you it’s a paste, right? You make a paste out of it. And then it’s like when you are dealing with flour, needing a flour or something, so you get that kind of texture. And then, of course, that’s the main dish. And then you add your sauce to it. And then, yeah, you dip it in the sauce. I should make that one.

Toban Dyck  53:33

I feel like, yeah, when you come back, yeah, when you come back, yeah. The next episode, it’s

Afua Mante  53:38

very sour. Well, if you like sour cream or anything sour, it should be, oh, cheesecake, like it has that kind of taste, yeah?

Jay Whetter  53:49

Cheesecake, fermented cheesecake.

Afua Mante  53:54

I like my cheesecake very sour. I don’t like it’s sweet, yeah? I

Toban Dyck  53:59

thought we talked about clean food, food grains back. I thought that’s what you were gonna go to. Oh, gonna

Jay Whetter  54:02

go. Oh yeah, we could do that too. You’re on the board of the Canadian food grains bank. Yes. Is that how you would like to end this conversation? Or do you want, do you want to talk about, is there like, one last thing that you wanted to

Afua Mante  54:14

Well, you never know where this will end. So

Jay Whetter  54:21

that’s right? Is there anything that we didn’t ask you about what you wanted to say? I

Toban Dyck  54:25

do want to ask what you, what you grew in Ghana, when you, when you were, kind of, when you were, you know, middle school, and surrounded by farming, what was, what was being grown?

Afua Mante  54:34

Mainly corn, okay, maybe corn. And then you have, like, cassava. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, okay. And then little vegetable, nice

Jay Whetter  54:44

by corn, you mean maize or, yeah, interesting. So a Mexican crop was a staple in Yeah, the

Afua Mante  54:53

staple, yeah. So you use corn. It’s like kenke, bang, everything like you can eat. Eats corn meal every time, like for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. It’s everywhere. I guess that’s why I like it as a coffee, because I ate it for so and that’s what my uncles were growing mostly. So we had lots of that available. So, yeah,

Toban Dyck  55:16

so. And then was that sold, like in local farmers markets? Is that, was that the that, yeah, that market worked,

Afua Mante  55:23

yeah. So we had a in my in the town. We had a weekly market stuff going on there. So every Thursday we will have all these traders coming in from all over the place, some from different countries, actually neighboring countries, yeah, they will come there and then buy the produce. That’s

Toban Dyck  55:43

very interesting.

Jay Whetter  55:46

Well, I could ask that question again. Was there one last thing that you wanted to say during this podcast, when

Toban Dyck  55:54

you interrupted you sorry,

Jay Whetter  55:57

when you woke up in the night and we’re thinking about the podcast. Was there something that you really wanted to say that you haven’t had a chance to say yet? Well,

Afua Mante  56:05

I feel strongly about us working with farmers, and not just researchers, but all of us as Canadians, and when we are throwing things at them, expecting them to step up and do volunteer all the time, we have to ask ourselves, how we supporting farmers to be able to protect or make sure the soil that they are cultivating is healthy all the time, to support the other ecosystem services, because it’s not just the yield that we have to focus on, and frankly, the 7% of the Canadian land mass, that is for agricultural production, is the best part of our land, and that 7% interestingly, about cultural source, you have good structures. You have good houses, good

Toban Dyck  56:54

houses,

Afua Mante  56:54

you have very good structure, right? And those structures are very important for all the other ecosystem services. So if we have that 7% compromised, then we are all doomed. So we need to support farmers. Yes, we want to get that aspect of the ecosystem service, which is food, but there is more to the soil than food. So how do we support farmers to be able to keep these soils healthy without throwing at them and expecting them to do all the work and volunteer all the time. What can we do as citizens to support farmers in that quest for our own good? Like the new the report that came out in June on soil health, the critical ground it’s the soul being healthy is as being healthy, us

Jay Whetter  57:44

being healthy, yeah,

Toban Dyck  57:44

so being healthy is us being healthy? Yeah, that that’s that’s a strong finish for sure,

Jay Whetter  57:50

Nana.

Afua Mante  57:52

Oh, you caught that.

Jay Whetter  57:54

I this, this phrase that your mom said, and I know you’re thinking about your mom today, who you who you are and whose child you are. So she wanted you to always think about who you are, whose child you are, and where you are going. Yeah, was that her, or was that part of Ghanaian culture?

Afua Mante  58:15

It was her. It was her. And one interesting thing, I, like my mom, didn’t even get Middle School certificates, right? But she always bowed to herself and to us that she knew the importance of education. So she’d be like, I couldn’t do this. She was very smart. But then, of course, the system around that time did not support her in that regard. But then she’s like, I couldn’t do this, but you want to be an engineer, I’ll make sure whatever I can you will be. And this support from her that I got, I’ll tell you the story behind so when I was in junior high school, first year, about early part of it, there is this lady in the first village, village one that I talked about, she was the pastor’s wife of our church, and they had a lot of influence on us, and because of what we’re going through, there was support, food and all of that. So one day she visited us, and my mom and her they were standing somewhere close to the house, and I was sitting on the staircase, and I could hear them having that conversation. So the lady told my mom, well, she is good with her hands, you know, I could style her I could sew clothes. So maybe she should drop out of school and start doing something to support the family’s income. And my mom was furious. She was like, kept her cool until she left. Then she came, met me sitting on the staircase. Then she said, Nana, what do you want to be when you grow up? Said, I want to be an engineer. And then she looks straight in my eyes, you will be engineer. Do you hear me be an engineer? Engineer, as if she knew what that was. But yeah, since that day, I knew I had to be an engineer, and whatever the circumstance or whatever life was throwing at us, No, I did not waver. I knew she was behind, and as she would say, it’s not where you are is what you are. Remember whose child you are and where you are going.

Jay Whetter  1:00:30

Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah. Thank

Toban Dyck  1:00:31

you so much. It was an honor, for sure.

Afua Mante  1:00:34

Thank you too, and thanks for having me.

Toban Dyck  1:00:37

Yeah, our pleasure or my pleasure, I don’t know. Yeah. He sees mine. He seems on the fence.

Jay Whetter  1:00:53

I like that line. Remember who you are, whose child you are, and where you’re going.

Toban Dyck  1:00:57

That is a good one. So that was, that was a great conversation. It was, yeah, it’s

Jay Whetter  1:01:02

one of those conversations where, you know, 30 minutes in, we realized, well, we’re not even close to what we really want to talk about. But it was so engaging and fun. I like, I didn’t really want to force the soil conversation even No, great though it was, no,

Toban Dyck  1:01:17

it’s, yeah, soil is a very fascinating topic. We’ve talked about it a couple times already on this podcast. This podcast, right? And I’m sure we’ll talk about it a lot more. But, you know, yeah, I yeah, it’s just such a complex it’s such a complex thing, and it’s so really starting to kind of get

Jay Whetter  1:01:40

what’s happening? Oh,

Toban Dyck  1:01:42

he’s not gonna be able to kill it. We’re, we are we’re attempting to kill a fly here in the studio. Do you catch it? No, apparently, apparently you can hear the fly in the in the mic. So, yeah, if you

Jay Whetter  1:01:53

can hear a fly, it’s really a fly. It’s not my nose hair is whistling.

Toban Dyck  1:01:58

It’s a ventriloquism

Jay Whetter  1:02:01

speech impediment,

Toban Dyck  1:02:05

yeah, but the complexities of soil, you know, it’s just like, you have people who have PhDs talking about it here, right? And like, it’s, they studied this for a long time. Yeah, I work with it. And, you know, you know, you work with it too, your work. And like, yeah? Like, I really, I’m really excited. I hope, after a number of episodes, I’m actually going to start learning about it, yeah, because it is complex well, and

Jay Whetter  1:02:30

I just like that, the house analogy. I hadn’t heard that before, but you can imagine a whole village which is your soil, and then you drive over it with a bulldozer or a steamroller, yeah? And you realize, oh yeah, no, it maybe isn’t going to be as as livable or as productive as it used to be when it’s all compacted like that, yeah?

Toban Dyck  1:02:48

Like, I think those analogies, I mean these, at least to me, and I’m guessing for a few other people, are really valuable. Like, it really drives it home, and the basement, like all that stuff, it starts to make sense, starts to really, really drive home. I can come back to soil if you don’t have anything more about soil. Well,

Jay Whetter  1:03:04

no, I think you should conclude soil. I just want to say F Wood’s mom’s line one more time, just because I love it, and I want to close with that, yeah. So as you heard in the podcast, F Wood’s mom would tell her, remember who you are, whose child you are, and where you’re going and I think that’s a really great philosophy for life. I mean, we carry the words and the experiences of our ancestors and our communities with us, and if we can remember that and and then, you know, build from that in a positive way. That’s a great message,

Toban Dyck  1:03:38

the if it was like resolve and like clarity of vision from a young age is quite inspiring as well. You know, kind of anchored on, anchored on that right just was so clear her path, and she, she, she stuck with it and with with passion. I mean, still

Jay Whetter  1:03:58

tell that she’s and we’re so lucky to have her in Western Canada. Absolutely, absolutely.

Toban Dyck  1:04:03

I’m really, I’m really interested in that relationship between that extension and empowerment and participation. I think that’s a really

Jay Whetter  1:04:13

I could just, for some reason, it just really like having farmers participate in the research. Yeah, yeah. Like, I

Toban Dyck  1:04:19

know it’s been talked about before, and I’ve been a part of those conversations in the past, too, but it really, really drove home. It really kind of sunk in during during this conversation. Be like, yeah, that is, you know, we you talk when we talk about extension and effective approaches to extension, I think a key part of that is getting who you’re extending to to participate in some way like and kind of answering that question, checking that box, right? I think that’s I think that’s important, and

Jay Whetter  1:04:48

that’s what keeps us interested in continuing with this podcast. So on that note, yes, this has been the extensionists. I’m Jay wetter and I’m Toban Dyck, until next time you. This has been a burr forest group production. We also want to thank the people you don’t see. We’re here.

Toban Dyck  1:05:09

We’re chatting away with our guests, but there’s tons of people who work behind the scenes to make this podcast

Jay Whetter  1:05:15

happen. Brian Sanchez, our

Toban Dyck  1:05:16

director, Ashley Robinson, is

Jay Whetter  1:05:18

the coordinator, and Abby wall is our producer and editor. You.