Why farmer Iain soils his underpants on purpose
Cattle breeder reveals novel way to test the quality of ground in his fields
A SCOTS farmer has come up with a novel way of testing his soil – and he admits that it’s really pants.
Beef cattle breeder Iain Green buried six pairs of his old underpants around his 2800-acre spread for an unusual experiment in soil testing.
The idea was that the more the material disintegrated, the healthier and more robust the soil.
Iain, of Corskie Farm near Garmouth in Moray, explained: “The theory behind the ‘soil my undies’ test is that the cotton in the pants will be devoured by the microbes and bacteria in the soil.
“We buried them in different fields, some which we think have healthier soil and others which aren’t as good.”
The trials were conducted in collaboration with Quality Meats Scotland and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.
A number of officials and fellow farmers gathered at Iain’s farm near the mouth of the Spey this week to examine the results.
Iain, who breeds prize- winning pedigree Simmental cattle, posted some of the results of the testing on the farm’s Facebook page.
He said yesterday: “Quite a few of the people who came to see the results were surprised and are away to try it for themselves.
“The results were very interesting.
“We have quite a wet field here and obviously that has been starved of oxygen and the underpants were hardly touched.
“However, with our arable fields, which are cultivated heavily, they were eaten away. But we do cover them with a lot of muck.
“It was a success and a simple and cheap way of testing soil. The cotton is the important thing, rather than the underpants.”
The theory is the more active the microbes in the soil, the quicker the cotton fibres in the underwear will be consumed by them.
A QMS spokesman said they hoped the test would be adopted by farmers across the country as a means of giving them information on their soil productivity.
US farmers near Nashville, Tennessee, where the main industries are corn, soybeans, and cattle grazing, have also been burying underwear to test soil quality.