Farm View: Bringing science down to earth at the Ploughing
Teagasc staff Gabriela Cardenas Alvarez and Luis Lopez Sangil with cotton underpants on display as part of the Ground Truth citizen science project at the National Ploughing Championships. Picture: Larry Cummins
It’s not just the country that comes to life for the week of the National Ploughing Championships.
There is something truly magical about seeing the moment when science suddenly comes to life too.
In a sense, the Ploughing is a place where research escapes the lab and becomes tangible.
Across the site, complex ideas are transformed into things that can be seen, touched and understood: Dancing robots at the Engineers Ireland stand; ballot papers inviting visitors to vote for Ireland’s favourite cattle breed while demonstrating the processes underpinning our democracy; and, at Teagasc, some decidedly worse-for-wear cotton underwear strung out on a line.
It might say more about my sense of humour than I care to admit, but even after hearing the “pants test” story countless times, the sight of a row of disintegrating underwear still managed to catch my attention.
The display formed part of GroundTruth, an Irish citizen-science initiative led by Teagasc and VistaMilk to improve soil literacy, raise awareness of soil health and gather baseline environmental data across the country.
Read More
“They are made of cotton, which is organic matter, so the microbes in the soil are very happy to degrade them when we put them into the soil,” explained Teagasc soil quality technologist and lab safety coordinator Luis Lopez Sangil.
“We put them in the ground for about two months at about 30cm deep. Then, when we dig them up, we dry them and weigh them, and from that we have an indication of soil health.” His colleague Gabriela Cardenas Alvarez said it offered “a really nice way to indicate the quality of the soil”.
“We have a lot of schools and farmers coming onto the stand and asking about them,” she added.
And it is easy to see why. Most of us in the agricultural industry will have heard countless times about soil organic matter and microbial activity. But seeing the physical evidence makes the science immediately real.
One pair had deteriorated so completely that it might easily have gone unnoticed.
It had been buried in organic grassland in Co Offaly and, were it not for the plastic-based elastic still holding its shape, the researchers might have wondered whether they had dug up the right plot at all: there was barely a thread of cotton left.
For researchers, the Ploughing is not simply a shop window for their work. It is an opportunity to make that work meaningful to the people it is ultimately intended to serve.
The country comes to life at the Ploughing — and sometimes, with the help of a pair of cotton pants, the science does too.
Best of luck to our Signpost columnist Kay O’Sullivan, who has been named among Europe’s leading organic farmers.
The Cork beef farmer has been shortlisted in the Best Organic Farmer (Female) category at the European Organic Awards.
The winner will be announced in Brussels on September 23, at a ceremony hosted by the European Commission and attended by European commissioner for agriculture Christophe Hansen.
We’ll all be cheering you on, Kay!
