Soils at Guelph Featured on TVO’s ‘Water Brothers’

Dec 13, 2023

The unique research University of Guelph experts conduct and have amplified through the Soils at Guelph initiative are featured in an episode of TVO’s Water Brothers titled “Save our Soils.”

Four U of G soil experts from the School of Environmental Sciences – Dr. Claudia Wagner-Riddle, Dr. Kari Dunfield, Dr. Adam Gillespie and Dr. Genevieve Ali – are part of the half-hour mini documentary, which is available now for viewing on TVO’s YouTube page. Dr. Genevieve Ali tracks water infiltration at the Ontario Crops Research Centre in Elora

“Save our Soils” explores the way soil is foundational to clean water and our food supply; the world loses 36 billion tons of fertile soil every year, driving up food costs. The U of G faculty members share with the Water Brothers how they are helping to protect the vital connection between healthy soil and water management.

“It’s fascinating to try to understand [soil] better, and to try to relate it to all of these very pressing environmental issues,” Wagner-Riddle says in the episode.

A professor of agrometeorology, Wagner-Riddle studies how crop rotation and cover crops improve soil and the environment, conducing her research at the soil health monitoring station at the Ontario Crops Research Centre in Elora.

The centre is equipped with the largest installation of field-weighing lysimeters in North America, which are used for various research projects, including investigating how different crop rotations affect soil health.

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Video: How American Farmers Harvest 1.15 Billion Pounds of Sunflowers

Across the open plains of North Dakota and South Dakota, sunflower fields turn the American landscape into a sea of gold. In this farming documentary, we go inside modern sunflower farming to see how farmers plant, grow, harvest, clean, dry, process, and transform sunflower seeds into valuable products used every day.

In 2024, American farmers harvested about 1.15 billion pounds of sunflowers. This video follows the full journey from warm spring planting to combine harvesting, seed cleaning, storage, oil extraction, refining, roasting, packaging, and animal feed production.

You will see how sunflower seeds are processed into cooking oil, roasted snacks, bakery ingredients, birdseed, livestock feed, and useful byproducts. From golden fields to modern processing plants, this is the story of how a beautiful flower becomes one of America’s important oilseed crops.

Watch until the end to discover how sunflower farming connects farmers, machines, factories, food production, and sustainable agriculture.