Measuring Quality
As one sees what they are looking at closer in food or farm products, in some cases it is excellent, but too often in the mainstream products the quality is not fit to eat. An older farmer once told me to make sure you see what you are looking at while visiting a farm. He meant to look closely and observe the soil, growing crops or harvested fruit, etc. Doing this regularly sometimes we are disappointed.
Recently a farmer showed me nitrate test results on melons in the deep south. Normal levels of nitrate in the melons should be in the range of 60-90 mg per kg or close to that. The pictures he showed me range from 300-650 mg per kg and needless to say the fruit did not look fully developed. These melons had been struggling with disease, only had a short shelf life, and were almost flavorless.
This is merely a result of the crop rotation and a fertility program used to manage that crop. Often we see rotations being short and without a crop to feed that soil, such a green manure cover crop, as well as high rates of nitrogen to drive growth which becomes excessive as the tests clearly showed.
Some are using regenerative farming practices to feed microbial life and balance soil so it not only flourishes but produces high quality food products for their market or consumer. Using a tool such as a brix meter can be very helpful to display this. Brix is a scale based on the amount that light bends when it passes through a liquid. This is due to higher or lower amounts of dissolved solids in the plant juice that has been pressed and put in the tool. Those dissolved solids are a mixture of plant compounds and sugars. The healthier the plant the more complex plant sugars are present. That differential light bending is the best tool currently available to consumers to determine the value of crops that are purchased or produced. The brix chart is a scale anyone can use to determine poor, average, good or excellent quality in a foodstuff.
Traveling around, the brix readings I hear discussed and see in products test range in quality as well as by crop. Cucumbers read 2 brix for poor quality and 5 for excellent. Garlic, however, is much denser and if you ever chewed on a raw clove alone, the burn it packs would help you understand that poor garlic cured reads 28 brix while excellent reads 40. So, it is quite relatable when my long-time gardening friend tells me cucumbers are cardboard vegetables and garlic is nature's medicine.
Be assured that the Growers Program of crop production, using clean inputs, balancing soil nutrients and feeding soil microbial life will benefit. It has been helping our farms to be efficient with their soil biology. As Regenerative Ag is promoted, there will be questions and, as always, feel free to reach out with those questions to improve soil life.
This is an excerpt from the Spring Growers Solution (2026) written by James Schiltz, Technical Agronomist.
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