Across the prairies, many soil types exhibit heavy and clay-like properties. While clay soils can offer benefits, they can also bring their fair share of challenges, including soil compaction, restricted root growth, and slow drainage. As a result, many farmers turn to agricultural gypsum—but can it truly help address these conditions?
Read on with the Norstar Agriculture team, and we explore all about the ins and outs of using agricultural gypsum for clay soil.
What Clay Soils Mean
The prairies are home to a wide range of soils, with 10 orders in total. These orders span numerous great groups and subgroups, and centre around the overarching properties of the given soils. As any farmer knows, clay is a property of soil rather than a soil type. Challenges with these soils aren’t typically due to the clay properties themselves, but rather to how they influence field behaviour, and in turn, crop growth.
Clay is dense. As a result, clay-dominant farmland is often challenged by slow water infiltration, poor surface drainage, and low aeration that can limit plant growth.
The Role of Gypsum in Soil
Gypsum has been widely used throughout the world for centuries. Civilizations from Egypt to Greece have used gypsum for drywall, plaster, and, more recently, as a highly beneficial soil amendment.
Gypsum offers a widely soluble form of calcium, known as calcium sulfate (CaSO₄·2H₂O). Thanks to gypsum’s high water solubility, it’s ideal for making calcium more readily available when needed. As a result, agricultural gypsum often works well for magnesium and sodium-dominated soils, which causes the soil structure to tighten.
So, Can Gypsum Actually Help?
It depends. Gypsum is most effective for soil with excess sodium, known as sodicity. It’s also often a beneficial choice when excess salts are present, including magnesium (Mg), sodium (Na), and chloride (Cl). Sodicity causes soil aggregates to break down, as well as more sodium ions to become attached to the cation exchange sites (CEC) of clay particles. As a result, these clay particles disperse, leading to a tighter, more compact soil that impairs water filtration. Gypsum helps soils with high sodium content by effectively replacing this sodium with calcium ions.
The result? Stable, re-aggregated soil that better allows for water filtration and pore spaces.
That said, not all clay-like soils are caused by sodium issues. Many clay soils are driven by physical issues, such as machinery compaction or tilling already wet soil. If so, introducing gypsum is unlikely to cause lasting benefits.
Should I Use Gypsum?
The truth is, there’s no universally applicable answer on whether or not gypsum will help your soil. Many factors go into managing soil fertility, and thus, what you need to fix it. From tilling schedules to current soil inputs and field management techniques—every field is different.
If you’re a prairie farmer searching for a way to revitalize your compacted or clay-like soils, the first step is to have up-to-date soil testing on your fields done. The chemical conditions that agricultural gypsum addresses, like salinity and sodicity, can’t be seen with the naked eye.
An Agronomy-Backed Solution
When you partner with Norstar Agriculture, we understand that it’s about how your entire system works together. Our agricultural gypsum product, NOR-Gyp, contains 22% calcium and 14% sulphur. We also offer several varieties, including prilled, organic, recycled wallboard, and micro-cal options.
Our primary gypsum source is recycled drywall, which has been processed to meet agricultural standards. These damaged boards that aren’t fit for construction are processed into a fine powder for agriculture use. We also offer organic gypsum from mines.
What’s in Your Soil?
Ready to revitalize your fields with agronomy-backed solutions? We’re ready when you are. Contact us today to book your field consultation with one of our experts, and check out our agronomy blog for more prairie-specific information for farmers.
