If one of the farmers in my community was approached and told that he and all of his neighbours are "scientists" who conduct research on their farms regularly, he would probably reply, "That cannot be true, I am just farming!" However the statement, "Research is a part of every farm," is true whether most people want to believe it or not. Something as simple as taking a few soybeans from the field and chewing them to test their moisture content to see if they are ready to be harvested can be considered a scientific experiment. The purpose of it would be to discover whether the crop of soybeans is ready to be combined and its observations and results would tell the farmer whether he should proceed with harvesting or not. When looked at from a scientific perspective, it can be seen that farmers do in fact conduct research on a daily basis and it also could be said that there is a scientist in us all.

I myself am not involved in any farming directly but I do observe and keep track of the work that my Uncle does on his farm. Our families live side by side on the same 100 acre plot of land so it is not very hard to know what is going on and when. My Uncle is definitely a small scale farmer, and yet he seems to be the one whose standards most of our neighbours follow when it comes to things like what kinds of herbicides to use and when to plant and harvest crops. He is like the "head scientist" while the others are lab workers. This situation does seem ironic though since my Uncle owns the least amount of land in our community and has the oldest and smallest equipment.

My Uncle experiments with usual things such as herbicides and which kinds work best on each type of weed, crop rotation so a certain field is not bled of all of its nutrients and tilling the soil in the opposite direction of the head winds to prevent erosion; but he does have some of this own innovative ways of doing things. One of them is his philosophy of the "mulching effect." Instead of baling his wheat and bean straw and removing it from his fields he just cuts it down using a stalk chopper and then plows it under. His theory is that between harvest season and the next spring this stubble will decay and act as fertilizer to replenish the soil’s nutrient supply. Since he does not have any livestock, my Uncle has found this to be an inexpensive source of fertilizer.

Another interesting little experiment my Uncle conducts annually is a test plot for the different types of soybeans he plans to grow during the year. He also includes some samples of the seed that he has stored in the barn from the previous year. The purpose of testing his stored seed is to make sure that it germinates correctly and has not rotted over the winter. He takes a few samples of each type of soybean and plants them in an old square cake pan with some of the soil from his fields. He places them in the south window of my house, because the windows in his home do not received as much sunlight, and than waters them daily with a spray bottle. He then monitors them to make sure they germinate correctly and to see which ones grow the best. Incidentally, these are the types of soybeans that he decides to buy the most of.

Although my Uncle’s theories about agriculture may not be Nobel Prize winning materials, they are definitely instrumental to his success as a farmer. They also prove the fact that research is part of every farm and that there is a scientist in us all because he is a very ordinary man and yet a scientist. The definition of a scientist can be as simple as anyone who conducts experiments or studies to gain knowledge about something. Many farmers glance at his crops and notice that they are practically weedless and they wonder how it can be done. My Uncle usually replies, "Well, it is a little something called hard very versus sitting in an air conditioned tractor and spreading thousands of dollars of scientifically developed chemicals." Through his experimentation, research and observation of others he has found this to be the best method for success on the farm.