BURYING a pair of underpants in a field may not seem the obvious starting point for the perfect roast, but farmers are being urged to dig deep for tastier meat.
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The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board and Quality Meat Scotland (GMS) claim interring a pair of cotton smalls in a pasture can reveal vital information about soil fertility.
According to the experts, sterile and lifeless soil will keep underwear intact, but organically thriving soils will eat away at the briefs, leaving nothing but the elastic waistband.
Dig up the pants just after two months and it is possible to judge how healthy the land is.
Burying cotton underwear in a paddock can reveal the level of the soil’s fertility, vital for healthy crops and livestock - a Scottish study as reported by Sarah Knapton. It’s an old experiment, but we revive it for reader interest.
Soil conditions on beef and sheep farms directly influence how well grass and forage crops grow and, consequently, the quality of the feed they produce.
And better feed produces healthier, tastier animals.
Iain Green, a Scottish farmers of Corskie Farm near Elgin, in Moray, has been burying his pants in various fields.
“The theory behind the the test is that the cotton will be devoured by the microbe and bacteria in the soil, so the more you have the better,” he said.
“We buried them in different fields, some which we think have healthier soil and others which aren’t as good.”
Fellow farmers and official s gathered at Mr Green’s farm to dig up his underpants and analyse the finding.
Mr Green said the results were very interesting.
“We have quite a wet field here and obviously that has been starved of oxygen and the underpants were hardly touched.
“However, with our arable fields, which are cultivated heavily, they were eaten away.”
It was a success and a cheap way of testing soil.
Cotton is the important thing, rather than the underwear.
A spokesman for QMS said it would like farmers across Britain to adopt the test as a way of checking the productivity of their soil.
Maybe a challenge to Aussie farmers prior to investing a soil pH test kit and further tests investigation.
