More than one way to maintain and improve soil health

If you are like me, many of you might have recently attended a no-till/soil health conference where you have heard numerous speakers from various parts of the country talking about what they are doing and accomplishing in the soil health arena. Most of the time the focus of these conferences is on integrating cover crops and livestock into cropping systems to improve the health of the soil. Which, if implemented correctly, no doubt can.

My concern is that focusing on just of couple of these practices, which seem to be the current hot items, we may not be paying attention to, or thinking about other ways to improve soil health. We need to remember that they are just tools in our soil health toolbox and when used for the right job work great. But there is also a wide array of other tools in that box that may work better to accomplish what we want to accomplish.

Other things you can do to maintain and improve soil health is to have a balanced fertility program using the 4Rs concept (right product, right rate, right time and right place). Soil pH needs to be maintained at optimum levels. Aggressive tillage should be avoided. Soil compaction layers should be removed and managed. An appropriate crop rotation that provides adequate groundcover should be used. On marginal soils the best thing is to maybe plant those areas back to grass. These are all practices that are good for yield and the soil.

But one of the most important and underlying themes is that no matter what we implement it needs to make economic sense for you the farmer. Sometimes I think we do not not work through all of the associated expenses and potential income and tend overlook this part of the equation, which in my mind is the most important. You need to make a profit or eventually you won’t be around to take care of the soil.

We also need to remember that implementing soil health practices can be very site- and producer-specific. There is not a one size fits all. I know that on our own farm we have struggled to find a fit for cover crops. They could potentially provide a lot of soil health benefits but without a livestock enterprise to be able to gain some economic value from grazing them my crop budgets currently do not favor using them.

Which brings me to my next point. Figure out if it will work for you before implementing any of these practices on a large scale. Start small, experiment and adjust the practices to fit what you are wanting to accomplish with them. We haven’t totally discounted the use of cover crops in our rotation. But we will proceed with caution, adjust things as we go and only do them on a few acres until we can really determine if they are a fit for us or not.

For more information about soil health practices, you can contact me at [email protected] or any local NRCS office.