Tom Cotter had the audience on the edge of their seats with his primetime presentation on the true potential of soil health. Fresh off his Leopold Conservation Award-winning year, the Austin, Minn., no-tiller compared his soil to a bank. Farming practices are the deposits and the withdrawals, and as he explains here, that’s an easy way to measure your soil health. 

"My “pluses” — no-till, plant a cover, reduce chemicals, add rotation, diversity, non-GMO traits, biologicals, livestock manure and grazing, we can go on and on about the good things we do on our soil. But we have to be honest and talk about the negatives too — every time you do a tillage pass, a chemical pass, insecticides, fungicides, synthetics, they all are hurting."

"On my farm (when I was conventional 15 years ago), and a lot of conventional farms out there, there are a whole lot of negatives. I’m a farmer. I want it (soil health measurements) simple, and I want to use my senses. I can tell I had bad soil health. Nowadays, there’s my no-till, my organic. Plus 3, plus 4. That doesn’t mean that’s the same thing every year because soil health isn’t a plateau you get to, it’s ever-changing and flowing. All I have to do is make sure my trajectory goes up.” 

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.