Investing in Your Farm's Future: Soil Health Principles

Over 400 producers and conservation partners attended the 2018 Wisconsin Cover Crop Conference: Investing in Your Farm’s Future. The conference was held in Stevens Point on February 27, 2018, and highlighted soil health and the use of various cover crops in a reduced or no-till system.

Barry Fisher, a 36-year veteran of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), shared a keynote presentation on the four principles of soil health and how to use cover crops and no-till to achieve more resilient cropping systems. Fisher noted improving soil health is key to long-term, sustainable agricultural production. Healthy soils hold more water by binding it to organic matter, and soils lose less water to runoff and evaporation. Organic matter builds as tillage declines and plants and residue cover the soil. Organic matter holds 18‒20 times its weight in water and recycles nutrients for plants to use.

Fisher presented a path to healthy soils explained in these four basic soil health principles: (1) use plant diversity to increase pathways for nutrient cycling, (2) manage soils more by disturbing them less, (3) keep plants growing throughout the year to feed the soil and (4) keep the soil covered as much as possible.

“Soil health is the continued capacity of a soil to function as a vital, living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals and humans,” said Fisher, NRCS regional soil health team leader. Your local NRCS Service Center can help you get started by developing a soil health management plan to…

To view the content, please subscribe or login.
 Premium content is for our Digital-only and Premium subscribers. A Print-only subscription doesn't qualify. Please purchase/upgrade a subscription with the Digital product to get access to all No-Till Farmer content and archives online. Learn more about the different versions and what is included.

Top Articles

Current Issue

Cover_CTG_1124.jpg

No-Till Farmer

Get full access NOW to the most comprehensive, powerful and easy-to-use online resource for no-tillage practices. Just one good idea will pay for your subscription hundreds of times over.

Subscribe Now

View More

Must Read Free Eguides

Download these helpful knowledge building tools

View More
Top Directory Listings