Managing soil microbes could be an excellent way to increase nutrient availability and improve nutrient health.
Nutrient cycling has a profound impact on nutrient content in crops at harvest. What can farmers do to grow the most nutrient-dense crops?
Get ready for a down-to-earth journey with three farmers who share practical strategies for keeping your farm’s topsoil right where it belongs—on your land.
A soil "aggregate" is a clump of soil particles that form around soil organic matter. They're a key indicator of healthy soils, and three farmers discuss what aggregates mean for their on-farm soil health.
Changing farm management to use soil health practices like cover crops and no-till can be complicated. But these on-farm changes show some clear benefits for preventing erosion and improving soil for generations to come.
Improving soil health takes time, but trying agroecosystem management is a great first step. Watch Marshall McDaniel explain three tips for getting started with agroecosystem management.
Policies aimed at improving soil health have been on the books for decades. State-driven soil health initiatives are one that have helped preserve soil resources and sequestered carbon in the process. But what are their strengths, limitations, and future opportunities?
Resilience is all about decreasing the impact of uncontrollable events--like weather, pests, disease, and drought--on crop yields and agricultural productivity. Discover how soil health can play a part.
Turfgrass is everywhere--is it providing benefits to the people who use it? Read on and discover all the potential upsides of turfgrass, including economic, environmental, and societal benefits.
The soil, crops, climate, plants, microbial, and animal life are all intertwined. Help them work together and reap the benefits of agroecosystem management on your farm.
Crop residue is no waste--listen and learn how to use crop residue to feed soil microbes and add soil nutrients.
It’s tough to get conservation practices from concepts to on-the-ground implementation. Listen as John Swanson talks through how you, too, can ”hit the easy button” on conservation practices.
Agroecosystem management takes the whole agricultural system into account. Watch as Marshall McDaniel describes some of the co-benefits of this holistic approach to managing a field.
Soil is the medium for plant growth, regulates chemical processes, and filters water. So how does soil health impact water quality?
Integrated Pest management (IPM) is a strategy to manage pest and disease threats to your crops. But it could have bigger benefits—it’s also an important part of your toolkit to improve crop resilience in the face of extreme weather events and changing conditions.
Temperature, rainfall, weather, pests, disease—there are lots of circumstances that can negatively impact your crops. But seed treatments are one tool in your toolkit to improve crop resilience.
When a host plant, virulent pathogen, and favorable environment are all in the same place at the same time, diseases can pop up. And nothing is worse than losing healthy plants to disease. Luckily, there are ways you can reduce disease pressure on your crops.
Wayne Fredericks, a farmer in Osage, IA, adopted cover crops after many years of no-till soybean and strip-till corn. Watch as he talks through the impacts of cover crops on his farm's soil, and how cover crops and reduced tillage can be complementary practices.
If you care about something, you measure it. Just as doctors recommend annual checkups, soil scientists recommend measuring soil health. But it's one thing to take samples in a single field--how do you measure soil health at scale?
Healthy soils are teeming with life. Changing management practices to foster biological activity is the key to improving soil health.
The words “ecosystem services” capture all of those tangible and intangible ways in which human beings depend on, use, and benefit from the natural environment.
Increased soil water storage, improved biological activity, better soil aggregation, improved yield--these are just a few of the benefits of increasing agricultural soil carbon.