Soil Health

On Tuesday I attended a program in Bloomington on soil health.  The program was well done as to the basics on soil health and how to achieve it.  There was a great discussion on how Illinois soils came to look the way they look.  The program then took off in the direction of using No-Till and Cover Crops to achieve healthy soil.  In past blogs, I know I have mentioned that I think farming with no tillage or a minimum of tillage makes a good deal of sense.  Adding cover crops makes good sense, but there are pitfalls to using cover crops as well.  I have been in many fields this year where aerial seeded cover crops just did not germinate in time to achieve the growth that we would like.  As I have listened to presentations on cover crops in the past year, I have come to believe that a lot of attention to detail is required to be successful with cover crops.  I am not meaning to imply it will not pay off.  I am just saying that preliminary research is necessary to get where you want to go.  The idea of keeping living roots in the soil as much as possible makes a good deal of sense.  We used to just look at residue cover to assess potential for soil erosion.  One of the parameters we now look at is disturbance.  If the soil is disturbed and loosened, it will erode more easily than undisturbed soils.  We have the good fortune in Illinois that most of our cropland is less than 5% slope, so erosion control may not be the biggest reason for no-till and cover crops.

Just to state explicitly, I am in favor of using no-till and cover crops and consider it a sound soil management alternative.  One of the things that has been left out, is the importance of making sure that the soil will support the favorable microbes we hope to stimulate.  Soil fertility and especially proper amounts of calcium are very important for all of this stuff to work.  I don't know if the presenters think that all farmers have their fertiltity house in order, but I can tell you that many do not.  I can also tell you that even among long time customers, the process can take longer than you think.  In order to achieve soil health, we need to manage the physical, biological and chemical health of the soil.