Soil Health Partnership - SoilSmart

By the time his corn crop would normally be chest-high, Brian Roemke’s farm was less than 10 percent planted. That’s the most-repeated story across the Corn Belt for the 2019 planting season, but for ...

McDonald’s customers increasingly expect the restaurant chain to share their values. “We have a responsibility in society,” says Townsend Bailey, McDonald’s sustainability director, adding that McDona...

Chad Bloom with Pheasants Forever believes in the mission of the Soil Health Partnership. “Pheasants Forever is an implementer,” explains Bloom, “and when all this science comes out, we can partner ...

“The biggest asset a grower has is the land that he farms,” says Nathan Fields, vice president of production and sustainability at the National Corn Growers Association. From the Farm Bill Conservati...

John and Joan Maxwell of Cinnamon Ridge Farm are the Soil Health Partnership Exceptional Educator Award winners. Through tours of their farm, at Donahue, Iowa, the Maxwells tell the agriculture story ...

Brian Martin advocates for the use of cover crops for improving soil health. The Centralia, Missouri, corn, soybean, small grain and cattle producer talks about the challenges of chemical control and ...

Participants in the Soil Health Partnership (SHP) are seeing improved organic matter and “a general uplift in their soil health” as a result of being in the program, according to Dr. Shefali Mehta, ex...

Since he began to farm while in high school, Greg Thoren has worked to keep soil in place. “Erosion is a very large factor. [There are] a lot of waterways, a lot of conservation practices that have go...

The Nature Conservancy helped found and continues to be a major partner of the Soil Health Partnership for a variety of reasons. At the top is that it supports TNC’s vision of “a future world in which...

Insights from data collected by the Soil Health Partnership (SHP) shows that cover crops do not result in a yield drag. “I think farmers are concerned that when they adopt a cover crop that they’re g...

“Getting healthy” is often near the top of the list of New Year’s Resolutions. There is an equal need for soil to be healthy. The new year is a great opportunity to set goals for getting your soil hea...

Wes Zylstra raises crops and pigs not far from Des Moines, Iowa, and very close to Interstate 80. Wes is proud to be the third generation on that farm and one can tell by the way he talks, he’s enthus...

Brian Ryberg has been turning heads in southcentral Minnesota ever since he reduced his tillage and began interseeding ryegrass cover crops in corn. While neighbors tend to begin with a black, heavily...

Everyone, no matter how old, enjoys a good toy for Christmas, but some toys can improve a farm operation from a sustainability standpoint as well as an economic standpoint. For John Stewart, a field m...

The 2018 growing season featured everything from severe drought to significant flooding. That all happened within the Illinois and Missouri geography in which Abigail Peterson serves as a field manage...

Dan Miller says cover crops should be managed like any other facet of the farm. “Managing a cover crop should be like managing a cash crop,” said Miller, who markets cover crop seeds in southwestern ...