Creating A Habitat For Soil-benefiting Microorganisms

By: Jon Stika

The term “soil health” gets tossed about quite a bit these days, sometimes by those who really embrace it, but sometimes by those that only employ it as an attention-getter. Truly learning about something new takes a bit of time and effort. Too often we find growers, researchers, educators, suppliers and government folks talking past one another—not really stepping back to look at the bigger picture.

The bigger picture, as I see it, should look at the basic resources and processes that make agriculture tick. For agriculture to happen, people, water, sunlight, plants and animals must all successfully intersect in the soil. Other than classification and nutrient testing, the integration of resources in the soil is often taken for granted. Few folks know how the soil functions to serve as the vital integrator of resources that must occur in the production of crops. This is where we have lost our way. This is what we have not paused to understand. This is where we are in trouble.

What is needed is a better understanding of how the soil functions.

For a very long time, we have tinkered with the soil and observed how it reacts to tillage, fertilizers, and a variety of other inputs and activities and make our best guesses about how to manage it. But without actually understanding how the soil was designed to function, we can never really restore it to its full powers.

In recent years, soil biologists have begun to identify the true workings of the soil to give us the first glimpse of a soil owner’s manual. Once we understand how the soil functions, we will be able to understand what soil health is and be able to harness its true potential. With that said, we need to take a closer look at how well our soils are functioning, and determine if our present systems of production are restoring the soil, degrading the soil, or maintaining it in the present condition.