Soil Health And Conservation Tillage Put To Work

By: Megan Vollstedt

“In a perfect world that university staff dream about, you would treat every field separately according to its soil test,” says Dick Wolkwoski, Extension soil scientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

At the Conservation Tillage Conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota, this week, experts covered a variety of soil health topics, but throughout all discussions were reminders that you have to know your environment and cropping system to make the management decisions that are right for your field conditions.

Below are practical strategies to consider:

Minimize soil erosion so that you can restore and stabilize the organic matter of your fields. David Lobb at the University of Manitoba recommends cover crops – and time – to build up your soil health, because if you started with poor soils, you probably can’t get any conservation practices to work properly on your farm.
Harness precision ag to narrow down the practices that work for you. Ken Franzky with Centrol Consulting says there is a big difference between information and data. Data drives decisions, so use yield maps and quantify the economic losses on your fields so you can make a plan that increases your profit and improves the function of the soil.