Having a solid foundation is the key to success in many aspects of life – and soil is no exception. Whether you’re growing crops in a field or managing turf on a golf course, your soil simply will not deliver the results you desire if it doesn’t have the right founding elements – proper management, nutrition and overall health.
For so long, our focus has been end-goal oriented – growing the tallest corn, having the most manicured fairway or producing the highest yields – however, these all start with one essential element: soil health. We need to shift the way we think about soil – it’s not just a nutrient reservoir, rather a resource and a physical environment where living things grow. In one gram of soil, there are at least one billion living organisms and over 10,000 different species. When we think about the soil’s foundation, optimum health and proper nutrition should be top of mind to deliver desired outputs.
With new and emerging analyses, we’re now able to measure soil health to keep it at the forefront of the management conversation. Much like a wellness exam for humans, a soil health report reveals elements of your soil that could use some improvement and provides you with an overall “health rating.” This can be a great tool for managing your soil. Nutrient and carbon availability, respiration, organic matter, air exchange, water infiltration and holding capacity are just a few elements that impact soil health and are captured in a soil health report.
Soil ties every living organism together. Regardless of the type of operation you manage, there are several steps you can take to ensure your soil health is up to par.
Want to learn more about how to improve soil health on your operation? Hear from James Friedericks, Ph.D., AgSource Laboratories, and Stefan Gailans, Ph.D., Practical Farmers of Iowa, in this webinar opportunity.
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