Building healthier soils is not just about a prescription, rather a pursuit. This is the motto of the new podcast, Soil Sense.

Tim Hammerich, host of the Future of Ag Podcast, came to North Dakota, with the support of the North Dakota Corn Council and North Dakota Soybean Council, to record a 15 episode series where we talk about collaboration, curiosity and communication amongst farmers, researchers, consultants and Extension. He weaves together the stories of how farmers are utilizing soil health building practices on their farms in conjunction with help from their trusted advisers and using partnerships with researchers and Extension specialists to better understand their systems. This series touches on the soil health movement in North Dakota with ideas on both successes and failures.

The first three episodes were released on Aug. 1 and include an interview with Tony Wagner, who farms in the Jamestown area. He shares his experience using no-till, cover crops and a diverse rotation to manage multiple soil types and the ever-looming resistant weed pressures. He is involved in North Dakota State University on-farm research and utilizes information collected on his farm along with the extremely important trusted advice from his consultant to help make sense of the changes he's seeing in his soils and crop production on his farm.

Dave Franzen, an NDSU soil specialist, and Anthony Thilmony, a farmer from Valley City, join up for an episode to talk about the many years of on-farm research Dave has conducted on Anthony's farm and how that research is being applied in practice. You can hear the highly valued relationship they have built surface in their conversation and the importance of that partnership for advancement of soil fertility recommendations. They will have a second follow up episode focused on the precision farming practices Thilmony is using across the farm.

Abbey Wick, NDSU Extension soil health specialist, is also recorded in an episode, setting the stage for the podcast and sharing thoughts on soil health advances in North Dakota. Wick talks about the value of relationships that have been built amongst individuals with soil health as a common interest and the approaches used to continue to build and maintain relationships.

The bottom line is that we have done amazing things in North Dakota — we have all contributed to advancing soil health in our region and it's fun to share what we are doing through our strong partnerships.

Each week, we will release one new episode with farmers cooperating on NDSU research, including Ken Johnson (Mooreton SHARE Farm cooperating farmer), Sam Landman (Logan Center SHARE Farm cooperating farmer), Matt Nelson (Lakota farmer and pilot), Luke Ressler (Hillsboro farmer and rancher), Doug Toussaint (Wahpeton farmer), and Lee Trautman (Jamestown farmer). Tim also interviewed consultants Lee Briese (Edgeley) and Allie Slykerman (Lamoure) and NDSU's Marisol Berti (plant sciences, cover crops), Aaron Daigh (soil physics, tillage) and Naeem Kalwar (Langdon Research Extension Center, soil health).