Cover crop adoption across the U.S. is on the rise, but Minnesota adoption has hovered around 2%. While Midwestern farmers understand the importance of soil health, adopting sustainable technologies that offer limited near-term economic returns is challenging. Read more in this article from University of Minnesota Extension.

Soil health is a term that everyone seems to be confused about or have their own opinion. Soil health is about three things: soil organic matter (SOM), soil microbes and organisms, and plants. Read more in this article from Ohio's Country Journal.

White desert is how Frederick farmer, Don Nickelson, used to describe the saline patches on his land. “Nothing would grow there,” says the crop and cattle producer. Read more in this article from the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan (Yankton, SD).

Without the soil, no farming would exist. Growers should be fixated with maximizing every inch of soil and improving the various factors that impact soil health.

Some of our fields looked really scruffy, like stands of forgotten, overgrown brush that had given up the ghost and turned that pale, beige color of dead foliage we become so familiar with, and bored of, through the long months of winter. Only the early signs of small, emerging spikes of greenery in rows suggested that the fields had not been forgotten. Read more in this article from Lancaster Farming.

Soil is more than just dirt. It is a living substance and when balanced, exchanges nutrients, stores and drains water, and provides a healthy environment for crops and forages to produce realistic yield expectations (RYE). Read more in this article from the Sun Journal (New Bern, NC).

In this podcast from Stroud Water Research Center, host Scott LaMar discusses soil health with Lisa Blazure, Stroud Water Research Center soil health coordinator; Jim Hershey, president of the Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance and Lancaster County, PA, farmer; and Steve Groff, cover crop expert and farmer, also in Lancaster County, PA.

Some farmers claim that you need to “open up and fluff up the soil with tillage” so it can take in moisture and that no-till just makes the ground hard making it difficult for water to get through. Tradition may make you think that is the case. Read more in this article from the Dodge City Daily Globe (Dodge City, KS).

The soil health benefits of having a perennial forage in the crop rotation are better than any cover crop, because its living roots are in the soil for much longer. Hay prices have been strong over the last couple of years, and there is always a market for high-quality hay. Read more in this article from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Rural Affairs.

Florida vegetable farmers who grow cover crops as a green manure between their cash crops anecdotally tout the health benefits, but a two-year study by University of Florida has provided the research to back it up. In a Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SSARE) On-Farm Research Grant, University of Florida soil health expert Jehangir (Jango) Bhadha shadowed the cover crop practices of eight farmers across the state to measure the benefits of using cover crops (mainly cow pea and sunn hemp) as a soil amendment and nutrient source for subsequent cash crops.