Why Soil Health Is Important For Your Operation
I have stated previously that we all depend on the same soil no matter our diets. Soil health is critical to any farming and livestock production operation. Agriculture and really our society (farmers feed America and the world) depend on the quality of soils. We want to share the importance of soil health, so that others can learn and improve their operations. We never stop learning and there is so much power in knowledge. Opportunity of capital gains or money saved is valuable to any operation.
On that note, it’s important to mention that the idea of soil health for most producers is profit driven, it is not solely based on ideals. Insecurities with drought, crop failures, and fertilizer costs are forcing the industry to find alternatives. A common answer found globally is to focus on soil health.
Healthy soils are essential for healthy plant growth, food production for human nutrition and ecosystem services such as clean water and air. Strong, healthy soils with deep carbon levels retain water, support strong, nutrient rich plants, and promote biodiversity. All are key to a successful operation to withstand multiple generations and increased productivity.
Soil for Life, an organization in Australia, sums up the benefits of healthy soils in an easy to read bullet format. They are as follows:
Increased productivity, leading to increased profits
Improved soil health - structural, chemical and biological properties
Supporting a diversity of vegetation to moderate temperatures, provide habitat and build resilience
Sequestering greater amounts of carbon from the atmosphere
Retaining more water in the soil for uptake by plants and animals - extending the growing season
Supporting health and biodiversity in soil microbes
Facilitating healthy nutrient cycling
Producing more nutrient-rich vegetation and livestock
Producing healthier, more nutritious food and livestock, and therefore healthier people
Regenerating, rather than degrading, the natural resource base
Building a landscape which is more resilient, especially to climate extremes (such as flood, drought and fire) able to recover more quickly
Reducing input costs
Enabling sustainable production
Smoothing out production and profit peaks and troughs
Applying techniques that could sustainably feed growing global populations
Encouraging neighbours to adopt regenerative practices, through leading by example
Now that we understand the importance of soil health, how do we get there? Maybe you’ve heard the term regenerative agriculture? The techniques used in this practice varies from place to place and operation to operation. Regenerative Agriculture includes changes in grazing practices, i.e. holistic management, mob grazing or using grazing management and animal impact as farm and ecosystem development tools. More ways to introduce regenerative practices are retaining stubble or performing biological stubble breakdown, encouraging natural biological cycles and nutrient transfers, managing for increased species diversity, pasture cropping, investing in re-vegetation, using direct-drill cropping and pasture sowing, changing crop rotations and incorporating green manure or under-sowing of legumes. Water management plays a significant role as well. Fencing off waterways and implementing water reticulation for stock, constructing interventions in the landscape or waterways to slow or capture the flow is helpful to improve soils. Reducing or ceasing synthetic chemical inputs and applying organic composts, fertilizers and bio-amendments when able are effective methods as well.
Soil health is critical as the global population rises and increasing pressure on the agriculture community intensifies for more sustainable and eco-friendly methods of production. Couple this with meeting the demands of human nutrition, soil health is an economically sound answer. The healthier the soil, the greater return for the pocketbook as well as feeding the world and regenerating the landscape.