Written by Jonathan Eisenthal

In its fifth season, the Soil Health Partnership has worked with corn farmers across the United States to acquire data that assesses soil health practices on the farm.

Now equipped with years of research, SHP is ready to share the impact of those practices using numbers acquired on the farm to tell the story, according to Executive Director Shefali Mehta. She will convene SHP’s Soil Health Summit this week in St. Louis where this data will be publicly released for the first time.

“The essence of the SHP program is that whenever farmers go through and adopt these changes that make their operations more sustainable, they take on quite a bit of risk,” said Mehta, “Our program helps to de-risk the shift to conservation methods, by providing hands-on support, data, and clarity in terms of the impact of the practices, and really helping the farmers as they go through this process.”

The Minnesota Corn Growers Association will bring five Minnesota farmers to the summit, along with MCGA Senior Research Director Paul Meints.

Mehta calls Meints a key partner in the selection and development of SHP program sites in Minnesota. Minnesota now has six program sites in the SHP network. Bryan Biegler, who farms in Lake Wilson, is the first farmer participant in the SHP network from the state, and he will be among the Minnesota delegation at the Soil Health Summit.

Biegler is eagerly anticipating the release of the first numbers to see what they reveal. His experience with cover cropping has been fruitful in his ongoing pursuit of efficiency and profitability. For example, Biegler’s area has seen greater-than-average precipitation in both the spring and fall, which has created difficulties both at planting and harvest for many operators in his area.

“A lot of guys were getting stuck during harvest,” Biegler said. “We found that we could sail through, which I attribute 100 percent to the improved soil structure we get from less aggressive tillage and using cover crops.”

As of this coming growing season there will be 140 farms across 14 states that are considered full SHP program sites, which requires following certain testing and agronomic protocols. For the coming year, SHP has announced an associate program, which has enrolled 75 farms where a more basic set of protocols allow easier entry, and provide a first experience that may lead to full program-site participation.

“We have farmers coming from all across the country, private industry partners, academics, a lot of non-profit NGOs, government agencies. It is an interesting mix,” Mehta said. “The summit will help us hit all of our goals: to allow our farmers to implement these practices, at scale, to create peer-to-peer learning opportunities and then creating the forum to bring diverse partners together around the topic of soil health and sustainable farming.”

An initiative of the National Corn Growers Association, the Soil Health Partnership was created to foster the transformation in agriculture through improved soil health. The 5^th Annual Soil Health Summit features opportunities for peer-to-peer networking, collaboration, and education on the latest in soil health strategies.