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Minnesota farmer recognized for soil health efforts

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(Brian Ryberg with Soil Health Partnership Executive Director Shefali Mehta (left) and Field Manager Tricia Verville)

Buffalo Lake farmer Brian Ryberg was honored with a “Seeds of Change” award at the Soil Health Partnership’s 2019 Soil Health Summit in St. Louis last week. Ryberg received the “Super Sprout” award for his tremendous contributions as a first-year member of the Soil Health Partnership.

Ryberg dove headfirst into the SHP program, quickly contributing to its mission to better analyze the benefits of soil health practices. His willingness to host a field day to discuss his soil management strategy last year and his ability to collaborate were cited as examples of his impact.

Ryberg’s farm is one of 140 farms across 14 states that are considered full SHP program sites, which requires following certain testing and agronomic protocols. SHP’s goal is to acquire data from each location to measure and communicate the economic and environmental benefits of different soil management strategies.

A past Minnesota Corn Innovation Grant recipient, Ryberg’s success as a year-one SHP member was aided by his farming philosophy being a natural fit for the program. Many of the soil health practices being analyzed by SHP were already incorporated into his farm, including cover crops and reduced tillage.

“We thought it made sense to take what we are doing and put it together with what [SHP] is doing through their organization because it only meant we could learn about the benefits of these practices that much faster,” Ryberg said.

Ryberg has an 80-acre plot on his farm where he plants cover crops on half the acres and no cover crops on the other half. SHP will test both groups over three years to measure the impact of cover crops on soil health.

The anecdotal benefits of both cover crops and reduced tillage have been evident to Ryberg. For example, reduced tillage has helped Ryberg better weather increasingly heavy rain falls over the last couple of years.

“We have had some wet falls, and what you are seeing on a lot of farms are these deep tracks that farmers have to go back and fill in due to the state of the soil,” Ryberg said. “We are in our fifth year of reduced or strip tillage, and we don’t have any of those issues.”

While Ryberg has noticed a shift in the mindsets of farmers when it comes to soil management strategy, he believes SHP’s mission to better quantify the benefits of practices like cover crops and reduced tillage will bring the biggest change. For example, having data to show the return on an investment in cover crops would be useful to a farmer as he begins conversations with his banker.

“If I am showing an entry for cover crop seed, how do I show something on the income side to offset that,” Ryberg said. “There are hidden numbers there, and I hope someday we can quantify that.”

An initiative of the National Corn Growers Association, the Soil Health Partnership is a data-driven program working to quantify the benefits of practices that support soil health. For more information on other “Seeds of Change” award recipients, click here.

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