Soil Health Success Stories: This week I’m sharing on the Nebraska Soil Health Coalition. I’ve watched this effort since 2019 and am grateful for the leadership, vision, dedication, and endurance of the Board individuals who have successfully completed the beginning efforts of this Coalition! Some background from their website at: https://www.nesoilhealth.org/, “In recognition of the need to achieve more rapid and widespread adoption of soil health practices with multiple benefits, the Nebraska Legislature passed LB 243 in 2019. The legislation created a 17-member Healthy Soils Task Force (HSTF) task with developing a Nebraska Healthy Soils Initiative. The Healthy Soils Task Force concluded that healthier soils produced through best soil management practices improve yield stability, produce greater financial returns over time, reduce the need for chemical inputs, increase water infiltration rates and water storage capacity making soil more resilient to drought, flooding, and erosion, and protect and improve water quality.”

“In May of 2023 a group of committed individuals decided to establish an independent, non-profit Soil Health Coalition in Nebraska. The purpose of the Coalition is to advance producer-centered education, outreach, and adoption of soil health principles to build resilient farms, ranches, and communities across Nebraska.”

What I appreciate is the three-pronged, four metric approach that is different than what has been built in other states. The three prongs include: producer learning communities, demonstration/education sites, stakeholder visioning groups. The fourth metric includes Outcomes (soil health benchmarks, improved economics, community growth, success stories).

The other difference is the building of “Hubs” that include producers and stakeholders (medical, financial, consulting, community, etc.) in the surrounding communities of around a 9-county area. Hub 1 began in the Hastings and surrounding area with Hub 2 rolling out now in Southwest NE.

The producers participated in economic interviews with the Soil Health Institute (SHI) and socio-behavior interviews with Dr. Julie Snorek. Why is this important? SHI seeks to quantify economics of conventional vs. regenerative ag practices. By interviewing producers in a similar region, the economics and practices of that region can better be quantified and relevant to those producers.

What was learned? 20 farmers who had adopted soil health management strategies for at least 5 years (cover crops, reduced tillage, Sentinel Ag, etc.) were interviewed. For irrigated corn/soybean, it was found that overall, producers were able to reduce expenses by adopting soil health practices by a total of $147.19/ac for corn and $88.27 for soybeans. Added value from revenue such as grazing provided a total value of soil health practices of $152.94/ac for corn and $89.73/ac for soybean. Non-irrigated corn soybean saw a total value of $197.80 for corn and $102.12 for soybean for adopting soil health management practices. The full fact-sheet can be found here and is worth a read!

On the socio-behavioral side, the producers shared about isolation in adopting practices different than their neighbors, the importance of producer learning communities/peer networks to be vulnerable in sharing successes and failures, independence they felt in reducing the need to pay entities for inputs, farming being more fun/interesting in trying different practices, and also the need for alternative markets. The joy for me in attending the Celebration Event last week was seeing a glimmer of the hard work and dedication of the Board realized with producers and stakeholders presenting outcomes and the ability to have economics around these topics that are meaningful to Nebraska producers. Our hope is that more producers who are watching on the fringes will join us in adopting soil health practices in the future! More info. at: https://www.nesoilhealth.org/.

Water use till maturity for Corn: Beginning Dent 5”, ¼ milk 3.75”; ½ milk 2.25”; ¾ milk 1”.
Water use till maturity for Beans: Beg. Seed 6.5”; Full Seed 3.5”; Leaves beg yellow 1.9”.