If you eat dinner, Soil Health should be important to you. Allow me to explain. The definition of Soil Health is the ability of the soil to function properly. Well you ask, what are the functions of the soil? Sustaining plant and animal productivity and diversity
Maintaining or enhance water and air quality
Supporting human health and habitation
The reason it is called “Soil Health” instead of “Soil Quality” is because the soil is teeming with life. Matter of fact, there are more living organisms in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on earth. Wow, let that fact bounce around in your mind for a moment. All those living organisms in the soil are responsible for cycling nutrients, helping air and water permeate through the soil so that it a perfect environment for plants to grow.
Sometimes, humans in their “infinite wisdom” do things to the soil that inhibits all this life in the soil all in the name of food production. Some of these things include excessive tillage, growing the same crop year after year or overgrazing pastures just to name and few. We can include adding chemical pesticides and fertilizers to that list also. Before you come out of your seat with that comment, know that these chemicals are added by producers to overcome some problem on their farm, lack of nutrients in the soil for sufficient plant growth or excessive crop damage from weeds, disease and/or insects. All of these are symptoms of poor soil health. Conventional agriculture production, that we know today, insists that these inputs be used to produce a crop. The healthier the soils are, the less of these inputs are required to be used. These inputs are not required for production, but when the soils are not functioning properly, the chemical inputs are a must for the farmer to be able to receive income for his cropping efforts. The same goes for livestock farmers. When pastures are overgrazed, they encounter the same problems that crop farmers face, lack of plant production, excessive weed and pest pressure, so they also must reach for these commercial inputs to boost plant growth and curtail weed and pest pressures.
These scenarios paint a struggling picture of food production in this country. Learning, practicing and embracing Soil Health can help producers out of the trench I just described. Even if you don’t grow a single thing you eat, methods of food production should be of paramount interest to you. Especially if you have concerns about how your food is grown and what inputs are being used to produce that food. Hello, my name is Pamela Hoskins and I am the District Conservationist with USDA in Cannon County. My office is located at 740 Old McMinnville Road in Woodbury, phone 615-563-4321. I can help you learn about “Soil Health”. Also, I ask that you visit a couple of websites that have valuable information. One of the sites is a USDA site, just type “Unlock the Secrets of the Soil” in your search engine. The most important video that everyone needs to watch is of Gabe Brown from North Dakota and this link is from his presentation to the Idaho Sustainable Farming Conference. Gabe Brown: Keys TO Building Healthy Soil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk
I ask that you watch it in its entirety. If you eat, this video is important to you because, “Soil Health, It’s what’s for Dinner”.
