Managing for Profit

Healthier soil is more profitable

The Soil Health Partnership manages and improves soil health by challenging cooperating farmers on its demonstration and research farms to make farming changes beneficial to soil health and profitability.  Hans Kok, a Soil Health Partnership field manager for 19 demonstration farms in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, says this is done through the primary conservation practices of cover crops and reductions in the use tillage.

According to Kok, soils have been ignored for a long time.  He says farmers are very aware of what crops look like on the surface, whether they need nutrients or water, whether they’re attacked by insects, or whether soils are clay or sand, but, he says, less attention has been given to soil biology.  The Soil Health Partnership, says Kok, is changing that.  Another goal of the Soil Health Partnership is profitability.  Kok tells Brownfield a lot of attention is paid to the economics of the practices.

AUDIO: Hans Kok (3 min. MP3)