Managing for Profit

Soil health practices need to conserve soils, add to profit

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.  In this re-broadcast of an earlier program, Hans Kok, a Soil Health Partnership field manager for 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.

Soils have been ignored for a long time, according to Kok.  Farmers, says Kok, 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 less attention has been given to soil biology.  The Soil Health Partnership is changing that, he says.

Another goal of the Soil Health Partnership is profitability, Kok tells Brownfield, with a lot of attention paid to the economics of the practices.

“It all has to make money for the farmer,” said Kok, “because they have to stay in business.”

AUDIO: Hans Kok (3 min. MP3)