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Healthier soils provide resilience against drought stress

Healthy soil provides a buffer against drought.

Pete Fandel, agriculture professor at Illinois Central College, says that farmers focused on increasing their soil health have found their fields more resilient to drought stress.

“When you have good, healthy soil, your soil can actually store more water between rain events.”  He says, “If you have a lot more biological activity in your soil, all those microscopic creatures can help benefit the plant roots, help them grab more nutrients out of the soil, like a lot of your micronutrients and things like that. A healthy soil will basically make a healthy crop.”

He tells Brownfield that reducing tillage is the first step to healthier soils.

“Because tillage destroys soil structure.”  He says, “In our current farming practices, we only have a living plant in the soil, basically five to six months out of the year, where nature intended to have a plant on the soil 12 months of the year. If we can try to have a living root in that soil more months out of the year, it will help with that soil health.”

Brownfield spoke with Fandel at the University of Illinois Extension Agronomy Summit in East Peoria.

AUDIO: Pete Fandel – Illinois Central College