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Improving soil health: Where to start

Carrie Vollmer-Sanders says she and her husband carry on the family tradition of promoting soil health by avoiding tillage and by planting cover crops, including those that are part of their normal rotation.

“We plant about a third of our acres into wheat each year,” said Vollmer-Sanders. “It’s a nice cover crop for the soil.”

Vollmer-Sanders promotes soil health with an eye to the future. “We really think about the long-term health of the soil,” she said. “We’ve seen the longer-term payoff in a number of different ways.”

The result could be getting into fields a little sooner, according to Vollmer-Sanders, or giving soil what she refers to as aggregate stability. “It just feels better when you pick it up,” she said, “and we’re seeing a little bit of increased organic matter, which is helpful.”

To begin, Vollmer-Sanders says farmers need to work on erosion. “We’ve put in some grassed waterways and some filter strips at the edges of fields,” she said.

Conversations with her children about soil health are important to Vollmer-Sanders, “so that when there’s any change in ownership of the land or management of the farm, the next generation knows the importance of the soil, knows the importance of managing that land in the best way possible.”