Soil Health Workshop Draws Crowd

On Thursday afternoon the Rice County Soil and Water Conservation Service (SWCD) and Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) sponsored a Soil Health Workshop. The workshop was at the Forest Town Hall by Millersburg. There was a very large crowd at the Forest Town Hall with people standing in the back and sides of the room! There were talks about microbial activity in the soil and what you can do to enhance it with less tillage, more residue and cover crops. There was also a demonstration with a rainfall simulator.

The rainfall simulator is used to show the impact of crop residue reducing water erosion. Cross sections of soil of 2 or 3 inches thick are taken from area fields with different types of residue. They are placed on a stand at a slope. Then water is sprayed over the top through a nozzle simulating a heavy rainfall. In this demonstration a CRP field with a cover crop was used, along with a field that was no tilled, strip tilled and a conventional tilled field.

Notice in the picture that no soil is being washed off the CRP field, the strip tilled or no till field. Then look at all the soil that is being washed off the sample of the conventional tilled field that had no crop residue. In addition there are small holes drilled in the pans under the soil samples. This demonstrates how much of the rain soaks into the soil. Much of the rain soaks into the soil with crop residue while the field with no residue, almost all the rain ran off the surface, taking soil with it!