Soil Health

Idaho NRCS State Agronomist Marlon Winger and I had an interesting discussion about Idaho farmers taking care of their soil.”That is what we are trying to educate our employees and our producers. That is our take-home message. By producers, you mean farmers in the great state of Idaho. Yes. In fact one thing that NRCS has done, we have just completed this, we have offered a training to all of our NRCS employees nationwide in a five hour presentation on soil health. What would be wrong with offering that same seminar to farmers? Last year in 2013, we talked 1200 people in our state. This fiscal year we are around 12 to 1300 people. That means employees and farmers. Is there a genuine interest on the part of farmers in Idaho knowing about sustainability of soil? Yes. They honestly have not been taught how soil functions. We spend a lot of time on herbicides, fertilizers, pesticides, tillage equipment but honestly our technical abilities throughout the US, we haven’t talked much about soil health.