Managing Saline Soils

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

For farmers in many parts of the country, they have fields that experience salinity. This build up of salts in the soil can make it so very few plants will grow there, and the problem will often get worse if not addressed. Mark Huso of Huso Crop Consulting in North Dakota targets these areas with salt tolerant crops.

Huso… “Yeah, salinity is our number one challenge where I'm located. You know, drought has never been our priority. It's always been the saline soils. The true fixes have been crop wise, barley and sunflowers. Those are really helped. Otherwise it's finding a CRP or a grass program is to simply retire those acres, get them out of production and not spend money on those acres. But that doesn't always happen. Guys aren't able to enroll these poor acres into those federal programs. Canola to a point, but, we're finding that wheat and barley and sunflowers are main fixes for those areas.”

Huso uses precision agriculture technology to manage saline spots within a field differently than the way the rest of that field is farmed.

Huso… “The saline areas, the saline flats, let's not spend $500 an acre on those areas. Let's spend 50 bucks an acre in those areas. So our focus was use technology to help us save on fertilizer costs.”

More information on Huso’s approach can be found on the SWAT Agronomy podcast on any podcast platform.