Soil Sampling for Soil Health

ance Gunderson is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Region Ag Labs. They work primarily with producers and groups focusing on soil health. He says when it comes to finding successful soil health strategies, individual goals are key.

“We have to understand or have an idea of A, what are your resource concerns? We have to identify the issues you're trying to address. And then B, what are your goals? Because, for example, if you're an almond grower in California and you are irrigating and being incredibly scrutinized by irrigation and water use, then working towards a goal of better water use, efficiency, infiltration, and holding capacity, are very valuable pieces. But if you're a corn farmer in North Carolina and you don't irrigate, it's rain-fed, I mean, those things are still important, but the primary goal of the producer may not be to manage their water irrigation system because it doesn't exist. And so that context is incredibly important in order to design a healthy system.”

Based in Nebraska, Region Ag Labs takes the samples and dries them out for analysis. And based on the results, he says that his team makes recommendations to producers on how to treat fields for maximum performance.