The first CCSI soil health event of the New Year is this week in Vincennes, Indiana. On Wednesday, January 29, Lisa Holscher, Soil Health Program Manager at the Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative, says Taking Charge of Soil Health will include insights on pests, including slug research and control.
“Ron Hammond is coming over from Ohio State University. As many already know we’ve had some slug issues in a lot of fields across the state and Ron Hammond is a slug expert, so we’re going to take advantage of his expertise and see what we can do to share his pointers with our farmers.”
Mary-Jane Orr from Purdue University will explain the basics of soil health tests and what they can and can’t tell us, and the day concludes with a session on cover crops. You can register for the event at their website.
CCSI pulls together multiple agencies and institutions and includes all of those in the Indiana Conservation Partnership. Holscher adds they also receive support and sponsorship from the Indiana corn and soybean organizations.
“It’s rather unique to Indiana that we have a commodity group that’s really putting forth an effort to promote these soil health practices, putting money into the research of it. They’re great partners to have.”
And that involvement makes a lot of sense for everybody involved.
“Very much so,” she said. “When we talk about soil health and improving soil health we’re talking about things that can improve profitability, improve productivity of our farmlands, as well as the potential to improve resiliency to extreme weather events like we’ve seen the last couple of years, and improve nutrient cycling. When you improve nutrient cycling that can also help reduce nutrient loads and help us avoid the specter of regulation that a lot of people are talking about.”
Holscher tells HAT many states are looking closely at the conservation partnerships Indiana has forged, hoping to replicate it in the their own states.