The 5 Principles of Soil Health
Soil is a humble thing.
Hidden beneath a canopy of green plants, it is easy to forget that it is much more than sand, silt, and clay. It is home to earthworms, beetles, nematodes, protozoa, bacteria, fungi, and more! It’s the addition of biology that makes our soils a unique and thriving ecosystem designed by the Creator to be the foundation of life itself.
What exactly does soil biology do?
Breaks down organic matter and rocks into nutrients for plant use
Captures nitrogen from the atmosphere for plant food
Transports nutrients through the soil
Fights off pathogens that cause plant disease
Creates glues that form soil aggregates, small bundles of particles that create pore space for air and water
Many more things we have yet to learn!
The biology that lives in our soils are the unsung heros that make life possible.
Unfortunately, there has been very little understanding and education about this truth. For too long, agriculture has tried to control nature with tillage, single-species crops, and commercial inputs. This inevitably destroyed the fragile ecosystem in our soils, but that’s not the end of the story!
There is a growing movement within our industry that focuses on creating healthier soils by working with nature, rather than trying to control it. Farmers and ranchers all over the world are improving their soils by embracing soil health principles that mimic nature and promote soil biology. Today, we want to share these principles and how we are implementing them on our farm.
Let’s dig in!
1. Minimize Disturbance
Planting corn directly into a diverse cover crop with triticale, oats, hairy vetch, crimson clover, and turnips. No tillage needed!
The practice of tilling a field is as old as agriculture itself. For generations, farmers have tilled their soil with the hopes of loosening the seed bed, killing weeds, and giving the crop access to nutrients deep in the soil. Sadly, the opposite happened. As farmers plowed up native grasslands, extensive networks of soil fungi were destroyed and excessive amounts of oxygen hyperstimulated the soil’s aerobic bacteria. With no more living plant roots to provide food for the bacteria, they began to consume the soil’s precious organic matter. As their food source dwindled, most of the biology living in our soils starved to death. Soil that was once a thriving, natural ecosystem became nearly lifeless.
Without the provision and protection of nature’s invisible superheroes, our fields began to require synthetic fertilizers to nourish the crop and pesticides to manage disease, parasitic insects, and weeds. Today, our agricultural system has become completely dependent on these inputs.
To break the cycle of dependence and make our soils healthier and more resilient, we can start by stopping tillage. Eliminating tillage is the only way to create a safe and happy environment for beneficial soil biology.
ON OUR FARM: We are committed to no-till planting on our farm. In the past, this practice has greatly helped reduce soil erosion. Today, it is the foundation for creating an environment where our soil biology can truly thrive.
2. Cover the Soil
We used a roller crimper to push the cover crop down after planting. This created a thick mat in between the rows, similar to using mulch in a flower bed or garden. This particular field was planted and sprayed the same day, then rolled as the cover crop dried out.
The earth longs to be covered. Nature will cover any bare spots quickly and efficiently with whichever plant is best suited (we often call those plants weeds). Naturally, this creates a challenge for row crop and vegetable growers that like clean, bare dirt between their rows of single-species plants. Thankfully, there is a mutually beneficial compromise. Nature and the grower can both be happy if the soil is covered by beneficial plants like legumes that capture nitrogen from the atmosphere, brassicas that dig deep in the soil to break up compaction, and grasses that provide an excellent feed source for soil biology and livestock. The practice of using plants to cover the ground between growing seasons is called cover cropping. Cover crops can also be used during the growing season by rolling them to the ground at planting. This thick mat of plant material keeps the ground covered, the weeds at bay, and most importantly, keeps nature happy.
ON OUR FARM: We use cover crops to protect our row crop fields throughout the winter and early spring. Rolling the cover crops at planting is an effective way to create a protective mat on the ground all summer long. We protect the soil in our pastures by managing our grazing so there is plenty of grass left behind to shade the ground. At first glance, it looks like we are “wasting” a lot of grass, but this grass creates a living armor that protects the soil from UV light, excessive temperatures, and erosion.
3. Add Living Roots
This is 9 month old Everett sitting in our cow pasture. We drilled cereal rye and hairy vetch into the existing grass to increase photosynthesis and add more living roots to our soils.
Did you know there is a whole economy beneath our feet? Everyday, plants and soil biology barter for the goods they need. The soil biology recycles nutrients and transports them to the plants in exchange for the liquid carbon the plants create through photosynthesis. This symbiotic relationship is the foundation for a healthy and self-sufficient ecosystem. The more active, living roots we can grow in our soils, the more new food there will be to support a growing microbial population.
Another important function of living roots is their tunneling. Roots of all sizes and depths help to break up soil compaction and increase water infiltration. When they die, they become food for soil biology and will increase the organic matter in the soil.
ON OUR FARM: Our favorite way to increase the living roots in our soil is planting summer and winter annuals as cover crops. These crops are quick to establish root systems and begin photosynthesizing, which is especially beneficial going into the winter months. Another benefit of planting annuals is their abundant above ground biomass that can be fed to our livestock or rolled onto the ground at planting.
One of our diverse cover crop mixes that was planted before a corn crop. This mix was selected for its ability to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and break up soil compaction.
4. Increase Plant Diversity
Plants, like people, have strengths and weaknesses. This is why single-species crops, like corn and soybeans, provided limited value to the soil and are more susceptible to disease, pests, and nutrient deficiency.
On the other end of the spectrum, planting multiple species in the same area allows them to work together and use their strengths for the greater good. For example, some plants excel at fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere while others are able to dig deep into the subsoil to bring nutrients back up to the topsoil. Diverse plant populations are also able to support more diverse soil biology. Plants are healthiest and most resilient when they can work together with other unique plants.
ON OUR FARM: We love using multi-species winter cover crops! This allows us to unlock the strengths of many plants on the same soil every year without sacrificing an income producing crop. We encourage plant diversity in our pastures by rotationally grazing and occasionally overseeding our existing pastures with annuals.
5. Integrate Livestock
This is a picture of the graze line on one of our spring pastures overseeded with cereal rye (the cows were just moved to the left side). The right side had been grazed for 24 hours. It looks like a lot of grass was trampled and wasted, but the leftover leaves increased photosynthesis and helped the grass recover more quickly.
We like to think of this last principle of soil health as the accelerator! Applying the other four principles will guarantee healthier soil, but using grazing animals to turn the above-ground plant material into food for the below-ground biology is the quickest way to see rapid improvement in our soils!
The key to unlocking the incredible potential of our grazing livestock is managing the grazing itself. This means grazing the top third of the plant, which happens to be the most delicious and nutritious, and leaving the bottom two-thirds so that the plant is stimulated without being overly stressed. Next, the plant should be rested until it has fully recovered and is ready for grazing again. Overgrazing a plant by grazing it too short or grazing it before it has fully recovered will change the way it uses its energy. Rather than building deep, healthy roots, the plant will be forced to use that energy to regrow its leaves. Each time this happens, the plant and its root system gets weaker and weaker. On the flip side, allowing the plants to fully recover stimulates root growth and photosynthesis and makes the plant and soil biology healthier.
This is our natural fertilizer, rich in nutrients, organic matter, and biology! See the little holes? This manure is just a few hours old and the dung beetles are already tunneling and working to store our fertilizer underground.
Finally, a discussion about the benefits of grazing would be incomplete without mentioning the miracle of the rumen! In His wisdom and goodness, God created ruminant animals (cows, sheep, goats, deer, bison, elk, etc.) to be nature’s perfect companion. No other animal can so efficiently turn plants into meat and manure. What is the secret to their success? Their rumen, a stomach that is home to billions of microbes that break down plant materials on behalf of the animal. The leftover material then exits the animal as a manure, a soil amendment rich in nutrients, organic matter, and biology. Thanks to rumens, we can turn plants into natural fertilizer in less than 24 hours. (Also thanks to rumens, we can turn plants into delicious meat!)
ON OUR FARM: Now you may be thinking, how do we train our cows to eat only the top-third of the plant. It is truly more of an art than a math equation, one that we continue to learn and experiment with every day. We have learned that cows genuinely prefer the tops of the plants and more frequent rotations (every 1-3 days) encourage them to eat more uniformly. They love the fresh buffet everyday and their digestive systems benefit from having a diverse mix of forages. Frequent, high-density rotations also helps spread their urine and manure more uniformly over our fields.
By using these soil health principles to work with nature, we can unlock the incredible potential of soil biology to produce more nutrient dense foods, improve water quality, and reduce carbon in the atmosphere. From the largest ranches to the smallest backyard gardens, we all have the opportunity to improve our soils and play a part in securing a bright and healthy future for the world.
We are still in the early stages of our soil health journey, but embracing the soil health principles on our farm has given our work fresh purpose and excitement! We feel blessed to have a front row seat to God’s perfect design and we are thankful for the opportunity to share it with you!
Other Resources
Here are some special resources that really helped us begin our soil health journey!
Dirt to Soil, by Gabe Brown
Youtube - any videos by Gabe Brown, David Brandt, Ray Archuleta, and Greg Judy