Soil Sustainability

To meet the growing sustainability challenges of the 21st Century, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service is reminding people that many of the solutions are right at our feet — in the soil. Here are the top five reasons NRCS says soil is a solution for sustainable agriculture:

1. There is growing competition for water and other food production resources — and many resources are limited (or in some cases finite) in their supply. Healthy soils help optimize those inputs and maximize nutrient use efficiency.

2. Weather extremes like drought and climate change pose increasing food production challenges. Healthy soil is more resilient soil, with greater infiltration and water-holding capacity, which make farms more resistant to periods of drought. And since it holds more water, healthy soil helps reduce flooding during periods of intense rainfall.

3. Globally, millions of acres of cropland are lost to development or resource degradation.

4.By the year 2050, an estimated 9 billion people will join us at Earth’s dinner table, meaning we’ll have to grow as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the past 500.

5. Idaho NRCS State Agronomist, Marlon Winger: “Maximize the diverse of the of plants in the rotation and use cover crops to help maximize that diversity. A crop that is currently not in your rotation. We have a cover crop periodic table. Do you remember in chemistry, how they had the periodic table set up? Yes sir. We have developed the periodic table of cover crops.”