The 5 Soil Health Principles

 Practices: No-till or reduced-till techniques

When soil is plowed or tilled, it’s structure is damaged, leaving it vulnerable to wind and water erosion and microbial decomposition. Tilling lessens the soil’s ability to retain water, devastating crops during increasingly frequent droughts.

From hooves to plows, soil is disturbed in many ways. While some disturbance is unavoidable, minimizing disturbance events across your operation builds healthier soils.

To minimize disturbance of your soil, you can:

• Limit tillage
• Optimize chemical input
• Rotate livestock

 Practices: Growing cover crops, double cropping

Soil health improves when crops are kept in the ground year-round. Regenerative agriculture farmers plant a different crop immediately after harvest, often alternating  cash crops and cover crops. This green cover shades the soil and the roots dig into it, increasing moisture.

 Practices: Crop rotation, interseeding, relay planting, and biodiversity strips or agroforestry

Planting the same crops on the same fields, year after year, strips soil of nutrients and allows pests and weeds to flourish. In regenerative agriculture, farmers rotate different types of crops over time. This helps limit pest infestations and nourishes beneficial microbes in the soil with a more diverse diet. Rotating between nitrogen-fixing crops like soybeans and nitrogen-hungry crops like corn can reduce the need for fertilizers. 

• Interseeding is when cover crops are planted between commercial crop rows
• Relay planting means inserting the seeds of the next crop even as the first one is still growing
• Biodiversity strips at the margins of fields or trees and shrubs around the boundaries of farmland (agroforestry) create habitats for pollinators and other beneficial wildlife. 

 Practices: Cover Crops & No Tillage

As a general rule, soil should be covered whenever possible. You can plant cover crops as part of both grazing and cropland operations.

To maximize soil cover year round, you can:

• Plant cover crops
• Use organic mulch
• Leave plant residue

Practices: Managed Grazing 

Livestock – cows, goats, sheep, chickens, and pigs transform plant material into rich organic matter through manure production. 

Whenever it is practical to integrate livestock into crop production, there are a range of benefits including increased fertility and improved soil structure. Grazing cover crops or crop residue at the end of the season helps prepare the land for the next round of seeding, without tilling. 

Perennial Pasture where animals are rotated frequently maintains the most functional soil ecosystems with minimal inputs.