SOIL HEALTH PRACTICES YIELD PROFITS

Economic analysis shows the benefits of building soil health

- Raylene Nickel

Does it pay to put soil health practices that can sequester carbon to work?

That’s the question the Soil Health Institute, headquartered in Morrisville, North Carolina, set out to answer when staff members interviewed 100 farmers in nine states who had been practicing no-till, using reduced tillage, or growing cover crops for at least five years.

After conducting a partial budget analysis of the economic data gathered from the farms, the institute found that the answer to the question was a resounding yes: Implementing soil health practices can indeed be profitable.

The nine states in the analysis are responsible for 71% of the corn and 67% of the soybeans grown in the United States. The states represented in the survey were Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, and Tennessee.

In the study of farms where soil health practices have been used, net income increased for 85% of farmers growing corn

and 88% of farmers growing soybeans. Some 67% reported achieving higher yields in all crops after adopting soil health practices than the yields they realized with their former conventional production systems. Farmers in the survey reduced the average cost to grow corn by $24 an acre and by $17 an acre to grow soybeans. Farmers surveyed increased net farm income by an average of $52 an acre for corn and $45 an acre for soybeans.

Increased Resiliency