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THE SECOND PRINCIPLE OF SOIL HEALTH

Minimize Soil Disturbance

As a teenager, I remember coming home from football
practice, eager to jump in the tractor and run the ripper
until the wee hours of the night. That was some of the best
times as a junior high and high schooler, being able to help
out my dad and run the ripper. I didn’t know that there was
a different way to have success with the corn on corn we
were growing. I thought you had to have the seedbed fully
prepared or else it would seal up over the top and the corn
wouldn’t be able to come through the crusted-over soil. I
thought tillage was the answer.

cycling nutrients and residue for us. Now that we’re a couple
of years into it, we’re having a hard time keeping residue on
the soil, and we have had to be more aggressive with carbon
inputs from cover crops to feed the system.
It wasn’t until we got into cover crops that our no-till sys-
tems really started to work. I encourage farmers to adopt
more than one of the principles of soil health at a time. It
Photos by Mitchell Hora help you have success along your soil health journey.
seems that no-till and cover crops go hand-in-hand and will

Other tips for farmers looking to switch to no-till:

you get consistent depth and seed-to-soil contact.
Now that my soil health journey has taken off, and I’ve been • Make sure your planter is tuned in and set correctly, so
able to learn from others, I know biology is the answer, not • As you upgrade planter or other equipment, don’t be
tillage. The ripper is still sitting out behind the shed, where afraid to downgrade the size of your tractor or sell your
it’s been for years, and it won’t ever move again (as long as tillage equipment - you’ll no longer need it. Remove that
my dad and I are making decisions). temptation from your farmstead and have extra capital in
Minimal disturbance is one of the key principles of soil your pocket to make other upgrades to implement a no-
health. In order to build our soils, we must improve the till system successfully.
“home” of the microbes and we must increase the biologic • Start by no-tilling soybeans. We started no-tilling soybeans
diversity in our soils. If we destroy that home via tillage, on our farm in 1986 and have had great success since.
we destroy that habitat for those crucial microbes. If your We know that improving soil structure, organic matter, and
house was destroyed year over year, you’d probably relocate, other soil health components can take a while. But if you
or at least you wouldn’t be able to flourish. We see the same are evaluating other agronomic parameters, such as soil
thing happen in our soils. biology, improving nutrient flow, reducing weeds, and im-
Now that we’ve adopted no-till proving consistency of the crop, then gains can be realized
across our entire farm, we’re quickly. We have to continue to reduce erosion, improve
seeing those soil structure gains, our impact on carbon in the environment, and implement a
and we no longer have crust- no-till or very low disturbance system.
ing on our soils. We have good
water infiltration, and we don’t By Mitchell Hora • Washington, IA
have near as many weeds getting Continuum Ag, LLC
stirred back up. We’re remov- For more information, check out Mitchell’s
ing our residue via microbe and website, www.continuumagllc.com or email him
earthworm activity, which is re- at mitchell@continuumagllc.com.

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