Soil Health Workshop to be held in Miles City November 29

For some time  now, agriculture production has focused on providing more inputs to the soil to ensure a better yielding crop.  Whether the inputs be pesticides, fertilizers, tillage operations, etc... the focus was on adding to the soil in order to make it more productive.

Lately, there has been a sort of change in thinking about how we treat our soils.  A fairly new term "soil health" has been coined.  Now producers are encouraged to think about building better soils so that more of these inputs may not be necessary.  Practices like crop rotations, planting cover crops, using variable rate technologies, and reduced tillage have been researched and implemented as ways to make our soils "healthier".

While these practices, and others like them, help build better soils, they are often not implemented because of various factors.  Changing from one practice to another is not always as simple as it sounds.  Usually there is new equipment that must be purchased or old equipment that needs to be changed and that fact alone, not to mention the change in one's mental approach to raising a crop, leads to a hesitancy by some to adopt the practice.

With that being said, however, we know that a healthy soil ultimately leads to a better crop.  That is why on Thursday, November 29 there will be a workshop in Miles City that addresses the issue of soil health and how these practices can be implemented.  The workshop will be held at the Sleep Inn and Suites, located at 1006 Hayne Ave., start at 10:30 and end at 4:00.  Anyone interested in attending should call the Custer County Conservation District at 406-232-7905 ext. 103.