Soil Health

Soils are Fundamental to Life on Earth

Healthy soil gives us clean air and water, bountiful crops and forest, productive grazing lands, diverse wildlife, and beautiful landscapes.

Soil does all of this by performing five essential functions:

 

Regulating Water

Soil helps control where rain, snowmelt, and irrigation water goes. Water flows over the land or into and through the soil.

Sustaining Plant and Animal Life

The diversity and productivity of living things depends on soil.

Cycling Nutrients

Carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, and many other nutrients are stored, transformed, and cycled in the soil.

Filtering and Buffering Potential Pollutants

The minerals and microbes in soil are responsible for filtering, buffering, degrading, immobilizing, and detoxifying organic and inorganic materials, including industrial and municipal by-products and atmospheric deposits.

Providing Physical Stability and Support

Soil structure provides a medium for plant roots. Soils also provide support for human structures and protection for archeological treasures.

The quality of our soil matters...

Soil health is the capacity of soil to function as a vital, living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans. While many soil properties are inherent and can’t change on a human time scale (i.e. texture), others are dynamic and are directly influenced by management (i.e structure, organic matter).

Soil Health involves the intersection of biological, chemical, and physical properties.

Physical

  • structural stability
  • erosion control
  • water storage
  • air storage

Chemical

  • fertility
  • nutrient cycling
  • buffering capacity
  • water infiltration

Biological

  • carbon storage
  • nutrient storage
  • pest suppression
  • disease suppression
  • biodiversity
What can you do for your soil?

 

Soil works for you if you work for the soil by using management practices that improve soil health and increase productivity and profitability immediately and into the future. A fully functioning soil produces the maximum amount of products at the least cost. Maximizing soil health is essential to maximizing profitability. Soil will not work for you if you abuse it.

Soil health research has determined how to manage soil in a way that improves soil function. These principles can apply to operations of any size.

  • Armor the Soil

Provide soil cover by reducing disturbance and planting crops that are slow to break down. In grazing systems, leave enough standing and trampled material to protect the soil surface. Residue is important and it is a key component of a system grounded in soil health.

  • Minimize Soil Disturbance

Especially tillage. Undisturbed root systems are the main contributor to increased organic matter levels in the soil and the building of soil root structure.

  • Keep a Living Root in the Soil

Keep living roots in the soil as long as possible to increase soil microbial activity. Soil microbes feed on sugars that leak from the plant roots.

  • Increase Diversity

Increase plant diversity by varying crop types within your rotation and/or using a “cocktail mix” as a cover crop. Effective grazing systems can also promote plant diversity.

  • Integrate Livestock

Livestock add another component of diversity to your system. Soil organisms like earthworms and dung beetles thrive where there is plenty of dung and dead plant material for them to live on.

Source: NRCS

Soil Health Resources

Videos

Guides

Agency Contacts

  • Farm Service Agency – Madison County | (406) 287-3262
  • Natural Resource Conservation Service – Madison County | (406) 842-5741 ex. 10
  • MSU Extension – Madison and Jefferson Counties | (406) 287-3282
  • Conservation Districts
    • Madison: (406) 682-3181
    • Ruby Valley: (406) 842-5741 ex. 11
    • Jefferson Valley: (406) 287-7875
  • Madison Valley Ranchlands Group | (406) 682-3259
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