Sand County Foundation is empowering farmers by installing soil sensors in their fields that provide real-time temperature and moisture data directly to their phones, which could be used to help inform their day-to-day decision making.
Farmers often share anecdotal information about the presence of standing water in fields following an extreme precipitation event, wondering if soil health management can improve farm resilience by improving water infiltration during storms and increasing water holding capacity during droughts.
Sand County Foundation’s soil health initiative aims to support the anecdotal experiences with on-farm data.
Applying a peer-to-peer learning approach, farmers already implementing soil health management are paired with a neighbor farming on similar soils but not yet implementing soil health principles. The aim is to quantify how infiltration, water holding capacity, soil trafficability, leaching potential, aggregate stability, and other soil properties are influenced by farm management.
Each farmer can access from their cell phone, their field’s real-time soil moisture and temperature data. They can pull this data up while meeting with other farmers to show what is happening below the soil surface during extreme climate conditions.
For more information contact: Heidi Peterson, PhD. - 612.504.7186 hpeterson@sandcountyfoundation.org
Empowering Conservation Champions: Real-Time Soil Metrics
SOIL HEALTH MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES
1) Minimize Soil Disturbance
2) Maximize Soil Cover
3) Maximize Plant Diversity
4) Maximize Presence of Living Plants/Roots
5) Integrate Livestock
