Intense rains this past spring took me back over 30 years ago to when a pair of Mason jars first convinced me that a change in tillage practices was vital on our farm. Sampling rain runoff from conventional and no-till fields showed severe erosion and topsoil loss from conventionally tilled fields with even slight slopes, but negligible soil loss from no-till fields.

It casts a shadow on agriculture when streams and rivers run brown after heavy rains, lakes bloom in the summertime and there is a dead zone in the Gulf the size of Connecticut. There is risk, and there is a cost to make the changes necessary to stop soil loss on each individual farm. There is no risk-free way of farming. But each farmer’s willingness to care for the soil they farm adds up to improved soil health across the board.

The good news is, many more resources are available now than there were 30 years ago. Soil health and its many benefits are some of the most frequently covered topics in farm publications in recent years. We have the tools and technology available to us to do a much better job protecting our soil and water, if we will make use of them.

If you have a nagging suspicion that you’re farming with less topsoil than you were a few years ago, try the Mason jar experiment. Sample surface runoff at the end of heavy rains. Collect some water coming out of the tile lines. Have some of the samples analyzed for content. Insights gained from this simple practice will likely point to very specific things you can do to improve the health of your fields, and eventually your yields with them.

Now, the crops are tall or some maybe even harvested and that hides the scars of erosion. But before you pull into the field to till this fall or next spring, consider whether you might begin making changes to leave the land better at the end of your farming career than when you began.

Joe Beam,
Greene County farmer