The future of soil health relies on “decision agriculture,” which means farmers need to be given the information and options to manage their operations to be profitable and productive.

Delivering a keynote address at the Soil Health Summit sponsored by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and the Soil Health Institute at the University of North Carolina Friday Center in Chapel Hill, Jason Weller, senior director of sustainability for Land O’Lakes, emphasized that soil health as a standalone initiative will not survive. A cohesive, integrated approach is needed for success.

“Soil health has to be threaded in, imbedded, woven in this tapestry of decision agriculture,” Weller said.

Since 2017, Weller has lead Land O’Lake’s SUSTAIN business unit where conservation practices are developed for the cooperative’s member-owners. Previously, Weller was chief of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“Soils were not created equal and they should not be managed equally. We need to use the data we have either coming off the combine or going into the planter to understand how soil responds to different management systems,” Weller said.

In essence, soil health management systems have to make farmers more profitable, or they won’t succeed. “We need to give farmers insights to manage the microbiome, soil moisture, soil organic content,” he said.

“The first question a farmer will ask is ‘what the heck is soil health?’ The second question they always ask is ‘what’s in it for me?’ And then they ask ‘what’s it cost per acre?’ And then they ask ‘what’s the return per acre?’ and then they ask ‘when am I going to see that return per acre and beyond that that how do I get started?   Do I have to change my rotation?  Do I have to change my management system?  Do I have to buy new equipment or upgrade my equipment?’  It starts with ‘what’s in it for me?’” Weller said.

Weller notes that ag retailers also ask “what is soil health, who’s going to pay for it and what’s in it for me?” And manufacturers of seed, fertilizers and crop protection products also ask those questions.

Weller said ag retailers need “silver bullet assurance” that soil health services will provide a rate of return that compares with the other products or services they are selling.

“If soil health can’t be put simply in their hands to have a good, simple conversation with a customer, forget about it, because they have an imperative which is to sell products and seeds. They’re not there to sell soil conservation. Soil health needs to be threaded in and imbedded into that sales call in a way that’s easy and simple and repeatable and uses the data we already have. We’re not asking for a new data collection system,” he said.

“So this is a seminal challenge: how do we figure out the value proposition and until we figure that out it’s just going to be a lot of experimental test plots, it’s going to be a lot of conferences where we’re thinking about how soil health should be the next best thing,” he emphasized.

The key is to remove the disincentives to improving soil health.

In April, Land O’Lakes sales agronomists will begin providing imagery to growers that shows the elevation, slope and erosion risk of every field they manage. Weller said it all starts with a conversation with a grower.

“They’ll say ‘hey, remember that yield monitor where it was kind of out of whack. Let’s call up your erosion risk. It turns out that part of the field where you’re not getting a good return is erosive. Let’s talk about how to protect that investment, that capital asset, your crop field,’”

Further, Weller said Land O’Lakes sent farm bill proposals to the House and Senate Agriculture Committees that would provide incentives to farmers to do sacrifice plots and strip plots and then track, manage and implement the data. The cooperative has also proposed soil health transition payments which would help growers as they establish cover crop cocktails and change their tillage systems to improve soil health.