Manure is a gift and a curse for dairy farmers. It becomes the dark cloud for dairy operations, being the source of time constraints, nutrient runoff and financial strains. Finding methods and approaches that bring consistency and flexibility to applications is often hard to find. That was, until conservation agriculture.

Let’s enter a very strange world. Dark, silent, microscopic, underground. The soil – on which our crops and forages depend – is a veritable Amazon jungle teeming with thousands of species of animals and plants and something that’s not quite either: fungi.

For the first time since 2019, the Midwest is mostly clear of drought advisories, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. In fact, May was one of the wettest months on record for Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and South Dakota and regions of Michigan, with above-normal precipitation continuing throughout the growing season. Such weather has dairy producers in a pinch to manage manure appropriately.

It may seem simplistic to analogize soil with a checkbook, but it works and is more apt than perceived. Matter can be neither created nor destroyed. It’s a simple truth that drives everything in the universe and holds true in the soil as it does in the cosmos – giving rise to the soil nutrient balance.

Over time with many common farming practices, we start to lose some of those minerals to insolubility, erosion or crop exportation. As with sentences, a soil's integrity can deteriorate as these minerals are depleted, leading to reduced plant health, more pest pressure and overall harvest productivity decline.

PFAS are a family of chemicals known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment. They’ve been in use since the 1940s and are designed to repel or displace water.

There is a new testing method in town. It is far different than any other form of agronomic testing taking place over the last century. Instead of looking at a soil's chemical properties, we catch a glimpse into the soil's DNA.

Broadcast fertilizer spreaders are used to apply the bulk of most dry fertility programs – making them an important factor in crop productivity and return on your fertilizer investment. Just like all pieces of equipment on the farm, proper setup and calibration is critical.

With funding from the USDA NRCS, ARS and NIFA, along with OCP North America, the soil fertility community has undertaken the immense task of finding and collecting the data that underpin the existing soil testing paradigm in the U.S.

While drones and imagery are flying along, the evolution of soil testing seems to be moving at an earthworm's pace.