On Wednesday February 19th Faribault Rotary heard again from Rice County Soil and Water Conservation. This week we heard about soil health from Steve Pahs. Steve has been with RCSWC for 17 years. He spoke to us about soil health and the inter-seeding programs RCSWS offers. He covered the five principals of soil health and how to measure soil health. He demonstrated a Slake test showing us plugs of soil from two different fields, one that is tilled regularly, and one that is not. The soil plug from the regularly tilled field could not take on and hold water. He demonstrated how run off happens. The plug from the ground that is left alone, took on water and remained intact. The water is absorbed into the plug, and does not start to fall apart.
He spoke about ways to improve soil health, when he highlighted the RCSWC program for inter-seeding that is offered to area farmers. The RCSWC rents a tractor for a month in the spring and uses the optimal time of the year (just a couple weeks) to get as many cover crops inter-seeded into fields as possible. The cost is reasonable for farmers. Statewide only 2% of farmers are doing this, but in Rice County the percentage is about 5% according to Steve. There are incentives for doing inter-seeding and cover crops and anyone interested should get ahold of RCSWC as they are already booking acres for this spring. They are looking to do about 2000 acres in Rice county and currently have about 1200 booked.
Thank you for joining us Steve, we understand you are considering Rotary, and we would love to have you!
