Promoting Soil Health

Feb 12, 2016

Change is slow but the results are inevitable.

The 2016 Ontario and Soil Crop Improvement Association’s meeting focused on a number of speakers who have been at the forefront of promoting soil health.

Cash crop farmers and seed representative Mike Pasztor highlighted farms like Heritage Lanes Produce which spent the year experimenting with cover crops in a variety of vegetable fields.

Cover crop expert Blake Vince spoke to the assembly about where the roots of the movement came from and where it’s likely going.

“The soil biology quest or the awareness has just been leaps and bounds, it’s incredible,” says Vince. “They’re realizing that we can no longer rely solely on tillage so the physical property or physical way to manage the soil or the chemical way with fertilizer and herbicide. We gotta start looking at the biology so that there’s actually living breathing organisms that exist within the soil.”

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.