By Miranda Mueller
Thirty-five producers, crop advisers, representatives from Natural Resources Districts, the Center for Rural Affairs and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), as well as faculty and students, gathered at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) Rogers Memorial Farm on Aug. 20 for hands-on soil health assessment training. The training focused on soil health assessment strategies and implementation of the NRCS Conservation Evaluation and Monitoring Activity (CEMA) 216 Soil Health Testing protocol.
The training’s potential reach extends well beyond the participants: 56% of surveyed crop advisers reported influencing or directly managing up to 10,000 crop acres, while 13% reported influencing 10,000–99,999 acres. Much of the cropland represented by survey respondents was rainfed.
Connecting Standards to the Field
The training combined presentations, demonstrations and a field practicum. Topics included soil-health foundations; CEMA 216 requirements and participant qualifications; the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Soil Sampling Positioning Tool (SSPOT); field sampling plans; strategic soil sampling; sample handling and submission; biological soil health indicators; laboratory result interpretation; and the Soil Health Assessment Protocol and Evaluation (SHAPE) tool. A 60-minute field practicum gave attendees an opportunity to move from concepts to implementation. One survey respondent shared, “I enjoyed the hands-on training and learning about what tools are available for assessment.” Another said, “Great to get in the field with like-minded soil health advocates.”
Post-event survey comments showed that participants valued training designed around the decisions and procedures needed for real-world assessments. One attendee described the event as providing “very practical and applied knowledge for our consultants, farmers [and] extension educators.” Another noted that the day offered “lots of tidbits from presentations, questions and discussions.”
Source : unl.edu