Soil at Heart of Conservation Decisions

Jul 10, 2025

By Jason Johnson

Soil scientist – to many people – may sound like a less than exciting career choice. Digging around, looking at different soil identifiers like colors, moisture levels, and textures might seem a little boring.

But for the soil scientists across the country working for the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), soil is exciting! To them, soil is literally and figuratively the foundation for many decisions made by farmers.

NRCS staff recently celebrated the agency’s 90^th anniversary. Formed out of the Dust Bowl era, NRCS has – from its very infancy – focused on reducing soil erosion on private lands.

Jason Steele is an area resource soil scientist for NRCS, covering the southeast part of Iowa. He has been a soil scientist for NRCS in some capacity for nearly 25 years.

He grew up on a farm and still works there every night after work. His family raises corn, soybeans, alfalfa, and pasture for their cow/calf operation. “Since I actively farm, it helps me communicate well with our farmer landowners,” said Steele. “I can talk to farmers about planting, harvesting, haying, agronomic concerns, and even economic scenarios. I feel that it builds trust between NRCS and our farmers.”

Source : usda.gov

Video: A chain harrow is a game changer

Utilizing a rotational grazing method on our farmstead with our sheep helps to let the pasture/paddocks rest. We also just invested in a chain harrow to allow us to drag the paddocks our sheep just left to break up and spread their manure around, dethatch thicker grass areas, and to rough up bare dirt areas to all for a better seed to soil contact if we overseed that paddock. This was our first time really using the chain harrow besides initially testing it out. We are very impressed with the work it did and how and area that was majority dirt, could be roughed up before reseeding.

Did you know we also operate a small business on the homestead. We make homemade, handcrafted soaps, shampoo bars, hair and beard products in addition to offering our pasture raised pork, lamb, and 100% raw honey. You can find out more about our products and ingredients by visiting our website at www.mimiandpoppysplace.com. There you can shop our products and sign up for our monthly newsletter that highlights a soap or ingredient, gives monthly updates about the homestead, and also lists the markets, festivals, and events we’ll be attending that month.