Mississippis Soil Health Initiative: Fostering Awareness, Belief and Understanding through Local Experience and Evaluation

A true understanding of soil health is lacking among the majority of Mississippi row-crop producers. In part, this is due to supporting practices (e.g. Cover Crops and no-till) being locally researched and utilized as stand-alone practices, not as a system to improve soil health. For producers to truly understand soil health and the system of management practices to be adopted, they must gain firsthand knowledge and experience of soil health systems as they are successfully applied on local farms. To develop a true understanding of soil health, producers must first be personally and socially motivated to learn with an open and growth oriented mindset. This desire to learn must then be supported by local experience and knowledge that demonstrates how soil health systems are implemented successfully. This project will demonstrate and field test soil health systems on 12 farms and 2,400 acres. Demonstrated soil health systems will be evaluated for improvements in soil and water quality using traditional and innovate methods. Production data associated with demonstrated systems will be tracked using an online platform to facilitate aggregated data analysis. Economic analysis will provide insight as to the profitability of soil health systems and will incorporated into enterprise budgets. An e-based toolbox will be developed to host all information and guidance developed through the project and serve as hub for connecting local producers to existing information and tools.