From the Classroom to the Field: Advanced Soil Health Training for Illinois Ag Service Providers

From the Classroom to the Field: Advanced Soil Health Training for Illinois Ag Service Providers

Summary

Due to increased awareness of the benefits of well-managed soils, the agricultural and conservation communities are promoting “soil health.”  Traditionally, the focus has primarily been on the physical and chemical properties of the soil and the need to increase organic matter, reduce erosion and limit soil compaction. With this project the American Farmland Trust (AFT) is providing in-depth training for up to 20 hand-picked Illinois ag professionals and farmers with experience in cover crops and introductory soils training.

We currently have a training cadre of 30 individuals – demand for in-depth soil health training was greater than we originally anticipated. Of the group, 27 are on track to meet their commitment goals of the program (attending 4 of 6 workshops and providing education and outreach on soil health in their communities). Trainees include cover crop specialists, farmers, agricultural retailers, consultants from throughout Illinois, educators from the University of Illinois Extension and Illinois Soil and Water Conservation Districts.

The training program closely follows that designed for the successful Indiana Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative and has been designed by a steering committee of 9 individuals from Illinois, Missouri and Indiana. Four of the six workshops were held in the reporting period.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Steering Committee  In the first quarter of the grant period we formed a steering committee to help us develop training content, methods, and guide the project. We met in person on November 10, 2015 to discuss purpose, format, and timing of the workshops, decided on the best approach for recruiting trainees, and discussed content for the first workshop. Since the inception of the project the steering committee has met via conference call to provide input into the content and design of each workshop and members of the steering committee regularly attend and contribute to the workshops.

Our steering committee includes: Barry Fisher, Central Region Soil Health Team Leader for NRCS; Nick Goeser, Director of the Soil Health Partnership; Joel Gruver, Associate Professor of Soil Science and Sustainable Agriculture at Western Illinois University; Lauren Lurkins, Director of Natural and Enviornmental Resources at Illinois Farm Bureau; Mike Plumer, cover crops researcher and retired University of Illinois Extension; Caroline Wade, Nutrient Watershed Manager at Illinois Corn Growers Association; Mike Baise, Midwest Director for American Farmland Trust; and the project leads – Jen Filipiak and Dan Towery.

Objective 1: Up to 20 conservation/agriculture professionals will be trained in advanced principles of soil health – especially soil biology, and methods to manage for soil health on the farm.

Results so far: We received 42 applications to participate in the program, committing to attend at least 4 of the 6 2-day workshops. This was much more than we expected and we decided to include 30 trainees in the cadre, to buffer expected attrition. Of this initial pool, 27 are on track to attend at least 4 of the 6 workshops, and 12 of the trainees have attended every workshop so far! Several of the trainees are covering their own travel and expenses through the generosity of their companies, the Soil Health Partnership has assisted with field day expenses, and the Illinois Corn Growers Association is supporting expenses for 4 of the trainees who are working in their “Cover Crop Specialists” program. Through this support we’ve kept travel and expense costs under budget even though we have 10 more trainees than we originally proposed.

Detailed information on the workshops follows:

Workshop #1 “Soil Health and Sustainability” was held on March 29-30, 2016 in McLean County. The curriculum was led by NRCS’s Soil Health Initiative Team (Barry Fisher and Doug Peterson) and based on training NRCS provides to their staff. Day 1 was held in Illinois Corn Growers Association’s conference rooms, focused on the principles of soil health, a detailed discussion of soil biology, soil health indicators and soil health assessment techniques. Day two was held at Mark Freed’s farm and focused on identifying soil health indicators in the field, using soil pits as a teaching and demonstration tool, and learning about Mark’s operation.  This workshop included 29 trainees and was open to all NRCS staff. In total, 46 people (trainees, guests, local farmers, presenters) attended the workshop.

Workshop #2 “Adaptive Nutrient Management for Soil Health” was held on June 22-23, 2016 at Tim Siefert’s farm (a Soil Health Partnership farm) in Sangamon County. The curriculum focused on nutrient cycling and how improved soil biology affects fertilizer recommendations. Trainers included Dr. Joel Gruver, Dr. Shalamar Armstrong, Dr. Tim Smith and Dan Schafer and covered topics from soil biology, to cover crop effects on scavenging nutrients, sampling and fertilizer recommendations. Day 1 was for just trainees and day 2 was a public field day held in conjunction with the Soil Health Partnership. This workshop included 26 trainees plus 29 additional people (presenters and local farmers). In total 55 people attended the 2-day event.

Workshop #3 “Measuring Soil Health and Alternative Farming Systems” was held on August 22-23, 2016 at Western Illinois University and Trevor Toland’s farm in Macomb County. The curriculum focused on the methods of measuring soil health and how to use soil health tests to guide farming recommendations. Trainers included Dr. Gruver, Donna Brandt (University of Missouri Extension) and Nick Goeser. Tests covered included all the parameters tested for in the Cornell and Haney tests and University of Missouri’s soil health testing protocol. Trainees also conducted qualitative soil health indicators used on the various “soil health cards” from different states – tests such as earthworm counts and aggregate stability. Day 1 was for trainees with 20 in attendance plus 10 additional people (presenters and local farmers). Day two was a public field day at Trevor Toland’s ranch – where we discussed cover crops in grazing operations and toured many of the soil health practices in use on Trevor’s farm. The field day was open to the public and an additional 15 local people attended. In total 45 people attended the 2-day event.

Workshop #4 “Cover Crops – becoming a master adapter” was held on November 9-10, 2016 in the University of Illinois’s Ewing Demonstration Center and at Junior Upton’s farm in Franklin and White Counties. The curriculum focused on cover crops and adapting cover crop management to different soil types and farm operations. Day one focused on planting dates, cover crop characteristics and seeding methods including a discussion on current annual ryegrass and clover research. Trainers included Mike Plumer and Nathan Johanning. Day 2 focused on the experiences and expertise of Junior Upton who has been implementing cover crops for over 30 years – he is in a long-term research project regarding the ability of annual ryegrass to permeate the sedimentary layer of fragipan soils, and precision cover crop planting and “biotill” trials. Trainors included Junior Upton, John Pike, Lloyd Murdock (University of Arkansas) and Barry Fisher. The training sessions were not publicly advertised but were open to cooperators and area farmers. In all 18 trainees attended with an additional 14 local farmers and presenters.

Workshop #5 “Seasonal operations and strategies for soil health management” will be held at BCS, llc and Brad Ramp’s farm in McLean County. The curriculum will focus on tools and equipment – their benefits and constraints during seasonal operations.

Workshop #6 will be held in June, likely in Christian County at Jack Erisman’s farm.

Objective 2: Experience will be gained by all trainees and workshop leaders (trainers) by attending field days throughout Illinois, and outside of the individual’s local area.

Results so far: See above for detail on the workshops. Workshops have been held in western, southern and central Illinois so far and the 30 trainees come from 21 Illinois counties.

Objective 3: Increases in awareness of the importance of soil health, soil health management and practices to improve soil health (especially cover crops) among approximately 180 farmers and farm advisors who attend the field days associated with the training workshops.

Results so far: In addition to the 30 trainees, 41 local farmers and farmland owners attended workshops in 2016. Having the training events paired with public field days has proven difficult – it is a lot of work planning and executing two separate events on consecutive days. We are experiencing greater success and value personally inviting local farmers and landowners to participate in the discussion and the training at each event. Trainees have reported that they appreciate having more time to talk with each other and a handful of local farmers, and would rather do that than attend a public field day that covers much of the same topic area but in less detail. We will not reach our goal of 180 for this objective. This is because of the evolution of the public field days as discussed above. This change, especially the increase in personal cultivation during the public days, has created the synergy to far exceed our outreach goal in Objective 4 – the number of farmers attending events hosted by trainees.  AFT feels strongly that the increase in outreach being conducted by trainees (Objective 4) and the personalized approach to the field days is a very favorable result for this objective.

Objective 4: Technical assistance regarding soil health and soil health best practices to be given to approximately 200 additional farmers and farmland owners through trainees after the workshops are completed.

Results so far: All 30 trainees have committed to hosting at least one education and outreach event in their community once the series of workshops is complete. All trainees have already been actively engaged in education and outreach throughout the project period. In preparation for this report, we asked a random sample of trainees to recall recent events they hosted or participated in regarding soil health.  The results, Table 1, indicate that already over 1200 additional farmers and farmland owners from 17 counties have participated in these events:

Table 1: Trainee Hosted Education & Outreach Events (Feb. 2017)

We will be collecting detailed data on the technical assistance outreach all trainees are conducting regarding soil health – including the roles they play, estimated impact, and geographic reach – for the final report.

Objective 5: Curricula specific to Illinois will be developed, all training materials to be made available to all.

Results so far: Four workshops have been held along with notes and survey results evaluating their effectiveness. Following the final workshop in June 2017, project leads will begin pulling together the full curriculum along with lessons learned and recommendations for repeating the workshop series.

Accomplishments/Milestones

Building a soil health community in Illinois.–Sense of community among trainees is much stronger than anticipated. Trainees are asking about next steps and some have created own peer groups for continued learning and collaboration. At least 3 trainees have found new employment as a result of connections made through this network. Many ideas are being discussed about how to keep this group connected after the conclusion of the workshops and the steering committee will be pursuing ideas for continued engagement in the final year of this grant.

Recruitment/interest greater than expected.–Initially the steering committee was worried about recruiting 20 individuals to commit to attending at least 4 of the 6 planned 2-day workshops. Even with travel expenses reimbursed, we recognized that this is a huge time commitment especially the trainees and trainers, and time is our most valuable asset! We were thrilled at the level of interest – we received 42 applications to the program with every applicant willing to sign a statement of commitment to attend at least 4 workshops. We anticipated trainees would drop out, and many would attend only 4 of the 6 workshops so we accepted 30 trainees into the program. So far, we were wrong about that as well – 27 are on track to attend at least 4 of the 6 workshops and 12 have attended every workshop so far!

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

Knowledge outcomes include a gain in technical knowledge on soil health, a gain in knowledge on how soil health management varies by soil type and geography, and hands on experience delivering information.

We are primarily using feedback from trainees to understand knowledge gains. Table 2 summarizes what we learned from pre-testing and surveys. Post-testing and surveys (to calculate differences) will be conducted after the last workshop. We asked each trainee to rank their existing comfort levels with soil health topics and asked everyone to complete a pre-test (20 general questions on soil health). At the start of the workshop series, trainees were moderately comfortable with all topics we asked about, being most comfortable with cover crop management and least comfortable with soil biology and economic impacts (see Table 2).

Table 2. Pre-Testing Ranking Comfort with Soil Health Topics (Feb. 2017)

Each trainee was asked to “rank your comfort level with the following topics on a scale of 1-5”.  (1=no knowledge or experience, 3= comfortable with topic but need to learn more, 5=very knowledgeable, I could teach this!)

The pre-test (IL Advanced soil health training – pre-workshop data summary) asked 20 questions about soil health BMPs, soil biology, soil nutrients, and cover crops. Trainees scored an average of 18 points, out of a possible 41 (26 trainees completed the test). In general, the questions with the most variability were the soil biology questions and soil nutrient questions. Trainees generally scored well regarding soil health management and cover crops.

Action outcomes include trainees using the knowledge and confidence they gain to provide improved technical assistance and more education and outreach in their communities following the workshops. A second action outcome is that a curriculum is developed that can be replicated and used beyond the life of the grant.

As mentioned previously, trainees committed to hosting at least one educational event in their community following the workshop series. But what we’ve found is that all the trainees have already been providing continual outreach in their communities and at regional events and conferences throughout the project.

Workshop feedback is consistently positive. All trainees who answered the post workshop surveys reported they met their expectations from very to extremely well, and they were moderately to extremely satisfied with content.

We also ask questions about how trainees intend to use the information they learned. In surveys following workshops 2-4 (we did not issue a post-workshop survey after the first workshop), all respondents either somewhat or strongly agreed with the following statements:

• I learned something new that I will use at outreach events that are already scheduled.
• This training has inspired me to lead or host a new (not previously scheduled) soil health outreach event in my community.
• I learned information that will be useful to my customers/clients that I intend to pass along.

For ultimate outcomes, we are operating under the theory that if a venue for peer-to-peer learning of advanced soil health measurement and management is offered to Illinois ag professionals, that the quantity and quality of technical assistance available to farmers will increase, which will lead to greater adoption of soil health management practices. This is not an outcome that will be achieved during the lifespan of the project, but we do intend to interview project participants and local hosts for feedback on this outcome at the end of the project.

Collaborators: