OFR21: Soil Health Demo Farms with Fernanda Krupek

Fernanda Krupek Author

10/26/2021 Added

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In this video, Fernanda Krupek discusses the UNL-NRCS Demo Farms. These demo farms explore topics related to soil health, cover crop management, and integrating grazing into the system.

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[00:00:00.595](Soft music)
[00:00:10.410]All right.
[00:00:11.560]Hello everyone.
[00:00:12.560]My name is Fernanda Krupek and I'm a PhD student
[00:00:16.122]in the department of Agronomy and Horticulture
[00:00:18.670]and I'm very excited to be here today
[00:00:21.100]and thank you all for joining.
[00:00:23.000]This is a great opportunity to share with you all,
[00:00:26.440]some of the learnings that we are creating
[00:00:28.160]with the UNL and our CSO health initiative,
[00:00:31.080]that we hope you
[00:00:32.700]advance adoption of soil management practices in Nebraska
[00:00:36.850]and today we are going to talk about
[00:00:39.620]the impact of soil management
[00:00:41.420]on multiple soil health indicators,
[00:00:43.530]particularly across soils
[00:00:45.570]with different management history and field testing
[00:00:48.860]of a variety of cover crop management practices.
[00:00:53.410]Before I get you started,
[00:00:54.940]I do want to acknowledge many partners
[00:00:57.410]collaborating in the soil health initiative.
[00:00:59.980]This picture you are seeing here
[00:01:02.110]was taken exactly one year ago in our annual meeting
[00:01:06.450]and we would have taken the same picture today,
[00:01:08.930]if not for the pandemic.
[00:01:11.040]So you are seeing here the team behind our project,
[00:01:14.200]but I also would like to thank
[00:01:16.460]the many extension educators, NRCS' staff
[00:01:19.460]and cooperating farmers that are working with us.
[00:01:23.980]I want to start today with a definition of soil health
[00:01:27.060]to make sure we are on the same page.
[00:01:29.550]So when I'm talking about measuring soil health,
[00:01:32.900]I'm talking about soil's ability to function as a vital,
[00:01:37.430]living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals and humans
[00:01:41.391]and clearly,
[00:01:42.550]water cycling is a big component of soil health,
[00:01:45.320]Right?
[00:01:46.390]This picture you're seeing here
[00:01:48.090]is from one of my first few visits in Knox county May, 2019.
[00:01:54.070]So there is this nice fence lining the Meadow
[00:01:56.380]separating these two different managements
[00:01:59.680]and you can tell that
[00:02:01.180]because of the different vegetation cover,
[00:02:03.280]Right?
[00:02:04.113]So one with residue cover in the right-hand side,
[00:02:08.450]and by the time of the year that this picture was taken ,
[00:02:10.850]you can guess that this feud was left by halo
[00:02:13.940]over the winter time,
[00:02:15.730]as compared to the few on the left hand side
[00:02:18.540]from one of our producers collaborating
[00:02:20.820]that had cover crops.
[00:02:22.670]So we know that has been rainfall
[00:02:24.740]because the water is standing on the top of the soil
[00:02:27.420]on the right-hand side
[00:02:28.730]and if you recall 2019 was a very wet year
[00:02:33.460]with a lot of bloating issues.
[00:02:35.050]So what we are seeing here is one soil
[00:02:38.170]on both sides of a fence line
[00:02:40.329]that have different functional expression
[00:02:43.360]after a rainfall.
[00:02:45.040]So I would say that this soil in the left hand side
[00:02:47.910]is likely healthier
[00:02:49.340]because there is residue covering the soil.
[00:02:51.860]We don't see the evidence of cresting, no water pounding,
[00:02:56.290]no toga occurring, and the crop looks healthy,
[00:02:59.700]right?
[00:03:00.610]As you compare on the right hand side,
[00:03:02.930]it looks like
[00:03:04.437]there's going to be some cross-training happening.
[00:03:06.400]So let's say that this soil is not functioning
[00:03:09.900]with regard to water cycling as we would expect,
[00:03:12.950]but it is all the same soil here
[00:03:15.910]and that's the point I would like to make
[00:03:19.030]is that soil has its context, its inherent capability
[00:03:23.900]and then the way we manage it
[00:03:26.210]and the land use on the top of it
[00:03:28.370]is that function expression of its health.
[00:03:32.350]So I would be glad to know from you now,
[00:03:35.350]some of the soil health management practices
[00:03:37.790]that you have heard about, or you are interested in.
[00:03:40.970]So if you are watching this presentation
[00:03:42.700]from a computer or a projector,
[00:03:44.650]you can use the camera on your cell phone
[00:03:46.790]to scan this QR code and they will take you to the website
[00:03:50.180]to submit your answer
[00:03:51.650]and you can also use your cell phone browser
[00:03:53.780]and go to slido.com and enter the passcode onfarm
[00:03:57.047]and then submit your answer.
[00:03:59.050]Also, feel free to send me more than one answer
[00:04:02.478]as much as you want.
[00:04:03.390]I'll give some time here so you can submit your answer.
[00:04:16.570]Okay,
[00:04:17.403]So you can use the QR code here?
[00:04:23.530]Okay,
[00:04:24.363]We see inter seeding,
[00:04:29.510]Cover crop.
[00:04:32.820]So what you are seeing here is called word cloud
[00:04:36.080]and it is related to the frequency of words
[00:04:40.440]that the audience is still meeting.
[00:04:41.960]So the bigger the size of the letter here
[00:04:45.340]means more people send that answer.
[00:04:48.864]So we feel a lot of interest in cover crops, No-till,
[00:04:53.520]there also a nutrient management.
[00:04:56.880]Okay.
[00:04:58.046]For the sake of time, I'll move ahead,
[00:05:00.654]but it's nice to see that
[00:05:02.322]majority here is interested in cover crops
[00:05:03.570]and that's one thing that I will focus today
[00:05:07.020]on my presentation too.
[00:05:09.750]So thanks first to submit your answer.
[00:05:12.050]So here in Nebraska,
[00:05:13.240]we have the Soil Health Initiative
[00:05:15.530]and this is a statewide
[00:05:17.210]statewide partnership to establish data and monitor changes
[00:05:21.040]in soil properties
[00:05:22.133]through the adoption of conservation practices.
[00:05:25.640]And this project was launched in 2016
[00:05:28.480]and farmers participate in this project
[00:05:30.720]were sign up through equip contracts,
[00:05:32.870]they acquired them to conduct its trip trial,
[00:05:35.850]comparing at least two contrasting soil management practices
[00:05:39.720]for five years .
[00:05:41.810]In terms of data that has been collected
[00:05:43.990]since the beginning of this initiative,
[00:05:46.880]we have cash crop, yield monitor data
[00:05:50.010]or research participation farm
[00:05:52.060]and choose soil health assessments,
[00:05:54.250]One using a feud protocol developed by NRCS
[00:05:57.730]and a Haney test
[00:05:59.410]which is an assessment available in commercial laboratories.
[00:06:02.980]In these two soil health assessments
[00:06:04.770]is what I'm going to focus on my presentation today.
[00:06:09.720]So we are going to look at data
[00:06:11.710]that has been collected in Tenure farm sites.
[00:06:14.390]As you can see in this map here,
[00:06:16.357]the soil health treatment comparisons in each side
[00:06:19.185]was different
[00:06:20.300]as you can see in this list here,
[00:06:22.420]we have single species versus multi-species,
[00:06:25.360]different cash crop rotations.
[00:06:27.910]And one aspect that is often overlooked,
[00:06:31.010]which is the whole that field management history plays
[00:06:34.210]When we are analyzing data from on-farm research.
[00:06:38.080]So in our data set,
[00:06:39.550]for example, across all the sites,
[00:06:42.310]the time of cover crop we use vary
[00:06:44.270]from zero to up to 12 years,
[00:06:46.826]tiller adoption practices vary from zero to up to 30 years
[00:06:51.130]and different plant species on there
[00:06:53.540]in a five-year rotation.
[00:06:55.778]We had feuds from two to up to 18 different species,
[00:06:58.810]So we need to take that field history into account.
[00:07:03.750]And the point I would like to make here
[00:07:05.640]is that the analysis I'm going to show today
[00:07:08.180]is a little bit different from what we are discussing
[00:07:11.670]on the on-farm research results book
[00:07:14.960]because here we are combining results
[00:07:17.400]from multiple farm studies
[00:07:20.023]that were testing cover crop management practices
[00:07:22.700]and taking to account the food history of those times.
[00:07:28.060]So for each side,
[00:07:30.790]we quantify the cash crop diversity ,
[00:07:33.410]frequency of mechanical soil disturbance,
[00:07:36.150]cover crop in organic amendment use
[00:07:38.520]and cropping livestock integration.
[00:07:41.060]Well, you don't need to memorize all these equations,
[00:07:43.710]I'm presenting here,
[00:07:44.660]but the main idea is that each index was defined
[00:07:48.760]to represent a progression
[00:07:50.330]to more intensify cropping systems,
[00:07:53.185]option of soil health management practices
[00:07:56.950]and the greater the index,
[00:07:58.460]that means they hired a number of different plant species
[00:08:01.200]in their rotation,
[00:08:02.220]fewer number of years with power bare soil,
[00:08:04.882]fewer number of years with tillage operation,
[00:08:07.870]increased number of organic amendment application
[00:08:10.860]and more frequent integration with livestock
[00:08:14.290]into their cropping system.
[00:08:17.160]So we applied this classification approach
[00:08:19.440]to 21 indicators of soil,
[00:08:21.710]physical, chemical, and biological health ,
[00:08:24.440]which is in this table here.
[00:08:26.200]In terms of sampling measurement,
[00:08:28.520]all the fields were sample at zero to seeing inch
[00:08:31.450]prior to the start of the experiment
[00:08:33.443]that was in 2016 or 17,
[00:08:36.070]depending on the viewed
[00:08:37.810]and we also collect data in the fall 2019,
[00:08:41.900]and it's quite a lot of measurements,
[00:08:44.030]right?
[00:08:44.863]So what, what do we do?
[00:08:46.110]So basically we have all these measurements
[00:08:49.520]and the first thing we did was
[00:08:51.690]to look at the relationship between all these measurements
[00:08:55.330]and this soil management indexes that we calculated.
[00:08:59.020]So that's what you are seeing here in this graph,
[00:09:01.470]I know there's a lot of information going on,
[00:09:03.870]but let's take a look at it in pieces.
[00:09:06.720]So first this graph is showing us,
[00:09:08.930]we just saw how indicators are more forceful
[00:09:12.140]to differentiate that transition
[00:09:14.090]towards intensified soil management practices.
[00:09:17.310]So for example, soil organic matter ,soil respiration,
[00:09:21.890]infiltration, soil porosity,
[00:09:23.890]water extractable organic carbon ,nitrogen,
[00:09:26.687]and all those properties that I highlighted here,
[00:09:30.180]they were the ones most sensitive to change in cover crop,
[00:09:34.400]crop diversity in organic amendment .
[00:09:37.590]In thermostat cropping livestock integration
[00:09:40.830]in years without soil disturbance,
[00:09:43.370]then we have soil temperature,
[00:09:45.210]volumetric water content, manganese, potassium, phosphorus,
[00:09:50.110]all those properties, they were most forceful
[00:09:52.860]to differentiate the change on those management practices.
[00:09:57.440]Another information we can get from this graph here
[00:10:00.200]is that soil health indicators,
[00:10:02.130]they were found to be either positively or negatively
[00:10:05.620]related to the different management indexes
[00:10:08.660]and that's the meaning of the errors
[00:10:10.740]going here in the opposite direction.
[00:10:13.410]So for example,
[00:10:15.590]as we increase cover crop use,
[00:10:17.980]there is a decrease,
[00:10:18.910]We see a decreasing bulk density, which is good,
[00:10:21.660]right?
[00:10:22.493]But let's look at here
[00:10:24.350]as cropping livestock integration in years
[00:10:26.980]without soil disturbance increase,
[00:10:29.700]we see potassium, inorganic nitrogen,
[00:10:32.390]all those properties here going in the opposite direction.
[00:10:38.140]And yeah,
[00:10:39.130]that's the meaning of it going on different directions.
[00:10:41.750]And the point I would like to make here is for you
[00:10:44.800]to think about the big picture
[00:10:46.720]and the visual analogy I would like to make is
[00:10:49.800]when we are trying different management practices
[00:10:52.380]to improve soil health, it is like climbing a mountain,
[00:10:55.940]right?
[00:10:56.773]There will be ups and downs,
[00:10:58.250]but it is important to think on the big picture
[00:11:01.210]and the longterm goal in reversing soil degradation.
[00:11:06.290]Our next step on the analysis was to model
[00:11:08.655]the relationship between management indexes,
[00:11:11.770]to all together with the soil properties,
[00:11:14.510]to understand the management importance
[00:11:16.590]on the soil health indicators.
[00:11:18.660]And this is what this graph is showing in here,
[00:11:21.360]their relative importance of each management index
[00:11:24.520]on modeling their response of the soil health indicators.
[00:11:28.170]So for example,
[00:11:29.150]with soil properties that are closely related
[00:11:32.260]to carbon and nitrogen dynamics,
[00:11:34.060]such as soil respiration, organic matter,
[00:11:37.680]water extractable carbon nitrogen, total nitrogen,
[00:11:41.870]we can see that their cover crop use
[00:11:44.690]explained quite a lot of the total variability in our model.
[00:11:48.720]In terms of crop diversity index, for example,
[00:11:52.740]we can see their soil water infiltration
[00:11:55.300]and problematic water content
[00:11:57.820]was the highest per crop diversity index
[00:12:00.780]and when we average across all this soil health indicators,
[00:12:05.090]we can see their cover crop use was the most important
[00:12:08.650]and contributed to up to 30% of the overall influence
[00:12:12.200]in all the assessed variables followed by years
[00:12:15.300]with outside of disturbance, cropping livestock,
[00:12:17.850]organic amendment and crop diversity.
[00:12:20.860]So if we consider, all these indexes keeping mind
[00:12:24.630]that their cover crop use is the only one
[00:12:26.980]that shares these critical features
[00:12:29.110]of continue living hover and roots in the soil
[00:12:32.260]with the use of cover crop.
[00:12:35.210]And because Cover crop was the most important management
[00:12:38.120]affecting properties related to carbon nitrogen dynamics.
[00:12:41.830]Now we are going to look at the impact of cover crops
[00:12:45.050]on Haney task calculations of available plant nitrogen,
[00:12:48.550]nitrogen recommendation, nitrogen savings.
[00:12:51.440]So let's focus on this first graph here .
[00:12:54.971]Here we see this linear relationship
[00:12:56.350]between soil respiration on the horizontal axis
[00:13:00.160]and organic nitrogen on the vertical axis
[00:13:03.320]and this organic nitrogen release here
[00:13:06.542]is an overall credit that the Haney test calculate
[00:13:09.780]from the soil that other more conventional fertility tests
[00:13:13.870]that utilize nitrate or ammonium did not account for
[00:13:18.820]and because organic nitrogen needs in the amount
[00:13:22.150]where needs through a microbial activity
[00:13:25.672]from organic nitrogen pools.
[00:13:26.860]Typically this value increase as the systems gets healthier.
[00:13:31.820]And
[00:13:33.170]as we can see here,
[00:13:34.760]we have organic nitrogen release
[00:13:37.250]was highly associated with soil respiration
[00:13:40.030]and this is already expected
[00:13:41.550]because the Haney test uses soil respiration
[00:13:44.870]as one of the variables
[00:13:46.100]to calculate the organic nitrogen we need .
[00:13:49.000]But the point I would like to call your attention here
[00:13:52.510]is the fact that intensification in cover crop use,
[00:13:55.622]which is represented here
[00:13:57.250]by these larger and lighter blue cycles,
[00:14:00.360]those resulted in greater 24 hour respiration
[00:14:03.990]and organic nitrogen release.
[00:14:06.700]And remember,
[00:14:07.533]I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation,
[00:14:10.429]that the time of cover crop use
[00:14:11.890]among our farmers vary from zero to up to 12 years.
[00:14:15.490]So these last two indexes here represents
[00:14:18.690]feuding adopter Cover crops for over eight years.
[00:14:23.010]We also have here their relationship
[00:14:25.350]between plant available nitrogen
[00:14:28.300]and organic nitrogen release.
[00:14:30.020]There was found to be negatively correlated
[00:14:32.590]to corn and wheat nitrogen recommendation.
[00:14:35.890]And we , in our analysis,
[00:14:38.000]we found that in healthy and high functioning
[00:14:40.500]biologically active soils,
[00:14:42.100]particularly those using cover crops for over eight years,
[00:14:46.670]this nitrogen credits could be above 10 PPM
[00:14:50.420]and that reduce the nitrogen fertility substantially.
[00:14:55.070]And what does that mean in terms of nitrogen savings?
[00:14:58.090]So we can see that fields adopting cover crop
[00:15:01.410]for a long time,
[00:15:02.630]they have an average savings of $44 per Hector,
[00:15:08.240]which would be around $18 per acre in nitrogen application.
[00:15:13.284]We choose significantly higher than in fields
[00:15:17.070]with less intensification in cover crop use.
[00:15:20.400]So taking together all of these results
[00:15:22.870]and it suggested that longterm cover cropping is trending
[00:15:26.880]to low nitrogen requirements and higher nitrogen savings.
[00:15:31.570]And this is the last graph I would show here
[00:15:33.700]showing the percentage of change from the baseline samples.
[00:15:37.827]Let's focus on infiltration and bulk density.
[00:15:41.200]If we look at the, all the data set,
[00:15:43.580]we don't see difference in changes
[00:15:45.980]because all these,
[00:15:47.310]these virus here are crossing the zero,
[00:15:50.120]but we see that the fields
[00:15:52.440]where we have a no cover crop use
[00:15:56.350]those fields have a decrease in infiltration
[00:15:59.600]and increase invoke density.
[00:16:04.350]So to wrap up my presentation,
[00:16:06.450]I would do like to point out
[00:16:07.760]that intensification in soil management
[00:16:09.910]affect all the soil properties,
[00:16:12.390]but cover crop use was the most important management
[00:16:16.090]that also reduced nitrogen credits
[00:16:19.080]in intensifier cropping systems
[00:16:21.300]and also showing improvement in soil biology
[00:16:24.710]in overall soil health score.
[00:16:27.490]So if you have any questions,
[00:16:28.820]I'll be glad to chat and feel free to contact me.
[00:16:31.620]My email is available here
[00:16:33.890]and Laura, I will turn over back to you.
[00:16:39.507](soft music)

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OFR21: Soil Health Demo Farms with Fernanda Krupek

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