HAMILTON, Ohio – With conventional tillage, for every pound of soybeans a farmer produces, he loses 3.7 pounds of soil. Dave Brandt, cover crop expert and Fairfield County farmer, told attendees at the recent cover crop field day hosted by Ohio No-Till Council and the Butler County Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD).

At present, Brandt is working with Ohio State University’s Randall Reeder and Rafiq Islam on reducing input costs of fertilizers and herbicides using various cover crops, which improve soil health.

At the event, Brandt and George Derringer, a soil scientist, looked at soil pits with different soil types and different cover crops planted on them. They talked about improvements farmers will see in their soil when they use regenerative practices like no-till and cover crops.

In 2019, Butler County SWCD began installing an 8-acre agriculture conservation education demonstration site (ACED) to show different practices such as grassed waterways, pollinator buffers, grass buffers and cover crops, said Brady Smith, Butler SWCD rural specialist. For the field day, the conservationists had dug two soil pits at the site for the attendees to examine.

Scientists can learn and teach about soil health in universities, but unless the word gets out to farmers, it doesn’t help the land, Derringer said. The ACED site and the soil pits were designed to show farmers what they could do on their farms to make the land more productive.

“We want to focus on regenerative agriculture,” Derringer said. “Soil health enhancements are due to farmers and landowners adopting new cropping systems that will regenerate the soil health as part of their regenerative ag system.”

The soil experts were looking for things like rooting development in the soil, Derringer said. The plots at the site had cover crops on them for four years. Each plant of the cover crop varieties had different rooting depths and different structures. That changes the amount of soil enhancements and how fast they can happen.

“We’re starting to see some changes already,” Derringer said. “For example, where you have these root pores and night crawler holes going down and topsoil has washed into them, you’re getting darker soil colors going deeper on the soil. That, on top of the work of the soil microorganisms, improves the quality of the soil to produce a crop. That is soil enhancement due to soil health improvements.

“There are a host of different types of animals that live in the soil as you get more organic matter build-up,” Derringer said. “Organic matter improvement is a big one. By having more biomass growing on the field, it means the tops disintegrate and get added to the soil surface. The roots of the plants add organic matter all along the root canal down as far as they go.”

ROPES is the acronym Derringer used to talk about significant changes farmers will notice in their soil when they use regenerative practices such as no-till and cover crops.

The “R” stands for rooting development, the first change farmers will notice. “O” is organic matter. That is the second thing they can look for in their soil to see if it is improving. “P” is for pores or porosity.

“A healthy soil should be about 50 percent pores,” Derringer said. “To be even healthier, 50 percent of the pores should be filled with water. The subsoil has structure. That’s the ‘S.’ You want soil structure. They’re working for that here. So far, they have a medium grade of structure both in the topsoil and the upper subsoil.”

Over time, the soil will keep improving as Butler SWCD continues to use the plots.