GAITHERSBURG, Md.—The Izaak Walton League of America (IWLA) thinks the 2023 Farm Bill can help farmers reduce their need for expensive inputs like fuel, fertilizer and pesticides, said Duane Hovorka, IWLA’s Agriculture Program director.

“We think there are three things that need to be in the new farm bill,” Hovorka said. “No. 1 is we need to put soil health at the center of agricultural policy. We think that the benefits of soil health for our natural resources; the economic and other benefits of healthy soils for farmers and ranchers make it critical that we revise our agricultural policy so that we understand and learn the benefits of healthy soils.”

IWLA also thinks it is important that the Farm Bill protect the $20 billion that Congress provided in 2022 to help farmers and ranchers adopt climate-friendly farming practices, Hovorka said. The Farm Bill needs to meet rising demand from farmers for conservation assistance.

“The third thing we want to see in the new Farm Bill is leveraging more state, private, and local dollars to multiply the benefits of the federal investment for conservation needs,” he explained.

A new State and Tribal Soil Health Grant program would support state, local and private initiatives and investment in soil health systems adapted to each state’s soil, climate, and farming systems, Hovorka said.

Programs like Conservation Innovation Grants (under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program), the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, and the Regional Conservation Partnership Program all leverage state and other funding to support conservation.

Concerning soil health, Hovorka said that a growing body of research is shedding light on how important healthy soils are for both our natural resources and net farm income.

“What we’ve learned about the science of healthy soils has come a long way over the last 10 years,” he said. “What we’re understanding is how critical those are to the infiltration of water into those soils. That has an impact on flooding downstream. It has an impact on how resilient our crop and grazing land is to droughts or flooding. It also has an impact on water quality and on recharging our groundwater.”

America has lost half of the topsoil it had in colonial times, Hovorka said. After several decades of progress, where we saw reductions in soil erosion. The National Resources Inventory says cropland erosion in the United States increased between 2007 and 2017.

Producers and economists agree that restoring healthy soils can help farmers cut their fuel use and radically reduce their reliance on expensive inputs. When soils are healthy, they feed the plants, so farmers can reduce their fertilizer bill. Healthy plants – fed by healthy soil – are resistant to pests and disease, so farmers need fewer pesticides.

“When you reduce or eliminate your tillage, or use cover crops in the winter, when you can go beyond one or two crops in your rotation, then you start breaking up pest cycles,” Hovorka said.

“If you’re on grazing land, if you’re using well-managed rotational grazing so you move the animals around every day or two, that can have a huge impact on increasing the carrying capacity of the land because you’re restoring the health of the plants,” he explained. “You can put more animals on the land and you also get an environmental benefit with reduced runoff, with more wildlife habitat.”