COLUMBUS, Ohio – The inaugural Ohio Soil Health Week will be celebrated Nov. 10-16. It was initiated by the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA) and members of its Ohio Soil Health Initiative (OSHI). The week-long celebration raises awareness about the importance of Ohio’s soils and those who steward them.

“Healthy soils hold more water during times of drought and they absorb water more quickly during times of heavy rainfall,” said Lauren Hirtle, OEFFA grassroots policy organizer. “These farms that are practicing good soil practices are sequestering more carbon, improving wildlife and pollinator habitat, and, in a lot of instances, farmers can get better profits and better yields.”

The official designation of Ohio Soil Health Week has been introduced as an amendment to House Bill 162 by Ohio Sen. Tim Schaffer (R-20th district). The bill is still in the ag committee.

“We asked (him) if he would introduce this,” Hirtle said. “We asked him specifically not only because he is the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee in the General Assembly but because he was the late David Brandt’s state senator.

“David was a real figure-point in sustainable agriculture in the state but also he was known nationally and internationally, for his advocacy and education around soil health,” she said. “We chose this week specifically around his birthday, the 16th of November. So, every second full week in November will be Ohio Soil Health Week.”

The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has set standards for good soil health practices, Hirtle said. These include no or reduced tillage, utilizing cover crops, which means having something growing on the soil year-round, and using diverse crop rotations. It also means utilizing livestock on the farm, if possible, to increase soil organic matter which is increasing the health of the soil.

“But I think the most important thing for farmers is to talk to other farmers and learn from them,” Hirtle said. “There are a lot of networks around the state, especially OSHI, which OEFFA organized, but there are some other groups like the Soil Health Academy, a national organization that David Brandt started.”

Henry Peller, a member of OSHI and the owner of Rose Hill Farm, said he wouldn’t be farming the way he does today if he hadn’t met Brandt.

“Dave is a legend,” said Peller, who has a doctorate in soil science from Ohio State University. “He’s touched every farmer who took the time to talk to him.”

Many parts of the Ohio are still in a drought, Peller said. His farm has looked like it was in Arizona most of the summer. Since water is critical for agriculture and functioning soils, the best strategy to use water efficiently on a farm is in the way farmers manage their soils.

“The land where I use no-till or greatly reduced tillage, particularly around cropping, has far greater moisture retention than the soils where I have been tilling and disturbing the soils,” Peller said.

Most of Ohio’s farmland is still managed without cover crops, and tillage is still popular.

“Tillage is going on, including on my own land,” Peller said. “That is something we wrestle with. I am an organic farmer, but not certified organic; I don’t use synthetic herbicides or pesticides. I grow produce, mostly. I don’t want those substances (herbicides and pesticides) on my person and in my green beans.”

Peller also grows watermelon and sweet corn and he finds that growing organic produce without tillage is an oxymoron but he is figuring it out.

“I can’t really eliminate tillage, in my experience, but I can reduce it from using a cultivator in a patch of sweet corn every week, to maybe one tillage event per year in the fall. I would love to be able to use no-till, but I would need to spray herbicides on my fields at least twice a year to pull it off.”

He thinks soils are currently threatened while also presenting some of the greatest sources of innovations and solutions to environmental problems. Farmers need to stop or at least reduce tillage. Also, more diverse crops need to be planted on the landscape.

“Getting animals out of the confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and onto the land is paramount,” Peller said. “Grazing animals are meant to graze and when they do that, they are like a herd of compost reactors moving across the landscape, cycling carbon and nutrients. When farmers are able to get cattle into their crop fields in strategic moments, such as the termination of cover crop or the grazing of crop residues in the fall, amazing things begin to happen.”

This is not something he has been able to do yet, Peller said. After finishing graduate school, he has been farming full-time for three years. One of his ambitions is to get grazing animals into his field rotations; it is a slow process, but others are doing it.

Finally, he said, farmers need to have hope and believe in the process of innovating and sharing.

For more information on Ohio Soil Health Week and a list of events visit ohiosoilhealthweek.com.