From the Experts: Videos to Watch in This Story
#1 How can testing help growers build a plan to improve soil health over time?
#2 How can you ensure you are choosing the right biological solution for your particular needs?
#3 What is a misconception growers may have about fumigation and its impact on the soil microbiome?
#4 How can new technology help growers make more comprehensive plans for improved soil health?
#5 What are the benefits of a 3- or 4-crop rotation including winter wheat for soil health?
#6 Why is it important to work amendments deeper into the soil profile?
#7 How will soil health integrate into fertilizer strategies in the future?
Growers around the world have become increasingly focused on the importance of building — or, often re-building — healthy soils in their fields, orchards, and vineyards. Unfortunately, soil health isn’t a simple “see a problem, spray a product and solve the problem”-type issue. New tools, increased planning, and fresh perspectives are required.
For a thriving soil microbiome and the optimal production environment for their crops, growers need to develop a program specific to their own growing conditions, and with short-term and long-term strategies in mind. We asked thought-leaders and experts from some of the industry’s leading plant nutrition, biological products, and crop protection companies for their insights on steps producers can take to prepare for healthy soils in 2025, and for years to come.
There’s No Time Like the Present
Healthier soils next season are in large part a factor of steps a grower may take between now and then. There are many actions, big and small, that will enhance opportunities to get off to a good start next spring that builds throughout the season. And as with most things, paying attention to the basics is the best way to begin.
“As an end of the field-season type of approach this fall, the best things you can do for biology are just age-old simple things,” says Jacob Parnell, Director of Agronomy for Biome Makers. “Put a ground cover in and don’t till your soil. As you turn over the soil you get a lot of mixture of nutrients — but it kind of kills the biology of the soil. I think those are the two things that I would recommend for anybody. Put in a cover crop. Something that's going to keep your soil biology well fed. And don’t turn the soil over to keep it alive; keep it where it is. The different strata of biology in the soils plays a big impact on soil health and on the ability of the soil to provide a lot of benefits for the plant.”
Cover crops and minimizing tillage are important, agrees Robert Gibson, Senior Global Portfolio Manager, Certis Biologicals, but so is getting a solid start on cleaning up potential pest problems in your soils.
“Fall is just around the corner, and that's when parasitic nematodes really ramp up. Put a bio solution down that that does a natural fumigation of your soil, and gets those pests out of the way early,” he says.
“Then, it's really managing your land. The less you can agitate it, releasing carbon and other critical minerals and micronutrients, the better. Make sure you have a nice layer of a microbial community. Don't disrupt it. Keep the healthy root stocks in the ground. Try not to disrupt those root systems too much. Let those degrade, as they're full of nutrients leading into the next year. Alleviating any kind of major disruptions is key. Apply cover crops to keep those soils cool and healthy through the season and keep that biological community happy under the ground. And then use ground-penetrating radar or other methods to understand where your compaction points are in the field, where you need to open it up a little bit. Those would be the key things for healthy soils coming into this postharvest season,” Gibson says.
Dhritiman Ghosh, Director of Research and Innovation for Certis Biologicals adds that crop rotation is a familiar but important concept.
When you rotate in another crop, you bring another keystone microbiome that will build another community and you will have a mixture that is ideally required to maintain the soil health.
“It is easy to degrade the soil when you grow one crop over and over. You minimize your diversity of microbes in the soil. In the last 5 years we have come to know that each crop has a keystone microbiome. This is a signature microbiome that a specific crop brings in. If you grow the same crop over and over, that keystone microbiome will take a more dominant role in that soil and try to push out other microbes that are also important. But diversity is required. When you rotate in another crop, you bring another keystone microbiome that will build another community and you will have a mixture that is ideally required to maintain the soil health,” Ghosh says.
Figuring out exactly what’s going on in your soils at the end of the season is critical as well to understand where you’re starting from as you prepare for next year.
“I think the one thing growers can do when they start pulling their fall soil samples is to get a Solvita respiration test,” says Rob Ford, Midwest Sales Manager for Agro-K Corporation. “Soil is no different than an animal. It has to breathe properly. And if you have low organic matter, poor soil health, a lot of tillage, you're going to have a lower respiration. It is a pretty inexpensive test, and it gives you a good starting point for what you need to work on.
“And I think a second thing is just really work at getting those soils balanced. Bring up the micronutrient levels, the copper, the boron, the sulfur. You need to bring those levels up and get them in balance, so that you not only have soil health, but also nitrogen efficiency,” Ford says.
Ford’s colleague at Agro-K, Technical Sales and Marketing Representative Sean Jacobs, takes that thought a step further.
“When you start balancing your nutrients, whether it's micro or macronutrients, you're going to impact to some degree the tilth and the structure of the soil. If you're in an area that gets a lot of rain and you don't have good penetration in the soil — either aeration or water penetration — you can push your microorganism load to the anaerobic side, especially in the wintertime, when we have lower transpiration rates. Those anaerobic microorganisms tend to be the disease-causing kind versus the aerobic microorganisms. And so just maintaining good soil principles as far as your structure and your functionality goes is pretty important,” Jacobs says.
In addition to getting the right mix of nutrients into the soil, growers need to ensure they can be used effectively by the crop during the next season.
“From a grower perspective, a major concern we are hearing is that we have had a lot of weather pattern and climate changes in the last 3 to 4 years. That's impacting yields pretty negatively. One of the things that we are telling growers in response is how important it is to prepare your soil beforehand to have the right nutrients, as well as the right mechanisms which can help plants take up those nutrients efficiently. That needs to be done, in the short term as well as in the long term, and that's where we feel the play of biologicals makes a big difference,” says Sowmya Balendiran, Co-founder and Chief Business Officer for Sea6 Energy.
“The inefficiency of nitrogen utilization in crops, where less than half of the applied nitrogen is actually absorbed by the plants, leads to economic losses for farmers and exacerbates environmental issues,” she says. “However, biological solutions present an effective avenue to address this challenge by enhancing nitrogen uptake and minimizing the associated environmental impacts. We need to improve nutrient-use efficiency. Biostimulants help the plants take up nutrients more efficiently, thereby saving the growers money and also, producing better yields.”
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Making decisions on the right soil health products and practices to adopt for the coming season can vary from region to region, farm to farm, and even field to field, says Al Klapp, Market Development Manager Coordinator for Syngenta Biologicals.
The path to healthy soil has many, many variables. And that means local data. Trying things locally is still a really important mechanism for finding out what works on your operation.
“I'd say, we're pretty far along in the adoption curve as an industry on regenerative agriculture initiatives like minimizing soil disturbance and using cover crops. And I think the reason is that farmers tried all these various practices, determined what worked or what didn't work in their local fields, in their local conditions, and maybe more importantly, which of those practices penciled out for their operation. They found good things that they could adopt” he says.
“The path to healthy soil has many, many variables. And that means local data. Trying things locally is still a really important mechanism for finding out what works on your operation. Start one step at a time. It’s really about knowing your local soil conditions to identify some area for improvement. It's different for everyone. It's different for every field. Trial it next season. Give it a shot, see if it works in your environment. And lastly, work with good farm advisors who are thinking about soils and thinking about productivity in the short term and in the midterm,” Klapp says.
Wesley Haun, Senior Agronomist for Tiger-Sul Products, agrees that the best solutions are always based on local conditions, but says there are certain soil health principles that growers everywhere can consider.
“Soil health has been a popular topic in the last few years, as we try to evaluate and make assessments to improve the soil conditions to enhance crop growth. I want to make some suggestions and try to encourage farmers to analyze their management program, to look at things that may be negatively impacting soil quality,” he says.
“How are they managing soil disturbance? Is tillage involved? Are they plowing, chisel plowing, disking? Are they minimum till? No till? What factors can be adjusted to enhance their production practice? Less disturbance contributes to greater formation of soil structure. Improved soil structure is conducive to plant root growth.
“Another thing they can evaluate is crop rotation. Whether that's a monocrop, a two-crop rotation — maybe consider a three-crop rotation, possibly even four crops depending on their location and production goals. This can obviously have some impact as to developing that soil quality,” Haun says.
“If a farmer has access to animal manure, include that. It not only provides nutrients, it also provides organic matter, which is a food source for microbes in the soil. If you increase the food source, the microbes will multiply and you get greater activity to enhance the soil structure, which contributes to greater water infiltration and retention of the soil moisture.
“And I would suggest three important considerations for using ground cover as well. One, establish a cover crop early in the season, such that we can get an established stand going into the winter months. Two, manage the residue from the previous harvested crop. Leave that residue there. It not only holds moisture, but also protects the soil from erosion. And three, if a farmer has cattle, promote rotational grazing to manage that ground cover,” Haun says. “All these factors can influence the quality of the soil and enhance crop productivity.”
Don’t Fear Fumigation
Managing soil pests is also an significant consideration in prepping for next season. Soil fumigation can be effective for important pests like nematodes, but has often been labeled as a less-than-sustainable tool for its effects on the soil microbiome. But that perception is due for reconsideration says Randy Huckaba, Director of Research and Product Development for Teleos Ag Solutions.
“Let’s talk about nematode control, soil health, and sustainable crop production, and how they are related,” he says. “We offer a product, Telone, for nematode control. Telone is injected into the soil as a liquid, then quickly converts to a gas. Prior to fumigation, the soil is prepared using equipment that loosens and mixes it to ensure adequate pore spacing throughout the planned treatment zone. The gas permeates through the soil pore space and dissolves into the water film surrounding soil particles where the targeted nematodes are found. Under recommended application conditions Telone provides nematode control and completely breaks down into organic compounds after several days. After the fumigation and waiting period, plants are either seeded or transplanted, meaning there are no residues present in the harvested crop. This is a huge benefit and an important distinction for pre-plant fumigants like Telone.”
Huckaba agrees that sustainability is an important consideration with fumigation. “The increased interest in sustainability and soil health has resulted in extensive testing to determine the potential impacts of fumigation on the soil microbiome. Teleos has contracted with an industry-leading third-party soil testing company called Biome Makers who conducted tests across diverse soil types and production conditions in multiple crops. The results indicate that Telone does not decimate the soil as previously believed, but rather, has little to no negative impact on biodiversity observed in the soil microbiome,” he says.
“Additionally, key soil processes mediated by the microbiome were observed to be largely unaffected. The greatest impacts of Telone occur from controlling nematodes that devastate the crop roots. Increased healthy roots provide the necessary exudates to feed soil microorganisms that are so important for healthy, productive soils. The concept of sustainability incorporates several ideas, including perpetual crop production. Soil pests including nematodes are renowned for being difficult to control.
“Sustainable crop production requires that an effective treatment be applied to break the pest-build-up cycle, including those scenarios where marginally effective treatments were used in the previous crop. Telone effectively breaks the cycle contributing to sustainable production. Growers may also need to use less overall water and fertilizer inputs to achieve higher yields in the same footprint since more and larger roots can exploit a greater soil volume to capture these resources,” Huckaba says.
Building Soil Health for the Future
Preparing soils for the next crop involves a number of short-term tactical steps. Preparing soils for many healthy, productive crops calls for strategic thinking as well. Taking the extra steps to build your soils for the long term is a good place to start.
If you can put a lot of organic matter out in the field before you start establishing your rows, that will help in the long term to give the microbes a source to work on for an extended period of time.
“In California, where I’m located, we have a lot of low-till, no-till, permanent crop plantings and it can be challenging to tell people, ‘You need to put soil amendments on.’ Put compost out and then work it in. It can be helpful to throw it on top — you'll get sort of a compost tea from whatever little rain you may get long term. But that doesn't really impact soil structure, and it gets blown around or maybe washed away if you get a good rain” says Agro-K’s Jacobs.
“If you have the opportunity, work some compost in, especially pre-planting on permanent crops if you're ripping the field or doing some other work. If you can put a lot of organic matter out in the field before you start establishing your rows, that will help in the long term to give the microbes a source to work on for an extended period of time, and then you can work with other types of liquid compost, or things of that nature, to try to supplement and maintain those levels,” he says.
“In the Midwest, I like to use the strip till machine and get those nutrients down deep in the soil, 6 or 8 inches deep. That way, as the plant roots go down there, they will find them as you're into the middle of the vegetative growth stage,” Ford adds. “But the other thing is by deep placing those nutrients, you're taking away the risk of losing them from wind or water erosion. Plus, you're feeding those microbes that are actually deep in the soil — which could be different than the microbes that are in the top 2 or 3 inches.”
Being open to new approaches with different tools is important as well.
“Something to consider is that the concentrated synthetic fertilizers and pesticides we have been using for so long really harms the biology of soils. We need to move away from that. Those products have been amazing over the past 30, 40, 50 years. They'll kill all of the pathogens, and they will put the nutrients in the soil that you need. But now we're starting to see that it's actually hurting the biology. So, as we begin to shift away from those products, growers need an idea of what direction to go,” Biome Makers’ Parnell says.
“An important step you can take to impact the health of your soil in the long term is to get an idea of where the biology is now. We have technology where we can basically look at the DNA of your soil. It's almost like a medical diagnostic. We can take the DNA, run it through our test, and we can say, ‘These are the things your soil is missing. This is where your soil is really struggling.’ That helps the grower determine what products they can apply to solve these problems. ‘What kind of biocontrol or biostimulant or biofertility product does my field need?’ We're able to give that recommendation, saying, this is where your soil is lacking. A lot of it then is just building that biology back up. We can help the biology recover and reach an equilibrium where it acts in concert with the plant and provides more help for the plant in that way,” he says.
Ghosh agrees. “Thinking about the long term, at the end of every season, check the soil’s health by testing the organic matter — all the soil chemistry, all the nutrient content, and the biological content of the soil. This is part of your program. Based on what you find, add organic matter to the soil. And then also consider finding ways to use more biological products to replace some of your synthetics. Using biological products not only helps mitigate resistance, but they also are helpful in sustaining the natural community of the soil,” he says.
“As we look further down the road with those the soil programs, you’ll learn to optimize your fertilizer program,” says Certis’ Gibson. “We never look to reduce anything that you're currently doing in your fertilizer. But we do think we can do more with microbes along with your synthetics. As you continue to improve your microbiome community through the years, you'll be able to level out your fertilizer use efficiency with your biofertilizer use efficiency, and they will eventually bring better performance to the crop and a healthier performance over the years.”
The definition of “new soil health tools” goes beyond nutrients and soil amendments.
“Looking farther out — and this is not in the long-term future, this is really the midterm — I think we're going to see integration with some other topics that are really important in agriculture. One of those would be ag tech,” says Syngenta’s Klapp. “There are tons of great tools out there right now to measure soil health, measure carbon in the soil, measure respiration of the soil, get a sense of what's going on with beneficial microbes in the soil and pathogenic microbes, too. We're really on the front end of a golden age of being able to measure these things. That's going to become more and more integrated and will let us make better decisions around soil health inputs.”
“An extension of that is the idea of big global data sets. That's really what we're interested in at Syngenta. Let's look at hundreds, thousands, millions of data points with lots of variability, and start to draw some broader conclusions that we can take down to local geographies,” Klapp says.
In the long term the biggest thing that we keep talking about to improve soil health is to ensure that people understand the carbon content in their soils.
Sea6 Energy’s Balendiran agrees with looking at technology too, both familiar tools and innovations to come.
“I think, in the long term the biggest thing that we keep talking about to improve soil health is to ensure that people understand the carbon content in their soils. Carbon content sometimes is directly related to the amount of microbes that you have, which thereby helps you in having better soil health to grow more crops. Regenerative practices, such as reducing soil disturbance through methods like no-till farming, help to prevent the rapid loss of soil carbon. From that same perspective, biostimulants can help in restoring both carbon and microbes in the soil” she says.
“There are new technologies to help with this, and some older solutions which need more adoption. Mycorrhizal products have been around for a long time. Then you have phosphate-solubilizing bacterias, and a whole bunch of microbes which can actually help use the nutrients better and fix the soil. One of our biostimulants at Sea6 enhances the production of root exudates, which are secretions from the root area. These exudates serve as food for soil microbes, promoting the growth of beneficial microbes in the root zone. This, in turn, helps the plant absorb more efficiently the nutrients it needs to thrive.
“Soils will be the key to unlocking significant improvements in yield, profitability, and efficiency. Increasing the amount of carbon stored in our soils by enabling regenerative ag practices and adopting innovative technologies such as biostimulants, are step-by-step solutions which can help us in the long run,” Balendiran says.
At the end of the day, it’s many small steps that will evolve into a long-term plan to enhance soil health, says Tiger-Sul’s Haun.
“All those earlier practices I've mentioned contribute to biological activity in the soil, which will promote nutrient cycling. Nutrient cycling is the process of adding inorganic and organic nutrient sources, and soil mineralization involving various chemical reactions to release plant available nutrients in conjunction with nutrient removal by crop removal. At the same time, we gain some advantages by disrupting the pest cycles by rotating crops. And we are also minimizing soil erosion,” he says.
“There are so many benefits, so I just encourage farmers to evaluate specific ways they can adjust their management practices to enhance soil health and still be in a positive economic situation as well.”
