Three soil health workshops this September — Turbocharge Your Soybean-Corn Rotation with Cover Crops and Grazing — will offer opportunities for hands-on field and soils learning along with educational presentations. Speakers will include Jimmy Emmons, a no-till farmer and rancher from Oklahoma, who will speak at all sites, and at individual sites, Candy Thomas, a soil health specialist with the Kansas USDA NRCS, and Paul Jasa, Nebraska Extension agricultural engineer.

Attendees will be able to explore soils using magnifiers and digital tools and use a soil pit to view soil structure  Through hands-on work, they can gain practical knowledge to examine soil biota, gauge economic returns of various practices, and steps they can take to improve their operation. This event is sponsored in part by the North Central Region of SARE, No-till on the Plains, Nebraska Extension and the Nebraska NRCS Demonstration Farm Project.

Registration is $50 up to September 6 and $60 afterward and at the door. Those registering by September 6 will receive a free smart phone 15x macro lens or a hand-held 10x magnifier. Register at https://www.notill.org.

Programs will be in the afternoons. Please see workshop topics and program schedules for each site in the flyers below.

Guest speaker Jimmy Emmons of Dewey County, Oklahoma has been recognized for the conservation practices and land ethics used on his diverse 2,000-acre farm and 6,000-acre ranch. Emmons and his wife, Ginger, are the inaugural Leopold Conservation Award winners for Oklahoma (2017). Emmons will discuss his experience improving his operation’s bottom line by focusing on soil health principles and storing water on cropland and rangeland.