Beyond what could be seen by the human eye, researchers and students will have the opportunity to find out what makes a healthy crop through the nutrients found in soils around Mower County.

After launching the three-year soils research project earlier this summer, stakeholders, such as farmers and students entering into agronomic studies at Riverland Community College, will be benefited from the information that’s gathered in the studies inside the new soils lab that was unveiled in June.

The soils lab, now fully equipped, is in use by the Mower County Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) for storing and analyzing soil samples that have been collected from dozens of plots that represented different types of farmland in the area.

“We simply, at our facilities, didn’t have the room,” said Mower SWCD Soil Scientist Steve Lawler. “Riverland stepped forward and allowed us to utilize the lab to begin our work. We hope to continue to utilize that facility at Riverland down the road.”

This type of partnership doesn’t only benefit the work done by the Mower SWCD, but also for Riverland Community College. Students will be able to research several soil-health practices, including cover cropping and tilling strips on a field before planting, and no tilling to reduce erosion. These types of studies will also be able to be applied for improving agricultural practices in the region.

What’s unique is that while officials from the Mower SWCD research the soil samples, Riverland students in agronomy courses will also be able to work with scientists and get real life experience in soil health studies that are applicable to actual issues that agricultural producers encounter when planning for their cycles.

“Soil is a breathing, living thing,” said Dan Hoffman, interim director of Riverland’s Center of Agricultural and Food Science Technology. “For students to work with it and collaborate with other agencies is in a completely different league than reading from a textbook. …once you put students in an educational facility, that helps the research and verification of authentic data and getting that data that can be used.”

In 2017, The Hormel Foundation granted Mower SWCD $98,000 to conduct soil-health research and to observe the benefits of incorporating cover crops and other practices into farming operations, according to a previous story.

The project will match the grant—about $200,000—with state “capacity” funds that are given each year by the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources, and in-kind services from partner agencies.

Within the collaboration between the foundation and Riverland, the soils lab became multi-purpose with desks, chairs, lab tables and more that are connected into the Center of Agricultural and Food Science Technology. With this accessibility, Riverland instructors, such as Nick Schiltz and William Mekeel, will be able to incorporate the labs into their classroom studies.

“We are excited to be partnering with the Mower SWCD, as they’re bringing resources that we alone couldn’t do, and hopefully we bring them access too,” Hoffman explained. “Having students touch shoulders with scientists, research and using the lab in education and lab activities, that’s where this comes alive to them. They’ll go out into the industry to work, or back to their home farms, and apply the skills they learn and think about conservation, food production and agriculture. They’re setting themselves up for a life of learning.”

The information gathered by these stuides, led by Lawler, measured soil-property change over time could help researchers quantify typical soil properties in agricultural use before land-use changes to gauge different conditions. “The SWCD and Riverland have been partners for a long time on various areas of interest, including soil and water resources,” Lawler said. “It’s kind of a logical thing for us to have a soil lab in our county that would be educationally based.”

Newly introduced to continue research on soil health was Sustainable Answer Acre, an eight-acre research farm near Lansing that was offered by Northern Country Coop in collaboration with farmers, Mower SWCD, Riverland Community College and the University of Minnesota.

“The benefit of this is that we have a partnership among private, public and education institutions to address environmental concerns,” Lawler expressed. “It’s a wonderful partnership and it’s not one-sided. It’s a collaborative and that’s the greatest thing about it. We show each other that we can work together on sensitive environmental issues. There is no possible way that we can achieve goals and outcomes on our own without partnerships.” Sustainable Answer Acre aims to provide long-term research on environmental issues pertinent to the area’s agricultural producers, such as the effects of nitrogen in soil and nitrogen leaks and movements, according to Lawler. There’s hope that research can begin within next year and that researchers will be working with existing farmers in the acreage to use conventional farming methods, using best management practices.

“That testing, hopefully will begin next spring,” he said. “This piece of land is being offered as an outside lab for Riverland students, who will utilize it beginning this fall when the soil science curriculum begins.”

A key aspect of Sustainable Answer Acre is bringing farmers and producers into the fold, as they’re the ones to implement agricultural practices, as well as “guiding” the testings of treatments that researchers are studying, Lawler said.

“They’re really going to guide the testing and treatments that we are going to study,” he said. “It’s largely guided by farm recommendations, soil health components, cover crops and fertility methods. Farmers will make use of those treatments.”

While much of this research is still in its early stages, Lawler hopes that this type of study will be beneficial to the food producers in Mower County.

“It’s this base data that will hopefully inform farmers on the decisions they make as they look at systems in soil health,” he said. “We just don’t have good base data and seeing if those decisions affects the soils, if at all. That’s the beginning of that study and the agronomic decisions made by local farmers. We don’t normally collect this kind of data, and it’ll be unique.”

Autumn Ag