SARE Professional Development for Soil Health

The University of Massachusetts Extension has been funded by the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Professional Development Grant (2014-2017) to provide educational opportunities to Agricultural Service Providers and Farmers in Soil Health topics. Preserving and improving soil health/quality/resiliency continues to be an area of strong interest and concern for Massachusetts land stewards. Not unique to MA, this concern has been echoed across the region and nationally leading NRCS to emphasize soil health awareness as a continued priority with a special focus on cover cropping. The goal over the next three years is to equip service providers with a set of soil health assessment tools and the knowledge for how to choose the appropriate tools, use them correctly, and help farmers interpret the resulting information to make sensible decisions about implementing practices to improve soil health and resiliency especially in face of potential impacts from climate change. Three workshops per year will be offered for free to service providers including opportunities to network with peers and identify areas of collaboration. To participate in this opportunity, we ask that you commit to attending at least one meeting per year and complete a survey for each meeting attended so that we may capture and evaluate what you are learning.

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* 1. Contact Information

Name *

Organization/Business

Address

Address 2

City/Town

State/Province

ZIP/Postal Code

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Email Address *

Phone Number *

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* 2. Please register for one or more of the following Soil Health meetings this year.

"UMass Agricultural Field Day: Cover Crops and Reduced Tillage." Wednesday, June 24th 9:30am-1pm, South Deerfield. Attend the UMass Agricultural Field Day and learn about current research in cover cropping and reduced tillage including "growing mustard as a biofumigant", and "cover crop cocktails for weed management in no-till sweet corn".
Katie Campbell-Nelson, UMass Extension Educator, Vegetable Program will facilitate a discussion over lunch to get to know other project participants and share your barriers, goals, and needs for implementing improved soil health practices for mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change (Arrive at 11:30 for this portion only).

"Diagnosing Streams: Flood protection remedies for farm and forested lands." Thursday, July 16th 3-5pm, South Deerfield.
Christine Hatch, UMass Extension Assistant Professor, Geosciences, and Benjamin Warner, UMass PostDoc, Geosciences will present the latest science on "diagnosing streams" and provide best practices for farm and forest land managers to protect their land from the effects of stream flooding. Their goal is to help agriculture, forestry, and rural communities develop greater resiliency during extreme weather events. Christine and Benjamin are members of a New England "Fluvial Geomorphology" research group. The group has studied successes among restoration responses to Hurricane Irene in Massachusetts and Vermont and will be sharing findings from this work with Agricultural Service Providers in Massachusetts.

"Soil Tests for New England and interpreting them for Phosphorous Management." Monday August 17th 3-5pm, Slobody Building, 101 University Drive, Amherst, MA.
Hotze Winja, Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources provides an update on the new Plant Nutrient Regulations: ie. Background on the development of these regulations, overview of what the regulations require, dates of going into effect, plans for implementation, and outreach and education efforts.
Tom Morris, University of Connecticut Professor, Plant Science will present methods of different soil extractions and tests, with a focus on those appropriate for New England soils. With his experience in field research on nitrogen and phosphorous, Tom will present Agricultural service providers with a basic understanding of the chemistry of Phosphorous in the soil, how it behaves, how best to assess P status of soil in different growing systems, how to assess potential loading from soil applications of fertilizer, compost or manure, and how to mitigate soil with excess Phosphorous aside from not adding more (e.g., cover crops or other ways to use up or sequester phosphorous to prevent off site movement or contamination).
Tom Akin, Natural Resource Conservation Service Agronomist will present work on evaluating a new soil extraction method for New England with data from Massachusetts farms. The new Haney Soil Health Test is being tested in Massachusetts to evaluate it's ability to better predict active carbon and other indicators of soil health.

I cannot attend any of these meetings, but would really like to participate in this group. Please keep me informed.

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* 3. What do you hope to learn more about soil health by participating in this group?

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* 4. What soil health practices do you hope to gain more confidence in teaching about or implementing?

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* 5. Are there soil health assessments or practices that you would be willing to share with this group in future meetings? If so, please briefly describe them below. We are asking this question in order to build a network of expertise in the area of soil health.