A new video from the USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program features Cornell’s Soil Health Program, based in the Soil and Crop Sciences Section of the School of Integrative Plant Sciences.
“We’re still very much in a rapid growth phase in terms of doing the soil health assessment,” Harold van Es, professor in Soil and Crop Sciences who was instrumental in the development of the test, says in the video. “We currently get about 2,000 samples per year submitted to our lab. That has been steadily growing as there’s more interest the assessment framework and the test. All in all, we’ve reached many thousands of farmers and consultants.”
The video also features Donn Branton, a cooperating farmer in Le Roy, N.Y., who has worked with van Es and the Cornell Soil Health Team, and Bianca Moebius-Clune, former coordinator of the Cornell Soil Health Program who is now director of USDA-NRCS’s Soil Health Division.
Special kudos to Jenn Thomas-Murphy, an Extension support specialist in the Soil and Crop Sciences Section, who shot and edited the video.
See also: Innovative Assessment Helps Farmers in the Northeast Improve Soil Health at the SARE website.