Dryland Cropping System to Be Focus of Upcoming Nebraska Soil Health School

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) will host a Nebraska Soil Health School, sponsored by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), on Wednesday, April 24, at UNL’s High Plains Ag Lab (HPAL), 3257 Rd. 109, Sidney. Registration and refreshments will begin at 7:30 a.m., followed by a welcome from the event’s organizer, Bijesh Maharjan, UNL associate professor.

Following last year’s successful Soil Health School events across the state, this year, we plan to organize events specific to issues facing our growers in a given area, Maharjan said. The Nebraska Soil Health Schools are designed to build upon soil-related knowledge and practices for growers, crop consultants, ag professionals, and others. The HPAL event will focus on soil health topics in relation to dryland cropping systems with the following presentations:

Soil Health – Byproduct of improved soil and crop management practices: Gary Peterson, CSU professor emeritus Impact of tillage, biochar and cover crops on soils at the High Plains Ag Lab: Cody Creech, UNL associate professor and Fenster Professor of Dryland Agriculture Soil health measurement and carbon market: Bijesh Maharjan with Jessica Groskopf, UNL extension educator economics Impacts of tillage systems, crop residues and cover crops on soil water and yield in semi-arid dryland systems: David Nielsen, retired USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) research agronomist. NRCS soil health demonstrations and live rainfall simulator: Carlos Villarreal, USDA-NRCS state soil scientist and Riley Hackbart, soil scientist, USDA-NRCS High Plains Ag Lab research plot tours

We are fortunate to have two prominent keynote speakers at this event. Drs Nielsen and Peterson dedicated their careers to finding management solutions to address dryland cropping issues. They are well known among farmers, crop consultants and scientists throughout the Great Plains and other semi-arid regions of the world for their work on improving cropping system water use efficiency and profitability while protecting the soil resource.

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