Ohio Soil Health Week
Ohio Soil Health Week provides a time and space to celebrate, honor, and protect Ohio's soils. This weeklong celebration includes outreach, education opportunities, and events to raise awareness around Ohio's most valuable natural resource: our soil. The celebration will occur annually every second full week in November, honoring the late David Brandt, a sustainable agriculture trailblazer and the "Godfather of Soil Health", whose birthday falls that week. Ohio Soil Health Week will feature a variety of events hosted by multiple organizations and individuals around the state—all celebrating soil health.
Environmental Professionals Network: Inaugural Ohio Soil Health Week Breakfast
Nationwide and Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H Center 2201 Fred Taylor Drive, ColumbusThis Environmental Professionals Network (EPN) Program brings together myriad soil science and health professionals and experts to celebrate the first annual Ohio Soil Health Week. The event includes a morning breakfast with planned talks from soil health researchers, farm managers from across Ohio, and representatives from OEFFA. Mainly, the speakers will present on the theme of soil health in diverse landscapes in Ohio, including on production agriculture fields, gardens, livestock grazing paddocks, prairies and grasslands, and lawns and landscaped areas. The speakers will discuss how healthy soils hold more water, reduce run-off, and protect water quality. They’ll describe how healthy soil practices build soil fertility reducing the need for fertilizer and providing a positive return on investment for farmers. Additionally, the event will educate attendants both in-person and online (through a YouTube livestream) about how healthy soil practices can sequester carbon to mitigate harmful greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change and build on-farm resilience. All participants, regardless of in-person or virtual attendance, must register online. The cost of attendance for non-students is $25, $5 for students, and free for all virtual livestream participants. The price of in-person registration includes a coffee bar and a breakfast buffet.
Determining Biological Nitrogen Fixation in Maize Varieties in Ohio
Waterman Farm 2548 Carmack Road, ColumbusTo celebrate the first annual Ohio Soil Health Week, participants are invited to visit a maize experiment at Waterman Farm in Columbus, Ohio (adjacent to OSU) where different maize varieties were grown during the summer of 2024 that fix nitrogen (N) from the air, promoted by beneficial bacteria in aerial roots with mucilage, offsetting the need for mineral N fertilization. The Maize plots in this experiment are a great example that Improved, Heirloom and Mexican Landrace Maize can be grown in Ohio with little nitrogen input, providing researchers and farmers a reliable solution to decrease over-reliance on fertilizers and reduce environmental hazards on soil.
Soil Health and Human Health: Intersection of Microbiomes
ZoomIn honor of the inaugural Ohio Soil Health Week, the Nature Conservancy is hosting a webinar with Danielle “Dani” Kusner, who teaches about the soil and human microbiomes at Deep Soil LLC, empowering farmers and consumers to make choices that heal the soil and their bodies. She is a Certified Crop Advisor and expanded her expertise into human health as a Certified Terrain Advocate through The Metabolic Terrain Institute of Health. Dani earned a degree in Sustainability Studies from The University of Dayton in 2008 and since then, has been on a journey of transforming soils and food production through people's connection with Mother Earth. Register for the free webinar here.
The USDA and You: Conservation Programs
ZoomExplore USDA conservation programs and the ways they can benefit farmers. This session will focus on the NRCS’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). Learn about the historic funding in the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as how the programs work, their impact, and how farmers and farm advocates can influence their implementation to improve them over time. If you have used one of these programs, or are thinking about it, please join the conversation! Register at the link below.