No Till Notes: 'Path to Soil Health'

After listening to various speakers over the past month at the no-till conferences I attended, it became pretty obvious that we are working with degraded soils on our farms and ranches. The soils we work with now are not the same quality of soil that was present when farmers and ranchers originally began production agriculture on this land.

The soil is lacking carbon, or organic matter as it is often referred to, when compared to the virgin soil our ancestors tilled for the first time when the sod was originally broken. I would estimate the majority of our soils have organic matter content,...