By Zachary Larson
Interested in reducing operating costs on your farm, improving production, and doing your part to restore the Chesapeake Bay and your local watershed? Whether you are a grain farmer or livestock producer, improving your soil health can help achieve all three.
A soil health meeting for farmers and landowners will be held Thursday, March 9, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Pine Barn Inn, Danville. The meeting is being hosted by the Columbia, Montour, Northumberland, and Clinton County Conservation Districts and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Keynote speaker, Keith Berns, is a nationally known soil health farmer and co-owner of Green Cover Seed. Berns combines 20 years of no-till farming with 10 years of teaching agriculture and computers. He no-tills 2,500 acres of irrigated and dryland corn, soybeans, rye, triticale, peas, sunflowers, and buckwheat in South Central Nebraska.
Also speaking is Russ Wilson, who operates Wilson Land & Cattle Co, a 220-acre farm in Forest County, south of Tionesta, PA. He and his family raise cattle, sheep, goats, poultry and honey bees as well custom grazing for other producers. Even if you are not currently a livestock producer you will enjoy Russ’s talks and hopefully learn how important livestock grazing on cropland can be to improving overall soil health on the farm.
Greg Roth and John Wallace of Penn State will be on hand to give a brief overview of their experiences and research results from using the Inter-seeder to inter-seed cover crops into standing grain crops as a means to get covers established earlier in the year.
There is a $25 registration fee that includes refreshments, lunch, and conference materials. Registrations after March 3, 2017 will be $30 per person.