Soil Health and Corn Silage Performance

By Kirsten Workman and Joe Lawrence

Soil health is a key focus of corn growers working towards safeguarding their operation against increasingly challenging growing conditions and larger sustainability goals. Understanding the contributing factors that lead to resilient cropping systems in NY is an important part of farms meeting those goals. With funding support from the New York Corn Growers Association Corn Research and Education program soil health data was collected from the NY Corn Silage Hybrid Evaluation Program in 2023.

The annual hybrid evaluation program offers the opportunity to compare the same hybrids in different growing environments. Measuring key soil health parameters at each location with the Cornell Assessment of Soil Health (CASH) test offered additional insight into the role of soil health in the overall performance of the crop grown at each location.

PRO-DAIRY is a nationally recognized extension and applied research leader serving dairy farms for more than 35 years.