Managing for Soil Health in the Piedmont Area of the Southeast - A Farmer's Perspective
Webinar Details
When:
Jun 10, 2014 2:00 pm US/Eastern
Length: 01:05 (hh:mm)
Advance Registration NOT required.
View now on-demand.
Reviewed for Continued Content Relevance: 05/2017
Presenter(s):
- Curtis Furr, Farmer and Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor, Stanly County, NC
Virtual Event Format:
Group Viewing Available:
Participants will hear a farmer's perspective on using cover crops and no-till to improve soil health, increase soil organic matter, and build resilience in his soils.
Soils in the Piedmont region of the southeastern US have been intensively farmed since the founding of our country. Rotations that include low residue crops like cotton and tobacco have relied on excessive tillage and high inputs to maintain yields, resulting in compacted soils with low organic matter, unhealthy biological communities, and poor aggregation. Curtis Furr, a farmer and Soil and Water Conservation District supervisor in Stanly County, North Carolina, has been battling the impacts of “tillage addiction” for the past 20 years.
As a long term no–till farmer, Curtis' views on cover crops were dramatically changed by a trip to Burleigh County, North Dakota in 2010. There, Curtis observed the positive effects on soil health achieved by incorporating cover crop mixes in the cropping system. The following autumn, Curtis seeded all of his cotton acres to a cover crop mix that included five different species. This was done as he was defoliating his cotton. Since then Curtis has experimented with different seeding methods, including aerial, broadcast, and drilling, along with the use of a culti-packer in the spring to roll the cover crop down as he’s spraying. In this webinar, Curtis will share these experiences along with challenges he’s overcome when planting corn and cotton into cover crop mixes with over five tons of biomass. His efforts have resulted in dramatic changes in his Piedmont soils along with consistent increases in his yields.
This webinar is presented by the USDA NRCS National Soil Health and Sustainability Team located at the East National Technology Support Center.
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