Location: Dairy Forage Research
Project Number: 5090-21500-002-022-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 1, 2022
End Date: Jul 31, 2025
Objective:
Objective 1. Identify barriers and constraints to the widespread use of soil health practices by diverse farmers, and develop opportunities and remedies to support greater use of those practices.
Objective 2: Identify and communicate societal, economic and human health benefits and outcomes of soil health practices.
Objective 3: Develop an assessment framework for soil health metrics and identify soil health building practices for both short- and long-term farm and ecosystem resilience.
Objective 4: Facilitate participatory processes and strengthen outreach efforts related to soil health.
Approach:
For all objectives, ARS and the Cooperator will develop research and outreach projects that will address short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes outlined in the logic model developed by members of the Soil Health Collaborative core team. A goal of this project will be to develop individual projects that are complementary in nature and/or address knowledge gaps and contribute to the overall goals of the project. This may involve collaborations between ARS and the Cooperator or collaborations with other groups such as those located in North Dakota (North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition, Tribal Colleges, etc.) and in the Upper Midwest generally. This will also involve measuring and monitoring of field and other experiments, and analyses of soil health metrics and other biophysical assays relevant to the project.
