SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — A panel of Midwest farmers, led by former USDA deputy secretary and regenerative farmer Jim Moseley of northwestern Indiana, shared their experiences and perspectives in building soil health during the Illinois Stewardship Alliance’s (ISA) Soil Health Summit. The event was part of a five-day Soil Health Week virtual celebration that was capped off by the adoption of a joint resolution in the Illinois House that would create an official legislative Soil Health Day and Week in the state. 

“We are continuing to decarbonize our soils,” said Moseley, who had practiced strip-till on his land for many years before farmers’ tillage practices came under the public’s scrutiny. “This is an issue I have dealt with for several years being in policy. So, I figured if I was going to be active in this area and promote it, I’d better get onboard myself. It was important to me from a practical perspective.”

Moseley was sworn in as the deputy secretary of the USDA on July 17, 2001 and served in the role through 2009. He has played a key role in developing public policy for agriculture, the environment, and natural resources conservation at the state and national levels.

After stepping away from farming for a while to serve in public office, Moseley set aside 500 acres of his farmland around a decade ago to “tinker around” with various conservation practices. He began attending soil health meetings and furthering his education in sustainable soil health, finally beginning his “second phase” of farming — this time regeneratively — by planting cover crops. 

“By 2015 I had experimented enough, and it was the first year I went in 100 percent with cover crops. But I hadn’t listened quite well enough, and I planted corn in cereal rye that was about knee-high. We were going to terminate (the cover) a few days later, but then it started to rain for six weeks continuously. We were not able to kill the cover crop and we were not able to get nitrogen out there. It was the worst corn crop I ever had at 81 bushels per acre,” Moseley recalled. 

“I could’ve given up at that point in time, until I realized I was the one who had made the mistake; the concept was still sound. Today we are doing well.”

Through education and experimentation, Moseley learned that legumes and kale offered a more workable cover crop option for his farm’s soils, especially for corn. He still uses cereal rye, but only ahead of soybeans. He’s planting everything green and uses as little nitrogen as possible.

“We don’t wait for two or three days (to terminate covers); the sprayer is right behind the plant,” said Moseley. “ I’ve also been planting some wheat in the rotation, and the advantage of that is it gives me the opportunity to get a multi-species cover crop out there. I’ve been using 12 to 15 different species, and that is important from the standpoint of diversity of roots in the soil.” 

A western Illinois farmer, Joe Curless, said cover crops help him gain yield on sandy, sloping areas of his cropland that would otherwise produce little revenue. “Because we’re sitting on a bluff of the Illinois River, I had known that pretty much our entire farm was sitting on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. We’ve got very low CECs and very low organic matter. I had to find a way to build those (measurements) without any water holding capacity in our soils,” said Curless, who farms near the Fulton County village of Astoria.

After starting slowly in 2008, Curless now seeds cover crop varieties aerially (he owns a crop dusting operation) over 100 percent of his cropland and is currently practicing strip-till on corn and no-till on soybeans. Curless said at one point, he noticed the worms in his soil were being “baked” by the anhydrous ammonia he was applying. From that point on he began using a 32 percent mixture in order to grow his soil’s health. 

Frank Rademacher, an east-central Illinois producer who grows corn and soybeans using no-till and cover crops on 600 acres near Gifford, is a leader of the Illinois Corn Growers’ Precision Conservation Management (PCM) program. He joined ISA’s Soil Health Week webinar to advise participants of the PCM program, which confirms and documents growers’ sustainable soil health practices. 

“We have partnerships with Pepsi and other companies that want to promote these practices, so they add a lot of cost-share dollars,” said Rademacher, before divulging his own soil health practices. 

“My dad and I farm. I joined the operation in 2018 and we’ve been all no-till, cover crops. We knew we needed extra income, so that’s why we made the change,” Rademaker said. “Since then, we’ve moved pretty fast, and pretty drastically reduced or eliminated a lot of our inputs. We’re doing that primarily now with high-biomass cover crops, and we’ve got a planter-mounted roller-crimper that we’re using. The latest big milestone is that we’re 100 percent insecticide-free, as of last season.”

Moseley ended his remarks with a challenge and words of advice for the next generation of land stewards: grow a relationship with a soil health mentor. 

“The question is how do we motivate the next percentage — 10, 20, 30 percent of farmers — to take a look at regenerative soil health and do things better and have better performance on their farms?” he asked. “I have to admit I still don’t have the perfect answer. The very beginning point has to be increasing knowledge. We can be forced to do something, but if we’re going to voluntarily do it, we must insert knowledge into our minds as to what we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it and why we are doing it. (Cover crops) are not as easy to master as no-till was for me. It’s not simple, there is a lot of complexity to it. I used a couple of people as mentors, and we worked through some of the difficulties and problems. That’s how I learned.”

Lee Curby, a Sangamon County, Illinois producer, said he has plenty of motivation to employ as many regenerative soil health practices on his farm as possible. “I may not be able to hand down a quantity of farm ground to my children, but the quality of the farmland I hand down is just as important,” said Curby.

Soil Health Week was capped off by the March 10 adoption of a joint resolution by the Illinois House that created the first Illinois Soil Health Day and Week. “Soil Health Day and Week is a wonderful opportunity to educate people who might not understand how healthy soil can benefit our food and drinking water,” said Bennett, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “I’m glad to bring awareness to the importance of soil health protection through this joint resolution.”

“Everyone in Illinois is impacted by the health of Illinois soils from the food we eat to the water we drink -- The health of our food system, waterways, economy, and the environment are rooted in the health of our soils,” added Liz Rupel, lead organizer of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance. “Celebrating, honoring, and protecting one of our most valuable natural resources helps ensure that agriculture can continue to be an economic driver for the state for generations to come.”