STRATEGY A featured segment designed to share business- critical information to seed-selling professionals. Visit SeedWorld.com to download this department and other tools. No-till, Cover Crops and Seed Treatments We sat down to ask the experts what the relationship between these three are and what you need to know in working with farmers. Julie Deering jdeering@issuesink.com IN THE LAST issue of Seed World, we highlighted “The Next Revolution,” which many have said will be the result of increased emphasis on soil and root health. It’s even making main stream news, taking headlines in Politico, National Geographic, the New York Times and Forbes, among others. So why all the attention? Research shows that the benefits of improving soil health include: improved crop yield, enhanced water quality, increased drought resilience and flood resistance, and decreased greenhouse gas emissions. As such, both farmers and seed companies are making significant investments in this area with increased on- farm research and scientific advancements in the labora- tory that allow researchers to unearth what’s happening below the ground. Backed by Many Now it its fourth year, the Soil Health Partnership, which was initiated by the National Corn Growers Association, works to identify, test and measure farm management practices that improve sustainability through soil health. It’s goal is to economically quantify the benefits of these practices, showing farmers how healthy soil benefits their bottom line. At the 2017 Commodity Classic, the partnership announced that it would expand to work with 100 farms this year. Efforts such as the Soil Health Partnership have spurred other groups to coalesce, one of which is the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative. This is a group of leading food and agri- culture supply chain com- panies and conservation organizations — including the likes of Cargill, General Mills, Kelloggs, McDonalds, Monsanto, Walmart and the Environmental Defense Fund — that have formed an end- to-end partnership to support farmers in the improvement of soil health. Then there’s the Soil Health Institute, backed by the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation and founded in 2013. It’s designed to spear- head accurate, science-based information, create a sense of urgency and coordinate lead- ership about soil health. While these are rela- tively new initiatives, there’s a host of long-time soil health promoters, such as USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC), and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE). Two practices supported by the organizations listed above for improving soil health are no-till farming and the planting of cover crops. There’s a segment of farmers who have been doing these practices for a number of years but there’s a whole lot more who are trying them for the first time or are keeping their eye on what their neigh- bors do and their results. In fact, CTIC in partnership with SARE, Purdue University and the American Seed With the aim of improving soil health, farmers across the Midwest are adopting no-till and cover crop practices. 24 / SEEDWORLD.COM OCTOBER 2017