Agriculture In-depth-- South Dakota farmers and ranchers invited to participate in nationwide soil health assessment

A new nationwide project called “Probing Our Country’s Soil Health” and is looking for 80 South Dakota farmers to participate. The project leaders are working to understand the status of soil health around the country and use that information to develop a new tool called Soil Health Assessment Protocol and Evaluation-- or SHAPE.

SHAPE is an online tool designed to interpret soil health measurements, monitor soil health change and offer management practice alternatives for improving soil health. The goal of the project is to collect 13,000 soil samples across the U.S. from approximately 6,000 fields, sampling different soil, climate and management conditions. The SHAPE tool will be available as a free web-based app for easy soil health scoring.

For more information, go to https://extension.sdstate.edu/news/80-south-dakota-farmers-needed-nationwide-soil-health-project-enroll-today or contact Jason Clark, SDSU Extension Soil Fertility Specialist, at Jason.D.Clark@sdstate.edu, or Hans Klopp, SDSU Extension Soil Health Specialist, at Hans.Klopp@sdstate.edu.