Australia soil ecologist to speak at Farming Evolution Feb. 20-21

    Make plans now to join farmers and ranchers at the 2019 Farming Evolution event Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 20-21, at the Phillips County Event Center in Holyoke.
    Christine Jones, soil ecologist from Australia, will be the headline speaker. Over several decades, Jones has worked with farmers and ranchers using renewing practices. After a highly respected career in the public sector, she began to promote the benefits of soil carbon throughout the world.
    Jones will spend a good deal of time explaining how producers can build new topsoil. She’ll transition to the amazing power of diversity. She’ll also talk about how pasture cropping can benefit the soil and producer. Pasture cropping is seeding annual crops into former cropland seeded to grasses. This includes CRP, soil bank or go-back lands.
    Learn more about Jones at www.amazingcarbon.com.
    Raj Khosla will speak about Precision Nutrient cycling and the Precision Climate Smart Agriculture. Khosla was named 2015 Precision Ag Educator of the Year by the Precision Ag Institute. He will explore the connection between soil variability and precise crop inputs. He will also discuss using remote sensing techniques to identify crop nitrogen stress in irrigated corn and to detect weeds.
    Seeing is believing, and nothing makes an impression like a rainfall simulator. Seeing how water behaves on soils with different tillage and cropping histories is fascinating every time.
    Do producers know how nitrogen, carbon and phosphorous cycle in the soil? Candy Thomas will share both how they cycle and why that matters. Thomas is the soil health specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service for Kansas and Nebraska.

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