- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Published on: June 12, 2017
![An overflow crowd at the UC West Side Research and Extension Center learns about the benefits of farming practices that promote healthy soil.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/Green/blogfiles/44370small.jpg)
An overflow crowd at the UC West Side Research and Extension Center learns about the benefits of farming practices that promote healthy soil.
Healthy soil does much more than hold plants upright on the surface of the earth. It is a mix of mineral bits and old plant particles teeming with microbes to form a mysterious and complex web of life scientists are just beginning to understand.
While scientists use high technology to study heathy soil – painstakingly counting soil worms and bugs, sequencing the DNA of soil bacteria, for example – some farmers know intuitively whether the soil is healthy just by walking on it.
Scott Park is a first-generation Meridian, Calif., farmer. “When I step on a field and it feels like a road, something is wrong,” he said. “If it feels like a marshmallow or sponge, that's good.”
Tags: Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation (6), Jeff Mitchell (26), Radomir Schmidt (1), Randall Southard (2), Sloane Rice (1), soil (13)
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