The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) entered into an agreement with the Soil Health Institute (SHI) and the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) to facilitate a project entitled “Economics of Soil Health Systems to Enhance Adoption and Environmental Benefits.” The purpose of this agreement is to assess, demonstrate and communicate the economics of soil health-promoting practices and systems to increase adoption of soil health management systems to achieve environmental and on-farm benefits.

Through this agreement, the partners will enhance adoption of soil health management systems by providing quantitative evaluation of the economics associated with those systems based on partial budget analysis of farmers’ management practices; and conducting a joint communication/education campaign to convey results to farmers, field conservationists, agricultural consultants, and others who influence adoption. SHI and NACD conducted extensive interviews with 30 farmers implementing soil health management systems to learn about their experiences with adopting those systems and to assess the impact of that adoption on net farm income. Based on those results, NACD and SHI have created 30 fact sheets and 30 videos to support soil health training, education and outreach, and these deliverables are co-branded to be used by all parties. NACD also conducted a focus group in February 2020 with Soil Health Champions who did not participate in this interview to ground-truth some of the findings from SHI and NACD.

The executive summary can be found  here . The guided story map below will take you through all 30 interviews.