Amid constant promises of reinvention, soil testing remains one of agriculture’s most reliable tools.

Winter strikes the Midwest with winds that strip soil from dormant fields, stealing nutrients and hard-earned investment. Learn how to thwart this soil thief with carefully placed windbreaks.

As the crop year winds down and uncertainty looms for 2026, one thing remains clear: Informed farmers make better decisions.

Nickel plays a critical role in nitrogen metabolism – especially in legumes and urea-fed crops.

It may seem simplistic to analogize soil with a checkbook, but it works and is more apt than perceived. Matter can be neither created nor destroyed. It’s a simple truth that drives everything in the universe and holds true in the soil as it does in the cosmos – giving rise to the soil nutrient balance.

PFAS are a family of chemicals known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment. They’ve been in use since the 1940s and are designed to repel or displace water.

With funding from the USDA NRCS, ARS and NIFA, along with OCP North America, the soil fertility community has undertaken the immense task of finding and collecting the data that underpin the existing soil testing paradigm in the U.S.

While drones and imagery are flying along, the evolution of soil testing seems to be moving at an earthworm's pace.

Carbon sequestration, carbon capture, carbon farming – call it what you will, it all comes down to one concept: We can use plants to convert CO₂ from the atmosphere into physical forms of carbon that are locked away in the soil.

Water resources have become a legitimate concern for U.S. agriculture.