E180: Get Paid for Cover Cropping with Farmers for Soil Health

Farmers for Soil Health is both a collaboration amongst farmer groups and a program hoping to motivate a big change in the US ag landscape.  The group’s mission– to advance the use of soil health practices like cover crops to help improve farmer profitability, as born out of an agreement between the National Corn Growers and the Soy and Pork checkoffs. Recently, the group won an unprecedented $95 million USDA grant to tackle their goal of achieving 30 million acres in cover crops by 2030, a significant increase over today’s numbers. 

Today, we’re talking to the executive director of Farmers for Soil Health, Ben West, about the details of the project, who’s behind it, and how farmers can get involved. We’ll learn about the different tracks available to farmers who have never tried cover crops, to those who have tried but given up, and even for those who are currently using cover crops but would like to see added benefits. We’ll also dig into the role of consumer-facing companies in the project, and how USDA is involved. Then we’ll tackle what the future of the collaboration might look like.