Promoting healthy soil

Within the communities of the Middle Rio Grande and Rio Puerco, farming is changing. Large acreage has been subdivided, irrigation water is often scarce and soil is degraded. The average age of farmers in New Mexico is 61.

These trends may be offset if interest in growing food locally is supported. Young people might continue the agricultural heritage of their grandparents, eroded and neglected landscapes could become thriving ecosystems, and there could be plentiful food grown here, if people had the knowledge that would increase their likelihood of success.

The Valencia Soil and Water Conservation District intends to use its two communities in the east mesa for this outreach, promoting healthy soil strategies for farmers and backyard gardeners of the district.

Some eight years ago, when the district started the gardens in Meadow Lake and El Cerro Mission, the soil was compact, alkaline and low in biodiversity and organic matter. There, erosion-causing high winds and rain events have not been infrequent.

Following applications of compost, mulch, cover cropping and inoculate from Johnson-Su bioreactors and protection from wind with fence-line shrubs, alkali sacaton grass and vines, the soils at the district gardens are healthy, yielding thousands of pounds of produce each season.

This year, thanks to a grant from Valencia County, the district installed green houses at each garden, which will extend the growing season and provide additional protection for crops vulnerable to high winds.

With grant funding from New Mexico’s Healthy Soil Program and the Natural Resource Conservation Service, the district will provide bilingual outreach workshops and soil health field days, with hands-on learning and soil testing at the gardens (and elsewhere), once the autumn brings cooler temperatures.

Subsequent soil health field days will showcase methods that have mitigated natural resource concerns, providing hands-on learning about sheet mulching, methods of making organic compost, and building a Johnson-Su bioreactor. This bioreactor can produce biologically diverse compost from food scraps, manure, leaves, weeds and woodchips.

Participants will have an opportunity to look under the microscope to observe the fungal, bacterial and protozoal elements of health soil. Materials and tools to implement healthy soil practices in both farms and backyard gardens will be distributed at each event. The district plans to hold workshops in English and Spanish. Participants at each event will have a chance to win a Johnson-Su bioreactor.

Soil stripped of its top layer, subject to repeated chemical inputs and eroded by wind and floods, becomes lifeless. Johnson-Su bioreactors produce compost that can restore life to soil with a thriving community of beneficial microorganisms that allow soil to perform the functions necessary for the health of plants and the environment.

These bioreactors can be assembled simply for about $40 by backyard gardeners and farmers alike. The application of fungal-rich compost to local soil is regenerative agriculture that follows the five healthy soil practices of maximizing biodiversity: integrating animals, including microorganism, into soil management; minimizing soil disturbance; keeping soil covered with plants, mulch, or fallen leaves; and maintaining living roots to feed the soil.

With additional funding from the Healthy Soil Program, the VSWCD will test the suitability of Johnson-Su bioreactors to improve rangeland soil. This is the first grant the district has secured at the behest of the Pueblo of Laguna’s Environmental and Natural Resource Department. The project will take place in largely bare-ground soil, including on Laguna rangeland along N.M. 6 in Valencia County. The application of fungal-dominant compost should reduce erosion and improve the quality of organic matter in soil, soil biodiversity and the water content of soils.

The Laguna rangeland improvement project will include training on soil health principles, physical assessment of soil and soil sampling. With NRCS funding, the district also will recruit 15 residents to become apprentice soil technicians. This paid learning program will teach participants the physical properties of soil, basic soil microbiology, and how to obtain soil samples.

Participants will learn to perform conservation recommendations for local gardeners and farmers. With a new team of soil technicians, the district will be able to expand the reach of its current soil testing program. Funds for soil testing are made possible through a grant from the Healthy Soil Program.

Soil and water conservation districts across the nation were formed as a response to the environmental disaster caused by the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Your district is in the business of soil and water conservation. The workshops, field days and training provided over the next year is your district at work in remediating soil and preventing further erosion and desertification of New Mexico land.

(Teresa de Cherif is vice chairwoman of the Valencia Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors. By applying healthy soil principles, she turned degraded soil on her seven-acre farm into a veritable oasis.)