Soil Health and Cover Crop Extension Curriculum and Education.

An eight-hour Ohio soil health and cover crop curriculum including two cover crop seed displays and soil demonstrations has been developed. Soil health topics include educational concepts on utilizing continuous no-till with cover crops in a new system called ECO Farming or ecological farming. Major educational concepts include maximizing microbial communities to efficiently utilize soil nutrients by utilizing crop rotations and diverse cover crops mixtures to optimize/reduce chemical fertilize inputs. Sustainable agricultural practices include optimizing/reducing pesticide inputs by maximizing natural beneficial insect predators, minimizing disease organisms, and providing weed competition.  Topics include using cover crops and no-till to improve 1) Soil Nutrient Recycling, 2) Soil Structure and Soil Compaction, 3) Cover Crop Economics, 4) Keeping Soluble Nutrients out of Surface Water, 5) Getting Started with Cover Crops, 6) Raising Homegrown Nitrogen (Legumes), 7) Incorporating Brassica and Grass Cover Crops in Your Crop Rotation, and 8) Adapting Agriculture to Extreme Weather Events using ECO Farming. A total of 225 individual presentations have been made to 15,673 participants from 2011-2015. Ten complete soil health workshops (2013-2015) were conducted for 371 participants with 251 surveys completed. On a Likert Scale(1=poor to 5=excellent) on pre- and post-knowledge, participants gained 1.3 points in knowledge with an average of 89% planning to implement the information on their farm.  Participants included farmers, agricultural consultants, agency, and university personnel. Participants are given a notebook that includes eight power point presentations, ten fact sheets, three videos, four papers, and the Midwest Cover Crops Field Guide (ID-433).