Participants will learn how the practices that promote healthy soils can also lead to positive outcomes for water quality, water security and other environmental benefits, with a focus on the California context. Participants will also increase their understanding of the various barriers and enabling factors that affect whether farmers adopt or do not adopt healthy soil practices.
Healthy soil promotion practices could play a major role in addressing key environmental challenges, including reducing harmful nutrient losses and increasing water security. Case studies will be presented from California on how farmers are working to build soil health and how this impacts the benefits we derive (or do not derive) from soils. A look at ongoing work to assess the barriers and enabling conditions for adoption of practices that support soil health among California farmers, spanning technical to policy factors. Also, highlighting how consideration of soil, nutrient, and water challenges together, rather than separately, would better reflect the actual agro-ecological processes and potentially lead to better outcomes for California agriculture, with lessons for other regions.