Luhman: Summit brings national attendance

Last week was our 8th annual Midwest Soil Health Summit and we didn’t let Covid stop us from providing some great educational content to our attendees! We obviously prefer to hold an in-person conference, and are planning to go in-person again in 2022. However, by offering a virtual summit we had 12 attendees from outside of Minnesota, several of them from outside the Midwest who likely wouldn’t have been able to attend had it been in person.

On the first night, Gabe Brown talked about the principles of soil health and how they can be applied in any context from crop and livestock farms to vegetable farms. The second night, Sara Keough picked up where Gabe left off and discussed how our farming practices, and soil health, are connected to human health and nutrition. We were fortunate on that night to be joined by special guests Mary Jo Forbord and Dr. Stephan Van Vliet who offered more insight on this important topic. On the third and final night we had a panel of SFA staff discussing practical applications of soil health.

We were pleased to see that even with the conference being virtual we were able to maintain attendance with past years. 171 individuals attended live plus any spouses or family who may have been watching with them!

We also made an exciting announcement during the Summit that there is a discount available to SFA members for the Soil Health Academy online school Regen Ag 101! If you want to learn more about soil health, you should check out Regen Ag 101. It’s valuable information put together into a high quality video format and SFA members can receive $100 off now! Just email me at jared@sfa-mn.org and I will confirm your membership and send you the discount code!