Recording: Predictive Soil Health Economic Calculator: A decision support tool to assist farmers in predicting their costs and benefits from adopting soil health practices
- Sep 10
- 1 min read
Updated: Oct 10
Summary: American Farmland Trust (AFT), in partnership with USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), has developed a Predictive Soil Health Economic Calculator (P-SHEC) Tool to use with row crop farmers interested in adopting soil health practices. P-SHEC is a user-friendly online tool that estimates the potential long-term costs and benefits of adopting certain soil health practices, aiming to provide users with better-informed decision-making support. Using a combination of crop yield, soil, and weather data, we created a machine-learning model to predict, at the county level, for certain states, the estimated change in yield from ten years of soil health practice adoption. These predicted results are then combined with the recurring costs of adopting soil health practices, such as changes in machinery and input expenses, to generate a 10-year estimate of net income changes at the county level.
The P-SHEC tool includes the following crops: barley, corn, cotton, tobacco, sorghum, oat, peanut, sugar beet, soybean, and/or wheat. It can be used in 41 states and nearly 2,000 counties.
“The Predictive Soil Health Economic Calculator Tool will be available shortly at this webpage:
The Soil Health Retrospective Economic Calculator is available at https://farmland.org/cig-retrospective-soil-health-economic-calculator/
The soil health case studies are available at https://farmland.org/soil-health-economic-case-study-methods