Soil Health Leadership Lab

Soil Superpower: Negotiating soil health practices that work for farmers’ pocket books and the land.

Clay Bess serves as the Lead Conservation Specialist for the Precision Conservation Management (PCM) program and consults individual farmers in East-Central Illinois, specifically the PepsiCo sourcing region. Based in his hometown of Paris, Illinois, Clay earned a bachelor’s degree in Conservation Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison before returning home to be a key figure in the development of Illinois Corn’s PCM initiative. Clay’s biggest successes are his farmers substantially increasing their cover crop acres, awards such as Field-to-Market’s Advisor of the Year and the STAR program’s Partner of the Year, and dozens of PCM farmers being accepted into the NRCS’s Conservation Stewardship Program. He takes pride in building relationships with the producer and providing them with answers, even if it means reaching out through his network to find them. Clay looks forward to continued cover crop adoption, additional conservation implementation, and learning from his peers and growers.

In his spare him, Clay coaches high school softball in Paris and broadcasts other sporting events on the Paris Sports Network. His family has a small cow-calf operation southeast of Paris.

Connect with Clay via Email on PCM’s Twitter or his personal Twitter.

Soil Superpower: Seeing soil from the ground up.

Anna Teeter is a Field Manager for the Soil Health Partnership covering Minnesota, and has been with them since August 2019. The Soil Health Partnership is a research organization that focuses on farm scale soil health and conservation practices which include cover crops, reduced tillage and nutrient management trials. The growers she works with span the entire length of the state, as well as East to West, which give her a unique knowledge base for challenging growing conditions and diverse crop rotations.

Anna most recently received her Master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the Department of Soil Science. Throughout her undergrad, Anna worked with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Forage Extension Specialist and gained experience working with a diverse group of farming operations. She has a passion for agricultural science as well as science communication.

Connect with Anna through Email or on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Soil Superpower: Reading the clues in the soil to determine its state of health and work with farmers to improve management practices.

Jennifer Hahn is the Middle Minnesota Watershed Planner providing producers and landowners with technical conservation planning focusing and the voluntary adoption of soil health in Minnesota. Jennifer grew up on a dairy farm in Minnesota that now runs corn and soybeans. She has been assessing and providing conservation planning since 2005. Jennifer has provided soil and soil health technical support with the NRCS in Minnesota completing site evaluations, soil health testing, and providing technical services and outreach to staff and producers. She also spent time analyzing profitability of conservation practices to help producers increase their ROI.

Outside of work Jennifer enjoys teaching her two daughters about farming and land stewardship having them pick rocks, walk beans, ride along during harvest and planting, and teaching them about all the interactions of our natural resources and production agriculture.

Connect with Jennifer via Email or on Linkedln.

Soil Superpower:  Microscopic vision to see all of the organisms alive in the soil.

Kristin Poley is the Research Manager for Michigan Corn. Kristin manages Michigan Corn’s contract grant and on-farm research trial program, assisting in data collection and outreach for projects related to sustainability and soil health. Kristin is the coordinator for the Great Lakes Crop Summit, a large, farmer-focused annual event, and she leads the Michigan Corn MICENT program: Michigan Corn Education, Networking, and Training program for young farmers.

Kristin and has an M.S. in Entomology from Michigan State University. Prior to this, Kristin worked in organic pest management in tree fruit and vegetables, and nematology and soil health in field crops and ornamentals. In her personal time, Kristin enjoys gardening and spending time with her pet geese.

Connect with Kristin via Email or on LinkedIn.

Soil Superpower: Coming soon.

Ben helped to establish the NC Soil Health Coalition in 2022 because he enjoys working with and learning from other farmers who value protecting the soil on their farms. Ben currently serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors. Outside of his role at NC Soil Health Coalition, Ben and his family operate a third-generation farm in Cabarrus County, NC that includes a small Black Angus cow-calf herd, a Cheviot sheep flock, several garden plots, and fruit and nut trees. Ben is a Professional Engineer and a graduate of NC State University with a B.S. in Agricultural Engineering. Ben has utilized cover crops and minimal tillage across the garden plots since 2011, composting of chicken litter and green waste from their farm, and has recently begun using warm season annuals for supplemental forage. In the near future, Ben intends to implement improved adaptive grazing utilizing warm and cool season annuals, better management of their hay field acreage to reduce external inputs, an improved soil testing program, and rotation of poultry across the garden plots.

Connect with Ben via Email.

Soil Superpower: Teaching farmers to feed their underground herd of soil microbes.

Lisa Blazure is an experienced conservation professional who advocates for improving soil health to achieve water quality goals and enhance the economic viability of agriculture. She works for Stroud Water Research Center and serves as the coordinator for the Pennsylvania Soil Health Coalition to foster collaboration among numerous stakeholders involved in soil health education and research.  Lisa networks with a broad range of colleagues to implement conservation practices and organize educational programs.  She holds a Masters in Environmental Science with a focus on Aquatic Ecology.

Connect with Lisa through Email.

Soil Superpower: Coaching others to use a systems approach to agriculture.

Connect with Steve via Email.

Soil Superpower: Understanding what’s most important to individual producers in order to help them be sustainable on their operations.

Soil Superpower: Supporting on- and off-farm conservation for soil and water protection.

Erin Gundy is a Soil Health Educator at the Soil Health Institute working in corn and soybean systems across the Midwest in support of the Farmers for Soil Health Climate-Smart Commodities Partnership. Erin has developed passion for working with farmers, landowners, and technical advisors to improve the resiliency of soil by implementing soil and water conservation practices on and off the farm.

Prior to SHI, she served as Resource Conservationist, then STAR Operations Manager, for the Champaign County Soil & Water Conservation District in Illinois where she provided technical assistance to farmers and educators, worked with partners to develop and execute programs through grant management and community engagement, and upheld the district’s mission: Clean Water, Healthy Soils. She received her B.S. in Agronomy with a minor in Natural Resource and Environmental Science and her M.S. in Agronomy from Kansas State University. Her research focused on developing a commodity crop productivity index for Kansas based on inherent soil properties.

Connect with Erin on Twitter, LinkedIn or via Email.

Soil Superpower: Not being afraid to ask questions others may be unwilling to.

Andrea Basche is an assistant professor in Cropping Systems at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of Agronomy and Horticulture Department. Her research focuses on developing and supporting cropping systems that address profitability, resource use efficiency and climate risks. This includes improving soil health, increasing use of cover crops and perennial crops, as well as understanding the social and policy dimensions required for change. In her role, she also teaches undergraduate courses in crop management. Basche holds a B.S. in biology from Fordham University, an M.A. in applied climate science from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in agronomy and sustainable agriculture from Iowa State University. You can learn more about her teaching, research and outreach here.

Connect with Andrea on Twitter or via Email.

Soil Superpower: Using empathy to understand different perspectives and create effective partnerships.

Connect with Stephanie via Email.

Soil Superpower: Being an example in my watershed to improve soil health with cover crops and no till, and to improve water quality with edge of field practices. Through field days, podcasts, webinars, and personal visits we try to influence farmers and landowners to treat their own land with respect as well.

Connect with Lee via Email.

Soil Superpower: Connecting the dots between farmers, consultants, industry, funding, research or educational organizations, resulting in greater impact to soil health.

Connect with Abbey via Email or follow Abbey on Twitter.

Soil Superpower: Sharing and amplifying stories of farm and community resilience.

Nick Ohde is the Communications and Marketing Director at PFI, overseeing all communications and marketing work for PFI, including strategy, brand, publications and our digital presence. He ensures that farmers are the voice of all PFI outreach.

Nick grew up in rural southeast Iowa, outside of Wapello. He has a BA degree from the University of Iowa in 2008, where he majored in Journalism and English, and an MS degree from Iowa State University in 2011, where he majored in Sustainable Agriculture. His research interests focused on soil erosion, water quality, and the use of conservation practices.  From 2012-2013, Nick worked for a non-profit organization in rural Ecuador, where he worked with farmers, interns, and volunteers on rural community development projects. Before joining PFI, Nick worked as the kitchen manager at Cafe Beaudelaire in Ames.

Connect with Nick via Email.

Soil Superpower: coming soon

Soil Superpower: Analyzing human decisions and the impact on others through the eyes of soil fungi.

Mike McDonald is a life-long, Nebraskan who is involved in agriculture, education and rural leadership.  He and his wife farm 200 acres east of Lincoln, NE.  Through long-term demonstration farm work with SARE, NRCS and developing three NE Peer Groups, they focus on systemic education to enhance soil health steps. Mike serves on the NRCS State Technical Committee and Nemaha Natural Resource District Board in southeast NE.  Through his work as the co-chair of the NE Healthy Soils Task Force, he is helping develop statewide economic and educational hubs that foster systemic impact with projects such as PFI-SFL. Regionally, he serves on the Board of Notill of the Plains which is a guiding influence on many producers and land-owners.

He and his wife have 50+ bee-hives, 26 fruit trees, utilize dedicated pollinators, compost, biochar and grazing paddocks on 20 acres. They have converted 180 acres from traditional bean-corn rotations to incorporating cereals, value-added cover crops and forages to increase the living roots.  The overarching focus is changing the focus of economics through the “eyes of soil and water health”, carbon production (above- and below ground) and value-added systems.

After working and growing up the family farm in central NE, he taught thirty+ years  (middle-school, secondary and college, preparing future teachers oftentimes for rural NE through STEM grants). He farmed part-time but over the past nine years, he has farmed full-time while developing learning communities.  Mike completed three degrees at the Univ. of NE-Lincoln:  Ph.D., M.Ed. and B.S. (Curriculum and Instruction; Technology; Educational Psychology; Secondary Education and Social Studies).

Connect with Mike via Email or follow Mike on Twitter.

Soil Superpower: Coming soon.

Soil Superpower: Engaging farmer perspectives in research and policy priorities.

Alissa White is an agroecologist and transdisciplinary soil scientist who works with farmers in the northeastern US. She is currently the Senior Manager for Climate and Agriculture with the American Farmland Trust, where she oversees programs and research that address climate change in New England. As a Postdoctoral Associate, Alyssa worked with the Gund Institute for Environment and UVM Extension. She built research collaborations to generate usable and context-specific information for farmers and policy makers about soil health, and the links between ecosystem services and soil health indicators. Over the last 20 years, Alissa has worked in program development, grassroots fundraising, education and horticulture, as well as on farms in labor and management roles. She holds a PhD in Plant and Soil Science from UVM, and earned her BA in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz. Her research places farmers as central agents in creating solutions to pressing challenges facing agriculture, highlights the role of networks in supporting farmers’ adaptive capacity, and identifies tradeoffs in ecosystem services from alternative soil management strategies.

Connect with Alissa via Email.

Soil Superpower: Helping farmers apply the agronomics to building a soil health system and resilient yields.

Abigail Peterson is the Conservation Agronomy Manger for the Illinois Soybean Association. She focuses on agronomic education and integrated pest management specific to cover crop adoption in addition to helping farmers understand conservation options that yield positive results for their acres.

She graduated from Iowa State University with a bachelor’s degree in agronomy. At Iowa State, Abigail focused on soil analysis and cover crop use while working at the Iowa State soils lab and the USDA National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment. A Certified Crop Advisor since 2016, Abigail worked as an emerging leader soybean production agronomist with DuPont Pioneer in southern Iowa for two years.  Originally from northern Illinois, her family continues to farm near Wyanet.

Connect with Abigail via Email.

Soil Superpower: Helping farmers with his in field experience of cover crops, soil fertility, and crop management.

Brian is an Agronomist for Ducks Unlimited in South Dakota, where he works with a vast array of landowners to improve their cropping practices, implementing soil health principals and education of regenerative agriculture concepts. His work focuses around practices like cover cropping, soil testing, crop rotations, and livestock integration, to name a few.

Brian graduated with his B.S. in Wildlife Management and has masters course work in Agronomy\Crop Science from Colorado State University. He has been involved with multiple aspects of agriculture over the years from the private-consulting sector, to the governmental side of things. He most recently served as farm manager on a large-scale grain farm in Nebraska and North Dakota where he ran the operations from seed to harvest.

He also owned and managed his own farm in North Carolina, where he was recognized as a finalist for the John Deere National Young farmer of the year three times, and the North Carolina Food Hero of the Year award in 2017. Brian has a strong passion for agriculture and improving cropping practices. He loves the land and watching it produce crops and wildlife. He is extremely passionate about the outdoors and can be found in his spare-time hunting, training his labs, fishing or searching for shed antlers.

Connect with Brian via Email.

Soil Superpower: Scaling up site-level soil health success stories from farmers and ranchers into landscape-level impact.

Bruce Toay is the Manager of Conservation Programs for Ducks Unlimited in South Dakota. Ducks Unlimited provides a growing suite of programs to farmers and ranchers in the prairies aimed to improve soil health on working lands, particularly those with high densities of prairie pothole wetlands, to help improve water management in soils with an unpredictable climate. Bruce manages a team of agronomists, biologists, grants, and funding sources that provide technical and financial assistance to those producers with similar interests. Bruce is particularly interested in quantifying both the local-scale benefits to the producer and the landscape-scale benefits to society that are achieved by implementing soil health practices.

Bruce has a B.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology from the University of North Dakota and twenty years of experience working in the prairies of North and South Dakota. Though relatively new to the world of soil health, Bruce is continually amazed at the opportunities that lie just beneath our feet and how they scale up to improve both ecosystems and economics. Bruce is excited to help build connections between diverse interests to increase opportunities for soil health outreach, education, and implementation.

Connect with Bruce via Email.

Soil Superpower: Finding down-to-earth (pun-intended), engaging, and approachable ways to communicate with diverse audiences.

Mary is the Coordinator of the Virginia Soil Health Coalition and is based in Richmond, Virginia. She has experience working with collaboratives and coalitions across the country at the intersection of economic and environmental wellbeing with a focus on working lands and rural communities. Prior to working with the Virginia Soil Health Coalition, she worked at the Center for Rural Strategies where she helped coordinate the Rural Assembly, a coalition of rural stakeholders across the US. She received her Master’s degree in Fish and Wildlife Conservation from Virginia Tech and her Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Brown University. Through her graduate research she worked directly with agricultural producers and conservation practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of how farmers and ranchers approach conservation and land management decisions.

Connect with Mary via Email.

Soil Superpower: Viewing soil health from a farmer’s perspective.

Jennifer is the coordinator of the Kansas Soil Health Alliance.  The Alliance was formed in 2020 with the mission of improving and protecting Kansas soils.  Along with partnering organizations, the board of the farmers and ranchers is working to provide Kansas growers with practical, farmer and rancher proven soil health resources.

Jennifer’s interest in soil health began with her coursework and research at Kansas State University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Biological and Agricultural Engineering with an emphasis in Environmental Engineering and secondary major in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences.  Her interest was further deepened when she joined her husband, Chad, on his family’s farm and ranch.  Together, they are raising their three children and working to improve the soils they care for.

Connect with Jennifer via Email.

Soil Superpower: Using sheep to transform sunlight into protein and healthy soils on our farm in Maryland with the help of our trusty Border Collies.

Connect with Amanda via Email.

Soil Superpower: coming soon.

Amber Radatz is the Co-Director of Discovery Farms with a technical background in manure management and nutrient loss, and an expertise in program development, grant writing and communications. Amber received her B.S. and M.S. in Soil Science from UW-Madison.

Connect with Amber via Email.

Soil Superpower:Soil Manipulation, the ability to help farmers transform their ground into healthy soil (note: superpower does not work on rocks or stones).

Mark Gutierrez joined the Minnesota Soil Health Coalition in the spring of 2021 as the Executive Director.  Mark helps carry out their mission across the state by providing soil health resources, information, education, research and mentorship to farmers. This includes behind the scenes managing grants, coordinating with partner organizations, planning soil health schools, field tours, meetings and school visits, coordinating on-farm research, and overseeing the distribution of research results and the benefits of soil health management practices through various media.

Mark majored in Agricultural Business and Agricultural Economics graduating in 2006 with an M.S. from New Mexico State University. Following graduation Mark worked for USDA as an Agricultural Statistician and a manager of the crop insurance region for Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Mark loves the outdoors and spends his spare time hunting, fishing, foraging and shed hunting.

Connect with Mark via Email.