Warren Bachman

What are you doing to promote soil health and water quality?

We try to build new terraces every year, we’re doing cover crops, contour farming and no-till. We know that the soil is valuable, it’s our best asset and we want to keep it. We started building terraces in 1983, we’ve probably built terraces every year for the last five or six years in a row. We have been no-tilling for 10-15 years and have been no-till almost 100% now for the last five years or more. Cover crops, we’ve grown them for about eight years.

What is being done in your county to support soil and water quality?

There’s getting to be more cover crops it seems like all the time. And generally, most of the farmers are doing what they can afford to do to save their soil.

What could be done with more public funding for soil and water quality?

If there was more funding there would probably be more acres of cover crop. The conservation people, Caterpillar operators would be busy every single day. Maybe a subsidy for a learning period for no-till could be helpful.