Sonny Price grew up farming in Dillon, South Carolina. He even remembers picking cotton in his younger years and there was never any doubt that he was going to farm. In 2012, Sonny, along with co-owners Robin, Tony and Lucille Price of Bruce Price and Sons Farm, embarked on a soil health journey. In the early 20-teens, Sonny, along with a number of other progressive farmers on the Dillon Co. (SC) Soil and Water Conservation Board went to see a presentation by Ray Archuleta. Something shifted in Sonny and in 2013, through a USDA-NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant, he planted a 13-acre field in Austrian winter peas. What Sonny learned from those peas set the course of his farming strategy and farm journey. By 2015 the Prices committed to having zero fallow ground – in the cool season, this meant either wheat or cool season annul cover crops. Later on, they started planting warm season cover crops behind corn that was harvested in August.
Want to see how Sonny’s soil health journey unfolded? CLICK HERE to explore the 8-year case study.
1) What one thing have you done that’s been most important to the success of your operation?
The most important thing that I've done on my farm is probably implementing multi-species cover crops.
2) Can you recall a moment or time when the light bulb went on for you, when you realized that soil health practices make sense or that you should change the way you were farming?
So, the moment I think the light bulb went off for me was back in 2012 when we did a conservation innovation grant and I started to see results. That was when I realized we could cut down fertilization and liming, and that was pretty huge. We could see that it would be economically feasible for us to switch to cover cropping and cut down our inputs.
3) What surprised you most when you changed the way you farm to include soil health practices?
Well, I think that was one of the biggest surprises that we had when we started implementing the cover crop practices is that we'd been no-tilling for a long time, and I think our soils were primed to have us cut out fertilizers in a big way. It felt like God was more involved, like it went along with nature more to be implementing the multi species cover crops.
4) What would you say is the biggest misconception that people have who are not managing their farming systems for resiliency or soil health?
I think the biggest misconception I’ve seen is that people think they cannot economically pull off these changes. They look at the project of multi-species cover-cropping and ask, ‘How am I going to pay for that? Is that just going to be an extra expense?’ And through the Farmer Scientist Series with you guys, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrKye5y3ec0 ) that’s one of the big things we learned, is that by treating the soil this way we started saving a lot of money.
5) Is there something you'd still like to do that you haven't yet done to improve your soil health on the farm?
Yes, we've been working for the last 4 or 5 years to cut back even more on nitrogen rates on our crops and to reduce our use of the herbicides and fungicides. We’re looking to cut those out completely in the future.
6) What advice do you have for someone who's considering changing their farming system to one that's better for building soil health?
The advice that I'd give to somebody wanting to promote soil health is to just start small. We kind of went whole hog when we did it, but I think a fella needs to take 10 or 20 acres and try no till or multi-species cover crops on that. He just needs to try it. I think the best thing to do is start small and keep with it for a few years at least and just don't give up on it in one year.
7) When you walk across your cropland, what do you look for as an indicator of a healthy system?
The number one thing I look for is if the residue from the previous crop year is gone. And then I look at the soil texture and structure, I check to see if I’ve got water ponding on the land anywhere, and when I dig in the soil I try to see if I have any earthworm activity. That’s how I know that my soil health is improving.
8) Is there a change that you’ve made that you didn’t think would work at first?
I didn't ever believe that we could cut out fertilizer. We were always taught that you couldn’t grow a crop without a fertilizer truck running across a field, and now we’ve seen that’s incorrect.
9) What are the signs that your cropland is becoming more resilient and what does resiliency mean to you?
I think that resilience to me is reflected in the increase of organic matter, we’re seeing it increasing every year. And the word resilience to me means that business is good, and our soil can recover from things quickly. Since switching over to cover cropping we’ve seen unhealthy soil regain its capacity and its nutrient value and that seems resilient to me.
10) In what ways do healthy soil practices also make sense to you economically?
I think our regenerative practices make sense to us financially because we’ve cut out huge input costs and our soils are still maintaining themselves. Cutting lime was a huge financial boost. And at the same time, our yields have just been improving over the years. To me, that’s just another sign of our soils getting healthier and our operation becoming more economically sound.
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