For Colorado ranchers and producers, productivity stems from the soil. In the face of growing water scarcity and climate change, producers are turning to new practices to increase production, improve water efficiency, improve the nutrient density of crops, and more. The state is aiding the transition. 

The state legislature created a soil health program in 2021 to help producers overcome the barriers to adopting practices that could improve soil quality. The Colorado Department of Agriculture program built upon “pockets of soil health movements across the state,” according to John Miller, the department’s soil health program manager.  

At Cassie Cerise’s family cattle ranch in Carbondale’s Missouri Heights, investing in new soil health practices took their fields from sparse to a cornucopia of plants. 

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In the Crystal Springs drainage, the fields are fairly hilly, meaning that water was hitting and running off the ground without absorbing into the soil, Cerise said. 

“We had depleted our production. We were pretty spotty with our alfalfa. We had a lot of bare dirt,” she said. 

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She and her husband had already started down the path toward regenerative agriculture, investigating ways to improve soil health to increase the efficiency of their water resources when they heard about the state’s program through the Mount Sopris Conservation District. She serves as a board member for the district.  

The state Department of Agriculture partners with conservation districts and local organizations to find ranchers and producers who are already trying innovative practices or are open to doing so. Enrolling in the three-year program, the department provides technical expertise, monetary resources, and access to research to support them in trying at least one new soil health practice, Miller said.

To provide technical support, the department now has four regional coordinators working in the state’s four corners to aid producers in the changes to their operations. 

The program uses the STAR — short for the nonprofit Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources — framework to help ranchers evaluate their soil and implement relevant conservation practices. In March, the Department of Agriculture released the STAR tool for all Colorado producers, not just those enrolled in the soil health program. 

Why soil health matters 

There are five key principles of soil health: minimizing soil disturbance; soil armoring (or covering the soil surface); increasing plant diversity; maintaining continuous, living roots; and integrating livestock. 

“The healthiness of soil has a direct correlation to how water infiltrates into the soil and stays there,” Miller said. “And when we look at cropping systems in different parts of our state, it’s incredibly dry. And due to climate uncertainty, it just seems to be getting drier.” 

As such, it’s becoming increasingly important for producers to find new ways to retain water and do more with less.  

In addition to water challenges, improving soil health can help with erosion challenges, bare spots in fields, weed pressure, reduced yields, and more. The state has seen the program help increase production and the nutrient density of crops, improve water efficiency, and reduce labor and input costs. 

Miller said that so far in the program, it has been easy to draw correlations between the practices and a rancher’s bottom line. 

“These are innovative practices being utilized. That transition can be tough, and sometimes people could have a reduction in yield,” he said. “But we’re not so much focused on yield. We’re more focused on the fact that it’s costing people less to grow the food that they have.” 

Todd Hagenbuch, the agriculture and natural resources specialist for Colorado State University Extension in Routt County, said that even though livestock is the Mountain West’s “cash crop,” that income derives from the soil. 

“It’s about grass growth and how we’re harvesting that grass through ruminant animals in order to provide food for a growing population and also make a living from that,” Hagenbuch said. “Good grass growth can only occur when we have healthy, stable soils.”

“Soil health is always of interest, it’s how we make a living,” said Clayton Gerard, a Gypsum producer and board member for the Eagle County Conservation District who has been involved in the state’s program since its inception. “The better the soil is, the more grass that’s produced, the healthier our cattle are, the better our hay is.” 

Gerard works alongside his father and sister on a fourth-generation cow-calf operation in Eagle County. And similar to Cerise, they had already been experimenting with soil health and regenerative practices before the program.

“We’re always trying new things, and we never use fertilizer,” he said. “All of our hay is produced here, and the cows eat it, and in kind of a circle of life, (the cows) put the nutrients back into the ground.”

What producers are trying on the Western Slope 

In participating in the state’s soil health program, Cerise and her husband were able to expand their soil health work throughout their entire ranch rather than focusing on “sweet spots” as they had. 

The biggest practice they deployed is something called “no-till drilling, no-till seeding,” where crops are planted without disturbing the soil through traditional practices like tilling or plowing. They sought the help of their neighbor and friend, Felix Tornare, who brought over his no-till drill and seed mix — which includes common vetch, fava beans, crimson clover, spring peas, barley oats, and flax. 

“That field that he farmed for us had not been touched since at least 1998,” Cerise said. “It was hugely successful because now we’re growing stuff up here that we’ve never grown before. Everything that’s popped up is beneficial, and it’s helping to suppress the harmful stuff for us.” 

Now, instead of the water running off of dry, sparse patches of soil, the plants are capturing it and soaking it more efficiently, she said. The plant diversification in the field will also likely help guard against stressors like insects and high heat, she added. 

In one way, it was almost too successful, she observed. During the winters, the ranch plays host to a herd of elk that typically migrate to the High Country in the summer. In the first summer with their new growth, she said many of the elk stayed through the summer “because we had set such a fantastic table for them that they didn’t want to leave.” 

Further west in Gypsum, Gerard was able to use funds from the soil health program to purchase a no-till drill. 

“It’s pretty well changed how we plant and rotate crops,” he said. “There’s a lot of great things that come from it. You’re no longer tilling that ground and letting carbon out of the ground and evaporate into the air. It’s always covered; it’s never bare ground, and so there’s less chance of weed invasion.”

While he said the ranch was always trying new things to improve soil health, participating in the program opened the operation up to trying even more and taking bigger risks.

“Time is money, and nobody’s got a whole lot of time. We want to better our soil, but we’re not necessarily willing to take that leap and to try new things when it’s coming out of our own pocket,” he said. “But when there’s some funding to do that, it opens you up to taking that leap and trying it. And then when it works, it makes you want to continue to do that.”

While the program allowed the Gerards to use new practices at their home ranch, they are also in year two of a project on land that they lease from Eagle County in Eagle’s Brush Creek Open Space. Currently, the area has a weed problem. 

“What we’re trying to do is we’re going to plant some new stuff at that place in Eagle and just try to outcompete the weeds and give it the nutrition that it needs to grow,” Gerard said. 

The individuals who enroll in the program receive soil moisture monitoring systems and get annual soil moisture reports from the department. It also provides an in-depth soil analysis at the start of the program and again at the end of the three years. 

Gerard said that one of the benefits of the program is the consistent interaction throughout the three years. His only wish is that it lasted longer. 

Furthering research on soil health 

In addition to supporting ranchers, the program also is investing in research. It started with five research fields and will have 30 this spring, according to Miller. 

Hagenbuch runs one of the fields in Routt County. Generally, the research at this high mountain meadow in Steamboat Springs is geared toward resilient agriculture and soil health, he said.

“The goal, ultimately, is to help producers figure out how to increase the productivity of their hay meadows and make positive changes to their soil health, so that they can ultimately have better economic returns on their hay meadows,” Hagenbuch said. 

“Overall, producers in western Colorado are feeling the effects of a changing climate that includes more and extended periods of drought,” he said. “We’re trying to figure out how to get these native grasses to perform better without tilling and creating a more expensive situation that not only releases carbon, but also takes a lot of money to try to fix.”

The research is uniquely poised to help provide answers for producers without placing the risk burden on them.

“I could never ask a producer to give up an acre or two that they need to get a profit off of to do this kind of work,” he said. “This is a unique opportunity that we have to do it without negatively impacting somebody’s bottom line.” 

In addition to investigating soil health, the extension is also testing drought-tolerant crops that require less water at a different plot on the site.  

The research component of the soil health program is only just hitting its stride and will continue to deepen the understanding of Colorado soil challenges, Miller said. 

Colorado’s soil health program continues to grow 

The program has grown rapidly since its inception. In the first year, what was expected to be a pilot program with 20 producers ended up having 120 participants. In 2023, a $25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture allowed the program to enroll 270 additional producers. The program is on track to have 320 participants this year, Miller added. 

Nearly half (34) of the state’s conservation districts are working with the state to enroll producers in the program. 

It covers a wide breadth of agriculture ranging from small acreage productions in Denver up to 20,000 acre ranches, he said.

In 2024, 53,000 acres across the state were part of the soil health program. 

“There is a lot of excitement and interest from people about these practices and how they can make the changes on their operation, like to fit them into how they work their land,” he said. “These producers have to take that risk of trying something new … but we have really just seen a steady increase of people showing interest.”