• Soil carbon is essential for soil health as it enhances soil structure, fuels microbial activity, improves fertility by providing nutrients, and increases resilience to environmental stresses.

• Low soil carbon can lead to increased erosion, reduced microbial diversity, and a significant loss of crop productivity.

• Strategies to improve soil carbon involve a combination of practices, such as adding organic soil amendments, reducing tillage, planting cover crops, diversifying cropping systems, and integrating livestock.

  Earn 1.5 CEUs in Soil & Water Management by reading this article and taking the quiz.

More than half of the U.S. sugarcane production comes from the Everglades Agricultural Area. The region’s high agricultural productivity is largely attributed to its fertile organic soils, Histosols, which contain up to 85% organic matter and provide essential nutrients for crop growth. However, decades of intensive farming coupled with hot and humid climate have led to significant soil loss. This article examines the impacts of farming on shallow organic soils in South Florida, exploring how reduced soil depth affects crop production and what strategies can help mitigate further soil loss. Earn 1 CEU in Soil & Water Management by taking the quiz.

Phosphorus (P) losses from agricultural land in the Prairie Pothole Region of Canada are dominated by P dissolved in snowmelt runoff water. This article presents a study showing that slope was not a major driver of P losses in snowmelt runoff. Earn 0.5 CEUs in Soil & Water Management by taking the quiz for the article. This article was prepared as a contribution of the Western Region Nutrient Management Coordinating Committee (WERA-103).