This Toolkit contains an Excel-based Retrospective Soil Health Economic Calculator (R-SHEC) Tool to analyze data, an associated questionnaire to collect data, recorded video trainings, and guidance materials that walk you through how to use the Toolkit. The R-SHEC output is a partial budget analysis table of results, presenting side-by-side the positive and negative effects of soil health practice adoption. The field operation categories analyzed include: machinery, fertilizer, chemicals, soil sampling, yield, learning hours, and erosion.
If you want to turn the results into a case study that includes a description of the producer’s farm and soil health journey (like our soil health case studies) we provide you with a writing template to guide you. AFT’s hope is that one day our fellow conservationists in every farming county will publish a case study featuring at least one “soil health successful” producer, thereby demonstrating the feasibility of these soil health practices to producers in each county.
For the purpose of this Toolkit, row crops refers to commodity cash and forage crops, specifically: barley, canola, corn grain, corn silage, ensilage, forage, flaxseed, grain sorghum, hay, mustard seed, oats, rapeseed, rye, safflower, sugar beets, sunflower seed, soybeans, triticale, and wheat. Tree nuts refers to almonds, pistachios, and walnuts.
To learn more, visit AFT’s page on Quantifying Economic and Environmental Benefits of Soil Health. Should you use any of these methods, AFT would appreciate you providing an appropriate attribution and we’d like to hear about it. Please email Lia Raz, Case Study Conservation Agronomist (lraz@farmland.org). For trouble-shooting assistance with the R-SHEC Tool, please contact: Robert Ellis, Agricultural Economist (rellis@farmland.org).
UPDATE: On May 30, 2024, we released an updated version of the row crop R-SHEC Tool. To read more about the details of this update, click here.
Determine if the “soil health successful” farmer has a study area that is appropriate for the Retrospective-Soil Health Economic Calculator (R-SHEC) Tool. Familiarize yourself with the R-SHEC Tool User Manual. Read published case studies. Download introductory documents to provide to an interested farmer.
Dive deeper into how to use the R-SHEC Tool for row crops by watching our training videos. Download the Tool and supporting documents. The questionnaire can be used to collect the producer’s story and data. The machinery cost list can be a helpful resource during the interview process.
Dive deeper into how to use the R-SHEC Tool for tree nuts by watching our training videos. Download the Tool and supporting documents. The questionnaire can be used to collect the producer’s story and data. The machinery cost list can be a helpful resource during the interview process.
Download the case study writing guide and template, which provides detailed content suggestion and copy–editing tips that follow AFT’s published case study format. Learn more about the time commitment you can expect to publish a case study.
While our newest version of the R-SHEC Tool is provided above, you can still reference our older version, provided below. See the 2024 Updates document for all the updates that were made to the May 30, 2024 version.
