By Brett Grohsgal

Many of today’s market farmers are “start-ups”. We didn’t inherit well-chosen farmland, we didn’t grow up with livestock chores or tractor work, we didn’t have intimacy with cultivated earth as one of our deepest relationships. Start-ups have to buy or rent land to plant even a single large market crop.
 Vital questions for most new farm enterprises include marketing strategies; proximity to markets vs. cost of acreage; mixture of crops; pest management (e.g., conventional or organic); mortgage and machinery debt vs. probable income; labor requirements; desired climate; desired soils; and on and on and on. I write this as a primer to help new growers assess just one key aspect of buying or leasing land for farming: soils.
The reason I write this is because in my ideal world farmers, and not developers, would own and manage the best soils. And soils excellent for crops are usually superb for housing tracts and strip malls. We are in competition for good land, and I’d much rather be surrounded by prosperous fellow farmers than by an asphalt alternative. The soils you get need to be absolutely key parts of any land-purchase decision.
When you are looking for land you probably have a lot on your mind as well as a lot of extant responsibilities. But the single most important resource that will greatly influence your future crop options, decisions, management, and success is under your feet and is often initially overlooked. Different tracts of land in the same geographic area can have extremely differing kinds of soils. And while good –or bad– management can change an awful lot in any soil, certain key characteristics specific to given soils have evolved over centuries and millennia and are essentially unalterable. If you are a prospective land buyer, you need to know how to find land with good soils, how to quickly and easily assess the potentials of any soil you may purchase, what you can change readily in newly acquired soils, what you can change with a lot of work, and what is beyond your control.
I’ll start with a simplified glossary of the most relevant soil terms:
•Sand is the largest particle in soils excluding gravel and stone. Sand particles contribute almost nothing to soils’ abilities to hold moisture or plant nutrients. Sandy soils are classed as having more than about 45% sand; they can perform superbly with excess rainfall but require a lot of irrigation in a drought.
•Silt refers to the range of soil particles that lie between sand and clays in size. Silt particles are hugely important for good tilth and for nutrient and moisture retention. Silt loams are highly desirable soils and are roughly classed as having more than 50% silt; they perform very well under most climatic conditions.
•Clay refers to the most minute inorganic particles found in soil and are 0.002 mm or smaller. Soil clays are the best retainers of nutrients and moisture, but too much clay in a soil generally makes life rough for the farmer unless paddy rice is the crop.
Textural classes or soil texture is defined as the relative proportion of the above three types of particles. People who think soil texture is unimportant probably haven’t tried to farm a clayey soil in a really wet year or a sandy soil in a drought.
•Soil tilth is a qualitative term that, crudely, refers to the degree of fluffiness in a soil. Good tilth is “that highly desirable, yet unfortunately elusive, physical condition in which the soil is an optimally loose, friable, and porous assemblage” of small clods “which permit free movement of water and air, easy cultivation and planting, and unobstructed germination and root growth.,” says Daniel Hillel in the introduction to the textbook Soil Physics. That is a lot of well-chosen words to describe a soil that is most likely to produce a fine crop.
•Aeration is about how easily oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged both within a soil and between the soil surface and our atmosphere. Aeration is primarily dependent on soil texture and on porosity. Put very crudely, soil pores are like tunnels or channels that help keep soils alive and productive, and represent somewhere around a third of the volume of most soils.
•Hard pans are relatively impervious layers of soil that restrict water and gas movement through the soil profile. Many hard pans are naturally occurring but traffic hard pans, usually 8”-11” deep, are caused by vehicles or heavy equipment repeatedly traversing the land. These latter are very common in farm country, impact silty soils most frequently, and are often first noticeable at the edges of fields where tractors make turns.
•A soil series is a type of soil described down to the most explicit characteristics. Series are analogous to species of crops or breeds of chicken.
•The Soil Survey is the mapping and description of all types of soils found in the U.S. This monumental work was a joint effort of USDA, the states’ ag experiment stations, and select other groups. Conveniently broken down by county, soil surveys are filled with soil maps, visual and textural descriptions of each locally occurring soil series, and use recommendations for specific soils. Surveys are your primary road map to poor, adequate, good, or excellent agricultural soils. Some farmers criticize their county’s Soil Survey for their occasional minor inaccuracies but for me they are outstanding tools that can be well used either in a quick-and-dirty manner or as more thoroughly explored reservoirs of relevant data.

How to find land with good soils
The first steps in finding good soils are to narrow your search in two ways:
•Decide, in the broadest sense, what you want to grow. Grains? Livestock? Vegetables? Onions? Watermelons? Tree fruits? Grapes? And then research the types of soils that are recommended for these crops. Beware the adage that a “well-drained silt loam rich in organic matter” is best for crop x or crop y; in many parts of the US, farms with 100% of this ideal type are rare. You’ll likely have to adapt to a different reality. While most soils can be used for many different things, the soil and topographic needs of a prospective vineyard owner differ greatly from one who wants to farm cranberries and as greatly from a potential high-volume and diverse vegetable grower. And although most farming enterprises share a lot of similarities, most of us don’t easily shift operations very much; it is a rare thousand-acre grain grower who would switch to low-acreage intensive strawberries.
•Based on your marketing plans and on how far away from your proposed market you can be, draw a circle on a map around where you want to sell your crops. Fit for another article but not to be detailed here are the heterogeneous peculiarities found within regions (like traffic bottlenecks, high land prices, etc.) that should also focus this part of the process.
You now have the approximate search parameters -crops, soils needed, and region – to begin. The next step depends on two connected resources from the government: NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service, formerly SCS) Soil Surveys, which are available from county cooperative extension agents or NRCS soil specialists.
The Surveys give you extensively detailed soils maps that lessen your work load when assessing each actual site that you will be considering for purchase. The extension agents or NRCS soil specialists, especially the older and more experienced ones, can give you broad overviews of where to find those soils in the agent’s county that are the best, or the worst, for the kind of farming you want to do. “Broad” here means that you may get help in identifying large swampy subregions, key plateaus or ridges that have distinguishing soil types as well as microclimates or rain shadows, and the like. You can’t expect any county agent to know which soil types occur on smaller scales like random 100-acre or even 500-acre properties. You will find the telephone numbers of the cooperative extension agent types in the county government section of the phone book. Schedule an hour or two to discuss your farm plans and soil needs and to secure a copy of the county’s soil survey. And don’t get too nervous or get cold feet: new farmers are scarce and most extension agents will be happy to meet someone so brave.
After you’ve gotten the soil surveys for a few of the most promising counties, start reading the descriptions for frequently-occurring soil series. Soils rated as excellent for your proposed crops should be highlighted such that you can accurately rate each site that is up for sale.
The last step in finding good soils requires boots, a shovel or 4” soil auger, and a real estate agent or some other search engine for property. At the very start tell the realtor what you need: approximate acreage, price range, fields only or fields plus forest, road frontage or full privacy—the works. The realtor is going to help you most efficiently when she/he knows what you really need. And stress that you are looking for land for a working farm: your needs and limitations are different than for a hobby farm or a housing development. Many rural counties have real estate agents who specialize in farmland.
You will probably need to contact a different realtor for each promising county. Some people look for houses without using any realtor at all, but for such an large and important piece of land I for one prefer to employ the services of professionals. You will have to do a lot more work and learning if you don’t use a real estate agent, but you may be able to save some dollars or, alternately, spend more than you need to based on a poor sense of the local land market.
The realtor will ideally lead you to a lot of sites. At each property that you both assess, do your absolute best to find that land on your newly-acquired Soil Survey to approximate the resident soils. Finding where a property is on a Soil Survey is challenging for the beginner; persevere and your sweat will repay you in spades. Shared landmarks between soils maps and normal maps are major roads and bodies of water. On the property itself, look for standing water, patches oddly devoid of expected vegetation, or plant species that usually point to poor drainage or to excessively sandy soils. On active farms with both fields and woods, spend more time in the fields. These will likely have the best soils. Acreage that is currently managed for livestock or forest often have major soil and/or topographic constraints to tillage for row crops.
Most important, on each property that looks promising you need to dig some pits (or use an auger) to at least 18” in the fields. Crumble the topsoil from the lower depths in your hand to feel texture; moisten a clod to see how slick or clayey it may be when wet; look for black color as a good sign or gray clay as an indicator of anaerobic, poorly drained soils. Consider taking pint samples to bring to a local soil specialist. You may well come to own and work these soils. It is best to sense any problems now before you plunk down your money.
When my wife and I searched for our farm, we considered and rejected innumerable properties from printed descriptions, and actually looked at and walked 26 farms in only two counties. I dug at least 3 pits at every one, and at the best sites dug 8-12 pits. And yes, the real estate agents viewed us with astonishment (or perhaps some other emotion) as we shouldered a long-handled shovel through fields and woods. We ended up with a farm with 9 types of soils (i.e., nine series) and of the 103 acres, 75 have adequate to outstanding silt loams. And come parching drought or continual rain, these soils have proved to be stellar allies in our enterprise.

Assess the potential
In the previous discussion I consciously neglected any coverage of the chemical aspects of soil fertility. This is because I believe that the physical facets of soil fertility –texture, drainage, topography, et al. –are primary. These are really hard, if not grossly impractical or truly impossible, to change. The chemical parts of soil fertility are in contrast a lot more workable and are therefore secondary. When my soil pH is too low, I call my lime supplier and, for a nominal per-acre fee, fix the problem. When nitrogen is deficient, most farmers can employ a broad spectrum of N sources, from synthetics to animal manures or sludge to vetches or clovers. The same applies to all chemical nutrients. Even low soil organic matter, caused by erosion or excessive tillage, can be well ameliorated by healthy additions of cover crops or animal manures.
Why is this relevant? Because the new farm buyer may be told that this site or that site is “worn out”, or abandoned due to insufficient soil (chemical) fertility. Don’t believe this until you have gathered more data. Farms have been abandoned for reasons of chemical infertility but I bet that you can fix these problems. I would always take a well-drained but abandoned silt loam with a horribly low pH and minimal organic matter over a nearby, equally-priced working farm with good pH and base saturation but with severe drainage issues.
The Soil Survey shares many of these same assumptions. It has sections of great use to start-up farmers for estimating the cropping potentials of specific soils. After the descriptions of all the soils found in a given county, there is a section entitled “Use and management of the soils”. Read this and do your best to digest it; it is not irrelevant fluff. Then turn to the table of estimated average acre yields of principal crops. This table is a yardstick for expected production of typical commodity crops (corn, wheat, soybean, etc.) for each soil type. Only a minority of start-ups will be planting any of the listed crops. But relative yields can help the thoughtful reader appraise different soils rather well. And realize that the Survey assumes farmers will give crops the nutrients they need. Other tables in the Soil Survey that speak volumes about the ways each locally occurring soil series behave, especially in the arena of drainage, include “Limitations of soils for town and country planning” and “Degree and kind of limitations for specified recreational uses”. Each Soil Survey re-states a lot of information in multiple forms for diverse user groups, and the reading can be dry and can put you to sleep. But new soil managers would ignore described “limits” at their peril.
And novice farm purchasers can be prone to ignoring the “limits”. After many days spent fruitlessly searching for a suitable property, the land-hungry start-up could readily convince her/himself that major soil problems can be fixed. And isn’t any land better than no land? Any farm better than no farm? The answers are “maybe” and “sometimes”. Labor, skill, perseverance, and respectful resource management can indeed reduce the severity of many soil problems. The last part of this primer outlines what major problems you can easily change, which soil flaws you can address but that take a lot of work, and what is beyond your control. Look to other sources for the myriad details I omit. I seek here only to give start-ups the simplest sense of soil problem-solving and limits. Know what you may face before you buy any land.

Next month: Brett Grohsgal will define soil problems that are easily remedied, those that can be improved with a lot of work, and those that simply can’t be fixed.

Easily Cured Soil Problems
First among this group are the chemical aspects of soil infertility. Conventional start-ups have the fullest spectrum of choices to add N, K, Ca, Mg, S, and micronutrients. Phosphorus deficiency is easy to address as well, and P excess (a common issue in heavily fertilized fields) can be readily ameliorated with P extraction by your cash crops. County extension agents will give you free and useful advice on chemical fertility needs and approaches. Organic growers have many fewer options but still a reasonable array of paths. At this writing, organic start-ups will likely get better advice on specific amendments from more experienced certified growers than from the average conventionally-oriented extension agent.
The second simply addressed soil problem is low soil organic matter. While I do not idolize SOM, I do join the rest of the crowd in recognizing that healthy levels of SOM can greatly improve yields, tilth, and crop vigor under stresses of drought or flood. There are at least three ways to increase SOM levels: intensive cover cropping, large additions of animal manures or composts, and minimizing tillage. Our farm uses all three but we are committed most to cover cropping (winter and summer) and to minimal tillage.
The third easily cured problem is inadequate or sporadic rainfall. Unless you are looking for land in one of the really wet zones, be sure that you assess each property for potentially available irrigation water (e.g., generous ground water levels, deeper aquifers that aren’t being fought over, promising pond sites, etc.). Commodity grain crops, pastures for livestock, and tree crops are infrequently irrigated, but even with these you are rolling the dice –especially in the establishment phase– if you cannot easily water as needed. Growing For Market has nicely covered irrigation approaches and suppliers in prior issues, so I’ll move on.
Another relatively easily cured problem for start-up farmers is possible contamination of the soil by prior and recent application of pesticides (this is mostly an issue for those seeking organic certification). Provided the soils are well-aerated, intensive cover cropping over a one- to three-year period will do wonders for soil microbes. And these microbes are your principal allies in cranking off pesticide residues in soil. Industrial wastes and heavy metals (e.g., from sludge) are not easily ameliorated.

Soil Problems Requiring a Lot of Work to Fix
Poor soil tilth (see prior definition) is an insidious threat to nearly all market crops. Poor tilth, especially under conditions of too much rain, causes seeds to rot, seedlings to stunt, certain diseases to proliferate, and yields to plateau at low levels. In really dry years poor tilth produces concrete-like, crusted soils, hardly a good environment for seedling emergence. And too often farmers blame the weather rather than the more proximate cause: us. Certainly really clayey and really sandy soils have inherently poor tilth. But inappropriate management –most especially excess tractor use– by farmers is what most often and most thoroughly ruins tilth. New farm owners may inherit this problem from prior users’ ignorant or non-respectful attitude towards this key resource. On most silty or clayey soils, the ways to improve tilth are straightforward: a) use your tractor only when the soil moisture conditions are perfect, regardless of how inconvenient this might be; b) till minimally, regardless of how tempting it is to plant into a “putting green”-style seed bed; c) use cover crops as heavily as possible, as often as possible, and in as many seasons as possible; d) improve drainage, if appropriate, with ditches or raised-bed management systems; and e) consider very heavy organic matter additions, as well as raised-bed management systems. In sandy soils, increasing soil organic matter is your key to improving tilth. The tools you can employ toward this end are cover crops, longer-term pastures (irrigating these during droughty periods), or large and fairly frequent additions of manures or composts.
Stony soils are also fixable, but I pity any new farmer who must remove a lot of rock on top of all the other labor you must invest as a start-up.
Sloping soils can be addressed with common sense and extension-agent help. First, realize that moderate slope can be of great use in some kinds of farming. Rolling-hill microclimates have long been skillfully exploited by orchardists, grape growers, coffee farmers, et alia. Arguably the wisest use of sloping acreage is planting to such perennial crops. Grain and vegetable start-ups need to use contour tillage and/or contour beds of stabilizing cover crops in order to minimize gullying and erosion problems. But new farmers who are considering working hilly acreage must first and foremost be cautious. The fastest way for a start-up to fail is for the farmer to die or be maimed, and on hilly ground tractor roll-over accidents have killed a lot of experienced farmers. Level ground is more forgiving, and the steep learning curves of all new farmers require some safe terrain.
Highly eroded soils (i.e., where most or all of the topsoil has been lost, and the previous subsoil is now at the surface) are fixable and are very common in parts of the US. Treat these in two ways: a) address any simple chemical deficiencies that are indicated by soil testing and b) add organic matter generously to make the soil more stable and profitable. Cover cropping and/or judicious manure applications are your tools.
With brevity as my goal I omit detailing other resolvable soil problems. Heeding the advice of the more experienced –be they farmers or extension agents—is the best bet when start-ups face more localized soil issues.

Permanent Soil Problems
These are the problems that you will struggle with continually and that will most likely still plague you after years of hard work. Accept them and their implications or do not buy those particular soils. And do not delude yourself, in your yearning for land, that these are fixable by the typical resource-strapped new farmer.
I’ll begin with three straightforward dilemmas: chemically contaminated soil, not enough soil, and not enough water. Naturally contaminated barrens (notably the serpentine soils) or salt flats borne of human activity occur most frequently in the western US and are locally recognized as acreage to avoid. Human-induced contamination from industrial dumping or excess sludge application can be harder to recognize, as many plants can tolerate and even thrive in soils laden with heavy metals. As a start-up market farmer you will lack the resources to clean up such problems, so try to learn the application history of each site you are considering for purchase.
Not enough soil is a problem in geologically young regions, especially mountainous or marine sites. Trucking in dirt is costly. Do not consider any “farm” site where there is precious little soil.
Not enough water really means that irrigation water is short. While drip and trickle irrigation are invaluable tools in arid regions, even these require a ready source. Farmers are increasingly competing with other users for water, and in regions where this is an issue the situation can only get worse. Be sure of your water source or don’t buy the land.
As a farmer in the eastern US, the single biggest permanent soil problem that I witness, and that I will emphatically detail, is poor drainage. Too much water at the wrong time can kill as many crops as can drought. The easy side of poor drainage can be caused by farmers, most typically when we and our beloved tractors reduce soil tilth and create traffic hard-pans. Soil tilth was amply addressed above. To fix traffic hard pans, use a sub-soiler or deep chisel plow (requiring a lot of horsepower and fuel) or put the area into a long-term pasture or cover crop (1-2 years) after doing very deep moldboard plowing under perfect soil conditions. Gypsum may also help.
The worst kind of poor drainage, though, is naturally occurring. Causes include topography, excess clay, deep impervious soil layers (yes, nature does make hard pans), high water tables, proximity to wetlands of various forms, etc. Naturally occurring severe drainage problems are impossible to wipe out unless you can invest a true fortune in massive earth-moving projects. More practically, you can use drainage ditches or raised bed systems to make the acreage workable. But in wet years you will still have huge challenges and frequent crop failures. The Soil Survey well details drainage problems in specific soils, since excess water greatly limits what all users, barring pond lovers and waterfowl, can do with the land. Simple indicators of long-term poor drainage include gray clay, excess SOM in topographically low spots, wetland plant species, and oddly low real estate price tags.
It takes great skill and experience to farm these soils profitably, and novices nearly always fail. Look for something more user-friendly.

I hope that this primer has been of use to potential new farm buyers. I apologize for my biases and for anything in the soils arena that I have neglected. I also urge other experienced market farmers to write to GFM to correct any of my analytic omissions.
And to those start-ups who may help to re-invigorate American farming, I urge you to research your land purchase with a cool head, with plenty of time, and with hard work. Buy the best soils you can possibly afford. Remember that farmers too often face unforeseen and often harsh challenges. The soils that you will tend need to be trusted and treasure allies in your endeavors.

Brett Grohsgal co-owns Even’ Star Organic Farm with his wife, Dr. Christine Bergmark, in Southern Maryland. They grow diverse vegetables, cutting flowers, strawberries, and melons, and retail through a subscription service and at farmers’ markets and wholesale to 8 restaurants, two grocers, and two universities.