Webinars

June 3, 2025: Leveraging Soil Microbiomes for Resilient Organic Farms, by Elias Bloom and Ethan McNally, Cornell University; Steve Crist, Four Fold Farm; Lia Babitch, Turtle Tree Seed Initiative.

Farmers are grappling with increased average temperatures, heavier precipitation, periodic droughts, and new pest pressures. Evidence indicates plants attract beneficial microbes that reduce the negative impacts of climate change and suppress insect pests. This webinar will feature presentations by two NY organic farmers who will describe their approach to organic seed production and climate change challenges. Accompanying the farmers will be Cornell University researchers presenting soil microbiome studies. One study will detail how drought, locally produced seeds, and soil microbiomes interact to suppress insect pest populations. Results will also be shared on how different soil microbiomes respond to commercial compost applications, which can have unintended consequences for pest suppression.

August 13, 2024: How Organic Farming Practices Affect the Soil Microbiome, by Elias Bloom and Zoe Economos, Cornell University; Jason Grauer and Jack Algiere, Stone Barns Center; Zaid Kurdieh, Norwich Meadows Farm.

Evidence suggests that organic management increases the diversity of beneficial soil microbes for plant roots. However, scientific evidence remains scarce on the specific organic production practices that promote soil organism diversity consistently across fields and their functions in crop resilience. This webinar will feature studies from two soil microbiome projects conducted in New York State by Cornell University researchers. In the first study you will receive information on specific practices that consistently shifted soil microbiomes across more than 85 organic farms in New York State that donated their soil for microbiome sequencing and analysis. Results will also be presented from a multi-year manipulative cover cropping experiment using no-tillage and soil microbiome transfer experiments to determine which cover crops are most effective at increasing crop resilience through changes in the soil microbiome. Accompanying the researchers will be presentations by local organic farmer stakeholders who will describe their farms and highlight their efforts to manage the microbiome and soil health.