Building Soil Health at Ag in Motion: Five Rotations Put to the Test
- 21 hours ago
- 3 min read
Explore 4 years of demonstration plots testing new rotations
For the past four years, SaskSoil has used our test site at Ag in Motion as a living laboratory. Five demonstration plots, seeded side by side on the same patch of ground near Langham, walk visitors through what a modern soil-health-focused rotation can look like over time, and how it holds up next to a conventional monocrop rotation.
The plots weren't designed in isolation. SaskSoil board members, all Saskatchewan producers themselves, built the rotations collaboratively, drawing on what has worked successfully on their own farms. Rather than dedicating a single plot to intercropping or another to cover cropping, each plot demonstrates an example rotation over time, working in practices such as a year-round living root, high-carbon residues, intercropping and polycropping, and eventually livestock integration.
Plot 1 is the constant the other four are compared against: a typical Saskatchewan monocrop rotation of legume, cereal, oilseed. This year, it's seeded to hard red spring wheat (CWRS).
Plot 2: building toward a perennial stand
Plot 2 demonstrates the transition from an annual system into a perennial forage stand, using oats as a nurse or cover crop to help get it established.
Plot 3: the simplest soil health swap for grain growers
Plot 3 pairs a winter cereal with a spring cereal, underseeding winter triticale with CWRS. The triticale should stay vegetative through the season and overwinter, providing a year-round living root. Producers can terminate it the following spring or leave it in place as a component of the next crop, the way plot 2 does. Of the five demonstrations, this may be the most straightforward for any small grain farm to adopt.
Plot 4: timing an intercrop right
Plot 4 shows a classic Saskatchewan intercrop: red lentils and brown flax. What's worth watching here isn't just the crop pairing, it's the timing. This intercrop produces relatively low carbon residue, and it follows several years of higher-carbon-residue crops on the same ground. In a real farm rotation, that's exactly when a lower-carbon-residue crop makes sense.
Plot 5: a living root that becomes a grazing mix
In 2025, winter triticale was seeded as an understory to oats. In a typical field, the oats would have been cut or combined that fall and the triticale left to stay vegetative and overwinter. This year, plot 2 shows how that low rate of winter cereal, underseeded with another cereal, can supply a living root through the shoulder seasons and then serve as a base for a complex annual polycrop suited to grazing or baling. It's a plot worth a close look for cattle, sheep and bison producers exploring how forage and living roots fit into a grain rotation.
What We're Watching For
Since the plots were established, SaskSoil has collected soil samples from each one every fall, looking for measurable differences between the monocrop baseline and the soil-health rotations over time. We don't have results to share yet, changes like this take years to show up in the soil, but we'll report findings as the data comes in.
Fertility on the Ag in Motion plots has stayed low by design, so producers can see what these rotations can achieve on soil function alone. This year, we added conservative rates of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and sulphur to some of the plots to help the demonstrations perform well for visitors.
The guiding question behind the trial hasn't changed: how much of a crop's performance can come from a healthier, more active soil system rather than the bag or the tank.
Explore Soil Health at Ag in Motion
The plots are easiest to understand in person, standing between the rows and seeing four years of decisions play out side by side.
Find SaskSoil at booth #250, July 21 to 23, 2026, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily.
Walk all five plots and ask our board and staff what's growing where, and why
Catch a soil health presentation from Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture specialists at 11 a.m. each day. View schedule.
Enter our on-site giveaways donated by South Country Equipment
You don't have to wait for the trial to wrap up to try any of this yourself. A winter cereal underseeded into a spring crop, a simple two-way intercrop like red lentils and flax, a cover crop mix following a heavier-residue year, these are all practices you could pilot on a few acres this season. If you're ready to try one of these mixes on your own operation, or you just want to see how they're performing before you commit, come find us at booth #250. We'd love to walk the plots with you.
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