This lesson is aimed to help farmers in the cohort make decisions about which soil health practices to prioritize based on lab results, soil health goals and simple cost-benefit analsysis. This lesson includes a recorded presentation, downloadable spreadsheets for doing your own cost-benefit analysis for the following practices: cover cropping systems, carbon amendments and windbreaks. Links to additional guides and presentations are also included to help those who want to dive more deeply into doing cost-benefit analysis and partial budgets.

Decision-making:

• Prioritization based on lab results and soil health goals
• Prioritization based on costs vs. benefits
• Order of operation- What practices should be done first, which should be done together and which will need to wait until next season?
• Feedback - How do you make decisions about which practices to prioritize?

Partial Budgets & Cost-Benefit Analysis

• A simple framework for doing a cost-benefit analysis
• How to calculate the cost-savings from cover crops, carbon amendments and windbreaks. 
  • What costs categories to use for cover crops, carbon amendments and windbreaks. 
  • Examples of cost-benefit analysis completed with fellow-farmers in this cohort. 
• Partial budget- What is it and how can you create one?
  • Examples of partial budgets 
  • A simple framework for doing a partial budget
  • Additional resource for developing your partial budget & case study examples