Montana native studies regenerative agriculture and soil resilience for U of I master’s

Connor Daugherty’s path to the University of Idaho took a few twists and turns. After growing up on his family’s 140-acre farm in Charlo, Montana, Daugherty decided he wanted to try something completely different. He enrolled at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine and earned a bachelor's degree in marine biology and small vessel operations. He also met his wife, and the pair decided to move to Washington where Daugherty took a position as a deckhand for the Western Towboat Company.

Although he loved being on the ocean, the long rotations to Alaska meant that Daugherty would go months without seeing his wife. After two years, he knew he needed to consider a different career path. The couple’s long-term plan was to settle in Montana, so Daugherty began searching for master’s programs that would complement his biology background, agriculture experience and apply to environmental issues — this time on the ground rather than the water.

That search led him to U of I where he will earn a master’s degree in soil and land resources in December 2024.

Daugherty looked at several soil science programs, but it was ultimately the work of Michael Strickland, a research associate professor in the Department of Soil and Water Systems, that convinced him U of I was the right place.

“U of I offered the programs and the advisors that were oriented to the kinds of things I was looking into getting into,” he said. “Mike had an interesting project that I found value in and that I could see reorienting my biology experience into something involving soils and branching out and broadening my educational background to something I could apply in Montana.”

Strickland offered Daugherty the opportunity to join a larger project investigating several different regenerative soil health practices. Daugherty was given the freedom to create his own projects, as long as they fit into the overarching purpose of the study.

Daugherty’s main project involved examining soil health metrics used in agriculture and whether they provide a dynamic estimate of soil health and how soil will react to environmental and management disturbances. He analyzed healthy soil samples and how they reacted to simulated heat and drought stresses. He found that healthy soils were not more resistant to those disturbances, but they were more resilient and able to bounce back from distress quicker than soils considered unhealthy.

“I wanted to see how they reacted and then draw a correlation between those stress responses to the soil health metrics we measured and see if they can actually tell us anything,” he said. “There was higher resilience, more of a recovery, from those stresses, in regeneratively managed soils compared to conventionally managed ag soils.”

Daugherty also conducted a one-year study aimed at improving compost application management. He looked at soil after a fall compost application and compared it to a spring application to see if seasonal timing played any role in affecting soil health properties. Daugherty found no effect on the compost timing but acknowledged that a longer study would be worthwhile.

“In general, compost application had little effect compared to the control where no compost was applied,” he said. “We did see trending differences at least higher on average values with each of those treatments but nothing significant statistically. That might show that there are emerging differences, but a year isn’t enough to see something distinct. A lot of these regenerative soil health practices, it takes years to really see the effects, to slowly build either soil structure or fertility.”

With his degree secured, Daugherty and his wife are relocating to Montana and expecting their first child this spring. Daugherty is looking at career opportunities focused on remediation and rehabilitation of soil and environmental ecosystems.

“I’m looking to apply my experience to provide solutions to environmental related issues,” he said. “I think I can use this master’s experience and knowledge for anything I’m looking for in Montana. It can be applied to a broad range of jobs.”