Cover Crops: Long-term Benefit

/by

Author: Reed Fujii

LOCKEFORD — Farmers and ranchers primarily focus on growing plants that produce food or fiber — something of value they can sell and get cash to pay their bills for seed, farm labor, fuel and fertilizer and, hopefully, keep something for themselves.

But researchers at the Lockeford Plant Materials Center are encouraging growers to think differently — to cultivate cover crops, noncommercial plants that can improve the soil and more.

“They have so many benefits,” said Margaret Smither-Kopperl, manager of the U.S. Department of Agriculture research facility. “What we’re trying to do here is useful for all of us.”

Cover crops can help break up soil, improving water infiltration. and add organic material, which boosts the soil’s ability to retain water. They also can inhibit weed growth, provide nutrients for commercial crops and sustain beneficial insects.

During a field day attended by about two dozen farmers at the center last week, Smither-Kopperl acknowledged that water use by cover crops is a concern, especially with California entering a fourth year of drought.

But by helping soil retain moisture, she said, “They can actually store water in the soil.”

Cover crops are no panacea, the experts said. Plants or seed mixtures commonly used in other parts of the country may falter or fail in California’s Mediterranean climate, with its variable amounts of winter-months rain.

Keep Reading on Recordnet.com

Pasture Cropping: A Regenerative Solution From Down Under

/by

Author: Courtney White

Since the late 1990s, Australian farmer Colin Seis has been successfully planting a cereal crop into perennial pasture on his sheep farm during the dormant period using no-till drilling, a method that uses a drill to sow seeds instead of the traditional plow. He calls it pasture cropping and he gains two crops this way from one parcel of land – a cereal crop for food or forage and wool or lamb meat from his pastures – which means its potential for feeding the world in a sustainable manner is significant.

As Seis tells the story, the idea for pasture cropping came to him and a friend from the bottom of a beer bottle. Ten of them, in fact.

It was 1993. Seis, a sheep farmer in western New South Wales, and his friend Daryl Cluff, also a farmer, were drinking beer one night, contemplating paradigms. Why, they asked, were crops and pastures farmed separately? Their answer: tradition. They had been taught that pasture and crop systems operated by different ecological processes and were thus incompatible. Crops needed tilling and pastures needed animals. The systems could be alternated over the years, but never integrated. Right? Or wrong? They decided to have more beer.

Seis raised the question because he had been watching the native grasses on his farm and began to wonder if nature didn’t intend for annuals and perennials to co-exist. Nature certainly wanted weeds in his pasture – so why not a different type of annual instead, such as oats? He knew why: weeds liked to run a 100-yard dash while perennial grasses like to a run a marathon. Two different races, two different types of athletes. Right? Or wrong? They needed another round of beer.

Keep Reading on Al Jazeera

Improving Soil Health May Require More Use of Cover Crops

/by

Author: Julie Buntjer

WORTHINGTON — Farming practices haven’t been kind to the agricultural landscape since farmers first began tilling up the prairie soils of southwest Minnesota more than a century ago.

The common two-crop rotation of corn and soybeans has contributed little organic matter to the soil and even less cover to protect the landscape from the winds that often blow across the region.

Jay Fuhrer, dubbed the Waterway King of North Dakota (he’s a Natural Resources Conservation Service conservationist in Bismarck, N.D.), was in Worthington on Thursday to address soil health and the advantages of beneficial crop rotations, cover crops and livestock grazing on farm fields.

Before a crowd of more than 70 attendees at Minnesota West Community and Technical College, Fuhrer shared how he spent the first half of his career building drainage ditches and designing waterways because North Dakota farmers couldn’t get water into the soil profile. Every time it rained, the water flowed across the landscape. That, combined with wind erosion, meant a lot of nutrient loss on farm fields.

By the 1990s, Fuhrer said a team of conservationists came together as a team and decided their approach had to change.

“We can’t keep going the way we are — it’s non-sustaining,” he said, adding that with the focus placed on conserving a degrading resource base, the team developed ideas to rebuild soil and recreate the pore spaces that once existed.

Keep Reading in Daily Globe

Soil Solutions to Climate Problems – Narrated by Michael Pollan

/by

A powerful solution to the climate crisis can be found right beneath our feet—in the soil. By harnessing the immense power of photosynthesis, we can convert atmospheric carbon, a problem, into soil carbon, a solution. Emerging science proves that shifting to regenerative forms of agriculture such as agroecology, agroforestry, cover-cropping, holistic grazing and permaculture will allow us to store excess carbon safely in the ground.

Learn More From the Center for Food Safety

Organics and Soil Carbon: Increasing Soil Carbon, Crop Productivity and Farm Profitability

/by

This paper explains how atmospheric carbon is introduced into the soil and how it is stored in stable forms. It identifies the farming techniques that are responsible for the decline in soil carbon and gives alternative practices that do not damage carbon. Increasing soil carbon will ensure good production outcomes and farm profitability. Soil carbon, particularly the stable forms such as humus and glomalin, increases farm profitability by increasing yields, soil fertility, soil moisture retention, aeration, nitrogen fixation, mineral availability, disease suppression, soil tilth and general structure. It is the basis of healthy soil.

Organic agriculture also helps to reduce greenhouse gases by converting atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into soil organic matter. Some forms of conventional agriculture have caused a massive decline in soil organic matter, due to oxidizing organic carbon by incorrect tillage, the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers and from topsoil loss through wind and water erosion.

Why is carbon important to productive farming?

Soil carbon is one of the most neglected yet most important factors in soil fertility, disease control, water efficiency and farm productivity. Humus and its related acids are significantly important forms of carbon. Below is a summary of the benefits of humus.

Keep Reading in The Natural Farmer

Soils and Biodiversity

/by

Soils host a quarter of our planet’s biodiversity.

Soil is one of nature’s most complex ecosystems: it contains a myriad of organisms which interact and contribute to the global cycles that make all life possible.

FAO-Infographic-IYS2015-fs3-en

Download the Info Graphic from FAO

Our Soils Under Threat

/by

Soils are under increasing pressure of intensification and competing uses for cropping, forestry, pasture and urbanization.  The demands of a growing population for food, feed and fibre are estimated to result in a 60 percent increase by 2050.  These pressures combined with unsustainable land uses and management practices, as well as climate extremes, cause land degradation. Soil preservation and sustainable land management have therefore become essential for reversing the trend of soil degradation and ensuring food security and a sustainable future.

Screenshot 2015-11-11 14.29.15

Download the Info Graphic from FAO

Together We Can Cool the Planet

/by

“Together We Can Cool the Planet” highlights the role of industrial agriculture in climate change while expounding on how small farmers are combating the climate crisis through regenerative organic agriculture.

Download the Fair World Project Pocket-Guide

Download the “Food, Farming, and Climate Change – Small-Scale Farmers and Agroecology” Fair World Project Info Graphic

28 Inspiring Urban Agriculture Projects That Will Make You Rethink How Food Can Be Grown

/by

Authors: Danielle Nierenberg, Emily Nink, Juliette Crellin

Around 15 percent of the world’s food is now grown in urban areas. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), urban farms already supply food to about 700 million residents of cities, representing about a quarter of the world’s urban population. By 2030, 60 percent of people in developing countries will likely live in cities.

At Food Tank, we are amazed by the efforts of hundreds of urban farms and gardens to grow organic produce, cultivate food justice and equity in their communities, and revitalize urban land. Urban agriculture not only contributes to food security, but also to environmental stewardship and a cultural reconnection with the land through education.

The Urban Food Policy Pact (UFPP), signed on World Food Day, addresses the potential of cities to contribute to food security through urban agriculture. A technical team of 10 members organized physical and virtual workshops with many of the 45 cities participating in the Pact, and drafted a Framework for Action that includes 37 provisions covering the themes of governance, food supply and distribution, sustainable diets and nutrition, poverty alleviation, food production and food and nutrient recovery.

“The 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognize the importance of building sustainable cities,” says Maurizio Baruffi, Chief of Staff of the Mayor of Milan, Italy. “The City of Milan is partnering with urban areas around the world to embark on this journey, starting from food.”

Do you want to discover urban agriculture projects in your own city, or are you interested in visiting farms during your travels to new urban areas? Check out these inspiring projects, and find even more links to urban agriculture projects below.

KEEP READING ON ALTERNET

We Don’t Need Ketchum in Our Mustard

/by

Monsanto’s PR – attempting to control science.
-Dr Vandana Shiva

Around the time The New Yorker published a personal attack on me, in 2014 (my response – Seeds of Truth), there was also an effort to quickly approve field trials of 12 GMO crops, illegally. Currently, as Monsanto’s push in India, through corruption and lobbying, to get approval for Genetically Modified Mustard becomes stronger, Monsanto’s ‘typewriters for hire’ are preparing another attack on me to distract from the science and international laws, in a bid to rush the approval of Terminator GM Mustard, illegally.

I had to look up Kavin Senapathy when I got this email from her.

She is obviously a bright girl, in her thirties, full of promise. A college graduate from the University of Wisconsin and resident of Madison, Kavin studied Business and Marketing. But lists herself as a “science defender” and “science popularizer”- whatever that means?!

Kavin has an account at academia.edu, where she publishes her work, in her area of study.

Her undergraduate education, in Business and Marketing helps/ed her as a gifted Business Development Manager at Genome International Corporation (GIC),a bioinformatics corporation that provides IT solutions for genome mapping and has various patents, which I’m certain, are licensed by/to/from/with Monsanto – the company Kavin will defend in her forthcoming blog post.

Either she still works for GIC, or is so gifted at her Business Development work, that she has found a richer, new employer  – Monsanto. To help with their Business Development, i.e. propaganda or “pro-GMO writer”.

In a blog post attacking Vani Hari (on Biology Fortified, a small biotech propaganda outlet), she states:

“I’m a mother and science writer, and I’ve been critical of Hari’s work over the last several months. I am not a scientist by the traditional definition. I don’t have a PhD., nor have I authored peer-reviewed research publications. Still, I have a unique perspective afforded by the intersection of a sound working knowledge of genomics, genetics, and bioinformatics. I’ve garnered this knowledge being raised by a molecular biologist, working for a small private-sector genomics R&D company, and via coursework and extensive reading on the subject.”

Keep Reading