Conservation
Soil gets tired. After years of supporting a rotating cast of crops, the soil’s nutrient supply is often exhausted. The tilling, turning, and planting also degrade the organic matter in the soil and its ability to stay hydrated.
Meet alfalfa, a perennial legume used mainly as high-quality feed for dairy cattle. Alfalfa is also used as feed for beef cattle, horses, sheep, and goats. It’s high in protein (16-20% crude protein). It contains a lot of calcium and other minerals and vitamins. It contributes billions of dollars to the United States economy annually.
Two crops or one? Sometimes, growing two crops simultaneously on the same piece of land – called intercropping – can benefit farmers. But it needs careful planning and resource management.
Living mulch functions like mulch on any farm or garden except — it’s alive. No, it’s not out of the latest horror movie; living mulch is a system farmers can use to benefit both profits and the soil. While the system has been around for a while, scientists at the University of Georgia are making it more efficient and sustainable.
On the steep farming slopes of China, Bozhi Wu and his research associates are finding ways to improve economic and environmental stability.
Camelina: Have you heard of it? It’s an emerging alternative oilseed crop in parts of the Great Plains.
A new study looks at how three varieties of camelina perform when grown in two different regions within the Great Plains.
The end goal is to find the camelina variety that performs best in each location or environment. Augustine Obour at Kansas State University was the lead author of the paper.
Huckleberry Finn wouldn’t recognize today’s lower Mississippi River. Massive walls separate the river from low-lying lands along the bank, an area called the floodplain. Floodplains were once the spillover zone for the river. As people settled in floodplains, the land was converted into farms, homes, and businesses. Close to 1,700 miles of walls, or levees, keep the lower Mississippi River in check.
Growers always deal with precipitation amounts. Some get too much water. But for those in drought areas, scientists are working to create imaginative solutions that help the soil, have an economic return, and introduce a different crop – pulses.
It’s been largely ignored in the past as a route for phosphorus loss from farms, but the buried network of drainage pipes known as the tile system can carry away as much phosphorus as surface runoff.
That’s the conclusion of a pair of studies published in the Journal of Environmental Quality today (Oct. 3). In research in Ohio and Indiana led by USDA-ARS scientists, nearly 50% on average of both dissolved, “bioavailable” phosphorus and total phosphorus left fields via the tile system—a percentage much higher than previously thought.
The increasing scale of farming operations and use of agricultural machinery worldwide has caused an unusual problem—soil compaction. It’s defined as the packing effect of external forces that reduce soil bulk volume and pore size. Heavy farm equipment like tractors, trucks, and harvesters can cause soil compaction. Other causes include livestock and rainfall.