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Food Systems 101: How Community Colleges Are Helping Students Connect Farm to Fork

Modern Farmer

On the back 16 acres of Walla Walla Community College, 30 Red Angus cows stand munching on hairy vetch, ryegrass and other cover crops that were planted to help restore the soil. Red Angus cows help students learn about agroecology at Walla Walla Community College. director of the Agriculture Science program.

Food 98
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When Not Farming is the Best Use of Land

Modern Farmer

In return, they are paid a yearly rental rate per acre of land enrolled in CRP programs. In 2023, he USDA Farm Service Agency made more than $1.77 billion in payments to agricultural producers and landowners enrolled in all CRP programs, and more than 23 million acres of private land in the US was being conserved.

Farming 85
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Our Summer 2024 Food and Farming Book Guide

Civil Eats

Brazil’s national requirement that 30 percent of school food ingredients be sourced from local and regional family farms helps empower and fund women agroecological producers. That changed, however, after Moyer and her partner established an organic farm on 10 acres in the Sierra foothills of California. Meanwhile, in the U.S.,

Food 103
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PFAS Shut Maine Farms Down. Now, Some Are Rebounding.

Civil Eats

In late 2021, the Maine DEP identified 60 sites where 10,000 cubic yards of biosolids were applied as fertilizer with homes within half an acre of the application, a practice the agency called “Tier 1” because it presented the highest risk to human health. The spreading of sludge as fertilizer remains legal in all U.S.

Farming 118
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Ask a Scientist: Will the New Farm Bill Transform the US Food System?

The Equation

The US agriculture sector covers 654 million acres of pasture and rangeland for grazing cattle and another 391 million acres to produce corn, soybeans and other field crop monocultures—and all of them pollute one way or another. Let me give you a better idea of what we’re up against. By 2017, they accounted for only 1.6

Food 98
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Agricultural Diversification: Practice and Policy

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

And beyond the diversification associated with cropping fields, adding livestock diversity into a system can reduce challenges like pests and diseases while allowing for nutrient cycling from livestock to soil and back to crop or forage species. Mixed summer forage in the Southeast U.S.