Remove Acre Remove Plowing Remove Yield
article thumbnail

Whose Farm Is More Sustainable? Calculating Farm Sustainability.

DTN

Two neighbors, Farmer A and Farmer B: both farm 1,000 acres and use the same crop rotation schedule. reduced tillage, cover crops, treed acres). Trackable events include plowing, minimum-till cultivation, crop rotation, crop type, cover crop presence, irrigation events, harvest date, and crop residue presence.

Farming 98
article thumbnail

Crop Rotation Craziness (or rotations based on the land rather than schedules in books)

Hartwood Farm

Old school farmers would be quick to point it out, and likely ask why we aren’t growing in that gorgeous six acre lower field where we could have long beds and everything in one space. Years of cover cropping and chisel plowing have eliminated compaction and it even grew healthy beans and potatoes during the 21.5”

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

The Cheapest Hay Is the Hay You Never Buy

UnderstandingAg

We had 200-plus acres of stockpile from the previous year to graze throughout the green up process. Overgrazing pasture is a negative disturbance just the same as plowing or spraying, so minimizing the negative compounding, cascading effects through adequate rest and recovery is key.

Pasture 105
article thumbnail

Can Taller Cover Crops Help Clean the Water in Farm Country?

Civil Eats

Iowa farmers, for example, apply it on 87 percent of their fields at a rate of 149 pounds per acre. A 2022 Stanford University satellite study reported that although cover cropping reduces erosion and improves water quality, it also causes significant yield hits for corn and soybeans.

Crop 140
article thumbnail

Can Biden’s climate-smart agriculture program live up to the hype?

Food Environment and Reporting Network

These entities will pass most of the money on to tens of thousands of farmers, ranchers, and forest owners, including growers who manage thousands of acres and underserved and disadvantaged farmers who often have much smaller operations. This spring, the Biden administration began allocating $3.1

article thumbnail

Can Agriculture Kick Its Plastic Addiction?

Civil Eats

These synthetic polymer products have often been used to help boost yields up to 60 percent and make water and pesticide use more efficient. As contamination rose, crop yields fell by 15 percent. While the trials were limited to farms less than 80 acres in size, Zinati sees major promise in expanding the practice.

article thumbnail

Across Farm Country, Fertilizer Pollution Impacts Not Just Health, but Water Costs, Too

Civil Eats

When Jeff Broberg and his wife, Erica, moved to their 170-acre bean and grain farm in Winona, Minnesota in 1986, their well water measured at 8.6 Lee Tesdell is the fifth generation to own his family’s 80-acre farm in Polk County, Iowa. Tesdell’s farm is not the typical Iowa farm, which averages 359 acres. ppm for nitrates.