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Promising Conservation Results in the 2022 Agricultural Census

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

For example, the Census shows increasing use of key practices like conservation tillage and cover crops and durable protection of acres in conservation easements. million acres with cover crops (a 17% increase) in 2022 than in 2017 and a 50% increase in acres with cover crops from 2012. Since the 1997 high of 66.4

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Black Earth: A Family’s Journey from Enslavement to Reclamation

Civil Eats

Patrick Brown, who was named North Carolinas Small Farmer of the Year by North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University this year, grows almost 200 acres of industrial hemp for both oil and fiber, and 11 acres and several greenhouses of vegetablesbeets, kale, radishes, peppers, okra, and bok choy.

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Bringing Back the (Flax) Fields of Gold

Modern Farmer

Farmer Jeremy Dunphy stands next to his four-acre test plot, brimming with flax as a cover crop, sharing what he’s learned with a crowd of 20 farmers, textile artists, designers, and educators. At one time, 18,000 acres of flax were grown in Oregon , with 14 processing mills, spinning and weaving throughout the Willamette Valley.

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Mushrooms for Wildfire Resilience

Caff

Several years ago, Cheetah Tchudi and his wife Samantha Zangrilli bought 40 acres of undeveloped land in Butte County. Today they raise several types of livestock, tend a one acre herb garden, and produce a variety of culinary grade mushrooms. A participant breaks open some packed spawn material to spread through the straw.

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Regenerative Gardening, No-Till Winter Cover Crop Strategies

UnderstandingAg

Root crops and tuber beds are generally clean and free of residue after harvest, which make them an easy location to direct seed with any seeder, or broadcast seed, followed by applying a straw mulch. If you live in a high-rainfall climate, I recommend applying straw mulch after seeding to reduce crusting and soil loss.

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Out of money and out of options: Upland farmers in England (part 1)

Sustainable Food Trust

At present he farms 485 acres, of which he owns 160. But last year, he had to bring them in, in December, and they could not return to the pasture until May, which added hugely to the costs for feed and straw. Because of the extreme prices last year, he had to cut down on the amount of fertiliser he spread per acre.

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Can Agriculture Kick Its Plastic Addiction?

Civil Eats

The Rodale Institute , a nonprofit research institution for organic farming, cites that every acre of land farmed with plastic mulch creates upwards of 120 pounds of waste that typically end up in landfill, or otherwise break down into the soil or nearby watersheds. Depending on [those] factors,” she adds,” everything is scalable.”