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Commentary: With Agriculture Facing a ‘Great Collision,’ More Farmers Seek to Nourish and Heal  

Daily Yonder

They also embraced crop diversity by adopting traditional crops, including hardier, more nutritious varieties that had been orphaned by modern agriculture demands. In Kansas, some annual row crop farmers are pioneering perennial crops to counter the impacts of yearly plowing that has depleted their soils.

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Living Mulch Cover Cropping for Gardens and Small Farms: Managing an “organic matter” system

ATTRA

They are documenting Lincoln’s living cover crop system, where he undersows Dutch white clover into vegetables after the last cultivation in July. He would let the cover crop grow and overwinter and then plow down the following spring for green manure.

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Illinois Dust Storm Disaster Is a Warning for Agriculture

The Equation

As climate change continues and farming areas get hotter and drier—as expected in the Southern Great Plains and Southwest—erosion could increasingly take the form of dust storms when bone-dry fields are plowed. It’s a recurring ecological disaster that causes hardship for people who make their living from fishing, shrimping, and tourism.

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Can Cover Cropping Heal Abused Soil? A Mad Farm Reflection

ATTRA

By Lee Rinehart, NCAT Agriculture Specialist In my past two blogs, I reflected on planting cover crops on small plots and gardens. And since cover cropping is scalable to just about any size farm or garden, it made sense to conduct some field experiments of my own. Diversity of food crops and flowering annuals. Give it time.

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Farmers Can Adapt to Alternating Droughts and Floods—Here’s How

The Equation

But with the heavy rain came floods that damaged lives, property, and crops. With fields waterlogged, many farmworkers were unable to work and pick produce, signaling that crops like strawberries might see lower yields and higher prices in the near future.

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How Our Network of Roadways Has Altered the Natural World

Modern Farmer

Your book talks a lot about “road ecology.” Ben Goldfarb: Road ecology is the field of scientific study that looks at how roads and other transportation infrastructure affect nature and what we do about those impacts. A lot of road ecology is about why roadkill happens and what its effects on populations are and how to prevent it.

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The Night Shift

Modern Farmer

Studies show the most common means of adapting to rising temperatures in most crop-growing regions has been to start working when its still dark out, or even to shift to a fully overnight schedule. The conditions impacted crop yields, livestock, the transportation of goods, and the larger supply chain. Photography via Shutterstock.