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

ATTRA

He would let the cover crop grow and overwinter and then plow down the following spring for green manure. Whereas at one time she advocated organic approaches and specific practices to deal with singular issues with pests or crop fertility, she now fosters a system based on ecological farm design.

Crop 102
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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. Fertilizer runoff can also affect urban communities downstream. All the time.

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Can Cover Cropping Heal Abused Soil? A Mad Farm Reflection

ATTRA

Darker soils, better water infiltration, less fertilizer. year after year, usually with a non-cover fallow, intensive moldboard plowing, and the additions of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Until then, it seems to me a comprehensive, ecological approach is what’s needed. Once again, the unintended consequences of progress.

Crop 52
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Farmers Can Adapt to Alternating Droughts and Floods—Here’s How

The Equation

Industrial agricultural practices such as tillage (plowing) and leaving fields bare between growing seasons degrade soil structure, reduce water infiltration, lower water storage capacity, and increase runoff (the flow of water across the soil’s surface).

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Federal Climate Policy: Agriculture Resilience Act Re-Introduced

CalCAN

The plowing of agricultural land during the 19th and 20th century released vast stores of carbon dioxide , only a small part of which has since been returned to the soil. Side by side with that loss of diversity was a long growth in greenhouse gas emissions that has only recently begun to be addressed.