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

Civil Eats

He was paid to plant it by the Olmsted County Groundwater Protection and Soil Health Program , a local effort that seeks to reduce overall fertilizer use by building soil—therefore cutting down on the nutrients that enter waterways—while helping farmers save money.

Crop 122
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Seeing the Farm with Fresh Eyes

ATTRA

When he dug deeper (literally) he saw that the soils farmers were working with had an impenetrable plow pan layer about 6 inches below the surface, so the cotton plant roots could not access the nutrients they needed, even though the nutrients were present. The soil had lost its structure because of the way it was being managed.

Farming 52
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How sustainable farming is paying off for Australian farmers

Agritecture Blog

While government schemes financially incentivize planting trees and other vegetation in order to capture carbon on fallow fields, farmers are also finding that native pasture and grasses are more resilient to drought and overgrazing.

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

The Equation

While a small number of winter crops such as small grains (wheat, oats, barley) and forage and pasture crops such as alfalfa can use some winter rain and snow, western agriculture largely depends on a steady supply of irrigated water that has led to extreme groundwater mining.

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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.

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

Food Environment and Reporting Network

These practices include reducing or eliminating tilling of soil, planting “cover crops” that grow during the off-season and are not harvested, improving how farmers use fertilizer and manure, and planting trees. The main greenhouse gases emitted by U.S. Both warm the atmosphere far more, per molecule, than carbon dioxide. 28, 2019. “But