article thumbnail

One Farmer’s Regenerative Journey: Part 2

UnderstandingAg

For the past 40 years, our farm was in a hay, pasture and cereal grain rotation. Local practices included moldboard plowing to reseed perennial hay fields and as part of the plowing procedure, it is common to place drainage furrows with a plow on 30-60-feet centers. At first, I thought this was what I needed to do.

Plowing 95
article thumbnail

Watching Grass Grow … From Space

Modern Farmer

Last year, Planet and Organic Valley completed a pilot program using satellite imagery to evaluate pasture health in service of regenerative rotational grazing. My father initially started off plowing with a horse, and here we are talking about using satellite data to measure grass at home. Agriculture is no exception.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

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

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

Meet the Ranchers Trying to Restore Grasslands

Modern Farmer

In the spring, Steward moves her cattle out to pastures that have rested over the winter, but by the long heat of the summer, she’s wary of the ground getting too hot and baking, so she maintains a good litter cover while moving her cattle into shaded areas. million acres of grasslands across the Canadian and US Great Plains were plowed over.

article thumbnail

GRASS MANAGEMENT         

The Lunatic Farmer

From a distance, the field looked like it had been plowed. Stockman Grass Farmer is the world's leading publication dedicated to pastured livestock production and it has been my compass of direction and fount of inspiration for 40 years. A few years ago we turned a 15-acre field into slurry with 500 head during a spring snow melt.

Plowing 52
article thumbnail

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 40
article thumbnail

The Cheapest Hay Is the Hay You Never Buy

UnderstandingAg

The Cheapest Hay Is the Hay You Never Buy *Additional management considerations for this article were provided by Kent Solberg, Understanding Ag, LLC Stockpiled Pasture Regenerative agriculture and adaptive grazing often focus on reducing inputs in an agriculture production system. Fall grazing stockpiled pasture.

Pasture 105
article thumbnail

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.