A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a good infographic can be the equivalent of thousands of pounds of soil. That thought occurred to me recently while viewing the cool illustration below. Produced by scientists who are studying the effects of adding some targeted diversity to row-cropped fields in central Iowa, it tells… Read more »
Posts Tagged: biodiversity
Pollinators in Peril
As last week’s Congressional Research Service report on bee health makes clear, the crisis plaguing pollinators is not a single, big bad bogey man. It’s likely a combination of factors such as habitat loss, pesticide poisoning, introduced diseases and the stress of making domesticated honey bees the insect equivalent of migrant workers. That’s the bad… Read more »
Farmland Need Not be a Sacrificial Lamb
During yesterday’s otherwise excellent field day at the USDA’s soil conservation lab in Morris, the “S” word reared its ugly head. “S” as in our best farmland needs to be “sacrificed” in the name of food and fuel production, leaving room for only an odd corner here and there to provide a smattering of natural… Read more »
Relax Farmers: Climate Change is Good for You (Not)
In 1989, I worked for a farm magazine that claimed global climate change, if real, would actually be good for agriculture since rising carbon dioxide levels would act as some sort of mega plant growth promoter. During the past seven days, I’ve seen firsthand what happens when extreme weather—which many scientists say is an offshoot… Read more »
Profits from Perennials
One bright spot in the dust-up over the showing of the film Troubled Waters is that it highlights an important water quality issue: we need more perennial plant cover on the land if we are to keep soil, chemicals and other contaminants out of our rivers and lakes. But how do we make those perennials… Read more »