biodiversity

A Graphic View of Diversity’s Power

April 29, 2014
Brian DeVore
agriculture, Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Loon Commons blog
biodiversity, climate change, diversity, fertilizer runoff, grassland songbirds, Land Stewardship Project, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, nitrogen pollution, no-till, phosphorus runoffstainable Agriculture, pollinators, prairie strips, soil conservation, soil erosion, STRIPs, tallgrass prairie

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…
Pollinators in Peril

December 21, 2012
Brian DeVore
agriculture, Loon Commons blog
Ames Honey, beekeeping, bees, biodiversity, Brian Fredericksen, chemicals, honey, insects, pesticides, pollinators, soil health, sustainable farming, Xerces society

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…
Farmland Need Not be a Sacrificial Lamb

August 20, 2011
Brian DeVore
Food and Sustainable Agriculture
bees, biodiversity, Chippewa 10%, Dan Jackson, Forbord, George Boody, Land Stewardship Project, North Central Soil Conservation Research Laboratory, PAm, pollinators, The Farm as Natural Habitat, working lands conservation

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…
Relax Farmers: Climate Change is Good for You (Not)

June 17, 2011
Brian DeVore
Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Global Warming
agriculture, biodiversity, climate change, crop yields, diversity, drought, erosion, floods, Green Revolution, hunger, Land Stewardship Project, sustainable farming

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…
Profits from Perennials

September 28, 2010
Brian DeVore
Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Water
biodiversity, Chippewa 10%, grass, grazing, Gulf dead zone, local foods, Minnesota River, Mississippi River, perennial farming systems, perennials, runoff, sediment, sustainabkle agriculture, Troubled Waters, working lands conservation

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…