Land Stewardship Project

Soil Health: Numbers vs. Knowing

July 18, 2014
Brian DeVore
agriculture, Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Loon Commons blog, Water
cover crops, dead zone, diversity, Land Stewardship Project, Martin and Loretta Jaus, nitrates, NRCS, Ray Archuleta, Rob Myers, rotational grazing, runoff, SARE, soil health

Sometimes it takes a bit of an evangelist to remind us that praying at the altar of facts and figures can blind one to how they all connect in the bigger picture.…
Forever Green Receives $1 Million

May 19, 2014
Brian DeVore
agriculture, Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Loon Commons blog
Carmen Fernholz, cover crops, Don Wyse, Forever Green, Land Stewardship Project, perennial plant systems, soil health, sustainable ag research, University of Minnesota

The Minnesota Legislature took a major step last week toward supporting the kind of agriculture that can green up our landscape in a way that’s economically viable for farmers. Conference committee negotiations…
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…
Sand, Land & Land Stewardship

April 21, 2014
Brian DeVore
agriculture, clean air, Clean Energy, clean energy development, clean energy future, Energy, Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Land Conservation, Loon Commons blog
Citizens' Frac Sand Summit, extreme energy, frac sand mining, frac sand moratorium, frac sand petition, Gov. Mark Dayton, hydraulic fracturing, karst geology, Land Stewardship Project, People's EIS Scoping Report, soil health

By Johanna Rupprecht, Land Stewardship Project For longer than I can remember, my family has taken the same route from our farm in southeast Minnesota to visit my grandparents in north-central Wisconsin.…
Forever Green & Highly Efficient Agriculture

April 16, 2014
Brian DeVore
agriculture, Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Loon Commons blog, Water
Carmen Fernholz, Clean Water Fund, cover crops, diversity, Don Wyse, erosion, Forever Green Initiative, Land Stewardship Project, Legacy Amendment, nitrogen pollution, perennials, runoff, soil health, water quality

To understand why the Forever Green Initiative is so important to the future of Minnesota’s landscape, one has to consider this: there is a big difference between agricultural productivity and agricultural efficiency.…
Cover Crops: Insuring Against Disaster

April 7, 2014
Brian DeVore
agriculture, Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Loon Commons blog
2014 Farm Bill, climate change, commodity programs, cover crops, crop insurance, diversity, drought, Gabe Brown, Land Stewardship Project, mob grazing, RMA, SARE, soil erosion, soil health

Thanks to the recently passed 2014 Farm Bill, federally subsidized crop insurance is an even bigger player in determining what the landscape looks like. That’s troubling, considering that in recent years that…
Cover Crops: Not Just Foul Weather Friends

February 21, 2014
Brian DeVore
agriculture, Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Loon Commons blog, Water
cover crops, erosion, Gabe Brown, Howard G. Buffett, Land Stewardship Project, mob grazing, National Conference on Cover Crops and Soil Health, Ray Archuleta, Rob Myers, row crops, runoff, SARE, Soil and Water Conservation Society, soil health

Cover crops proved themselves foul weather friends during the Great Drought of 2012. A groundbreaking farmer survey conducted in the Upper Mississippi River watershed showed that during that year’s brutal growing season…
Snirt: A Stain on the Landscape

February 3, 2014
Brian DeVore
agriculture, Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Land Conservation, Loon Commons blog
A Road Being Taken, cover crops, John White, Land Stewardship Project, snirt, soil erosion, soil health, wind erosion

A drive through Farm Country this winter is a revelatory experience. Revelatory in that the impacts of planting the landscape to monocultures of corn and soybeans and plowing the ground black as…
Prepping Prairie Strips for the Real World

January 27, 2014
Brian DeVore
agriculture, Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Loon Commons blog, Water
birds, Gary Van Ryswyk, grasses, grassland birds, Land Stewardship Project, Matt Helmers, Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, nitrogen pollution, Pauline Drobney, perennial plants, pollinators, prairie, row crops, runoff, sediment, soil erosion, STRIPs, water quality

Gary Van Ryswyk’s concern for how his farming methods impact the landscape is obvious. A practitioner of a no-till system that avoids disturbing a field’s surface as much as possible, he is…
A Disappearing World Beneath Our Feet

December 17, 2013
Brian DeVore
agriculture, Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Land Conservation, Loon Commons blog
cover crops, International Soil Reference and Information Centre, Kristine Nichols, Land Stewardship Project, nitrogen pollution, soil bacteria, soil degradation, soil erosion, soil health, soil mirobes, tallgrass prairie, Verrucomicrobia

As Midwestern farm fields take a long winter’s nap, evidence is piling up that even when the temperature’s above freezing, all that soil is basically in a bit of a stupor—so devoid…