Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge

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…
Stripping Erosion Control to its Bare Essentials

June 25, 2011
Brian DeVore
Food and Sustainable Agriculture, Water
Chippewa 10%, climate change, erosion, Land Stewardship Project, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Matt Helmers, Matt Liebman, Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, perennials, praries, profits from perennials, row crops, STRIPs, working farmland

While walking through a knee-high prairie planted on a central Iowa hillside Tuesday, I happened to look down. Trapped amongst all that vegetation was an impressive amount of rich, black glacial soil,…