NRCS
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Soil Health: Numbers vs. Knowing
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.…
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Agriculture: How Not to Be Tools of Our Tools
One recent August day, I stood in a field in North Dakota watching soil being spaded up and listening to farmers talk about the optimal cover crop seeding mixes, how long to…
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Purebreds, Pluggers & Profitable Soil
On a recent August evening in south-central North Dakota, soil scientist Kristine Nichols laid out what I like to call the “purebred vs. the plugger” approach to farming. “With healthy soil, you…
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Teaming with Soil Microbes (part 1)
On a crisp morning in September, North Dakota farmer Gabe Brown held two handfuls of soil and searched for signs of life—theoretically not a difficult task considering one teaspoon of humus contains…
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Let’s Stop Treating Soil Conservation Like Dirt
Here’s the bad news: it turns out the USDA’s estimates that soil erosion rates are under control across the Corn Belt—something we reported in this blog last June—are probably overly optimistic, according…
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Erosion Down—Fingers Crossed
The federal government’s latest assessment of how much soil is being washed and blown off our farmland contains some good news: between 1982 and 2007, erosion dropped 43 percent nationally.
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CSP: Working out the Warts
The USDA announced this week that farmers have until June 11 to fill out an application for the latest round of Conservation Stewardship Program contracts. That’s a narrow window of opportunity at…
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How to ‘Deal’ with NRCS, Drain a Wetland & Erode More Soil
While driving in southern Minnesota this week, I gazed upon acre-after-acre of black fields—a sign that despite a wet fall, a lot of intense tillage took place before the snow flew a…