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… Read more »
Posts Tagged: NRCS
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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…. Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »