By George Boody Governor Mark Dayton announced in January his proposal to require an additional 125,000 acres of perennial vegetation along lakes, rivers and streams. There is a long history of utilizing such living borders to filter out fertilizers and herbicides, while fortifying streambanks and reducing the amount of eroded soil that ends up in… Read more »
Posts Tagged: runoff
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. In the case of production systems that build soil health, that preacher is Ray Archuleta. “The soil is naked, hungry, thirsty and running… Read more »
Forever Green & Highly Efficient Agriculture
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. In states like Minnesota, the spectacular productivity of our corn-soybean system is evident: bin busting yields are the norm. But there’s a lot… Read more »
Cover Crops: Not Just Foul Weather Friends
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 keeping the soil covered with small grains and other plants helped fields preserve enough precious moisture to provide a yield bump of, in… Read more »
Prepping Prairie Strips for the Real World
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 particularly focused on keeping soil in place. “None of us who farm want the soil to move—we care,” Van Ryswyk told me one… Read more »
Profits from Perennials
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 if we are to keep soil, chemicals and other contaminants out of our rivers and lakes. But how do we make those perennials… Read more »
The U’s Shifting Story Line on Troubled Waters
When the University of Minnesota announced late Thursday that the public showing of Troubled Waters was back on as scheduled, officials there were no doubt hoping this week-long PR nightmare would finally fade away. But now comes the hard part: explaining why the head of PR was allowed to declare a scientifically-balanced, professionally-produced documentary unfit… Read more »