Reduced Tillage and Increasing Cropping Intensity in the Great Plains Conserves Soil C
Soil & Tillage Research, 1998 Keeping Carbon in the Plains: How No-Till and Intensive Rotations Build Soil Health Farming in the Great Plains has always been a balancing act with moisture and soil quality. For decades, the standard wheat-fallow system helped stabilize short-term yields. However, leaving fields fallow and using heavy tillage comes with a […]
Successful No-Till (From the Ground Up)
from “From the Ground Up” newsletter, 2001-02 The 5 Keys to No-Till Success: Managing Diversity and Weeds Switching to a no-till system involves more than just parking your plow. To make no-till truly work, you need to look at your farm as an interconnected system. If you change how you handle the soil, you must […]
Sustainable Dryland Agroecosystem Management
G.A. Peterson, D.G. Westfall,, L.Sherrod, D. Poss, K. Larson, D.L. Thompson, & L.R. Ahuja, 1998A Cooperative Project between Colorado State University and the USDA – Agriculture Research Service Sustainable Dryland Agroecosystem Management: Better Dryland Crop Rotations For generations, the standard playbook for dryland farming relied on a simple two-year wheat-fallow cycle. The goal was basic: […]
Root Development of Vegetable Crops
by John E. Weaver & William E. Bruner, 1927 The Underground Blueprint: What Vegetable Roots Reveal About Tillage and Soil Management When we evaluate farm practices for soil health, we almost always look at what is happening above the surface. However, a true scientific understanding of plant performance requires a vivid mental picture of the […]
The Menoken Farm
By Jay Fuhrer, NRCS, Burleigh County Can Bio-Concoctions and Diversity Boost Yields? Lessons from Menoken Farm What happens when an operation scales back traditional models and leans into live biology? It sounds like a gamble for a profitable ag operation, but the field trial data collected from The Menoken Farm proves that pairing modern ranch […]