Capturing carbon from the air can be accomplished by observing four basic principles: disturbing the soil less, growing a diversity of plants, maintain living roots in the soil as much of the time as possible, and keeping the soil covered at all times.
Oftentimes the “disaster” farmers face is a degraded soil that has occurred through management that does not foster soil biology and soil function.
If farmers can get paid for an ecosystem service of carbon sequestration, while improving their soil’s ability for a greater return on investment, why not?
Crop yield has never been a good metric for success. Profitability & restoring soil health might be a better way to measure success in modern agriculture.
While tile drainage doesn’t typically have a huge impact on soil health, soil health can have a major impact on how well a subsurface drainage system performs.
How you manage your soil: The soil is a biological system … it only functions as well as the things living within it.
Humans have been tilling the soil and practicing agriculture for quite some time. W. C. Lowdermilk’s classic agricultural report of 1939, “Conquest of the Land Through 7,000 Years,” gives us a basic history of human-induced degradation of the soil. Even though tillage has been used for a long time to control weeds and facilitate the […]
Oftentimes, the opportunity to add both diversity and living roots feeding your agricultural soil occurs after cash crops are in the bin.
Cover crops are receiving a lot of attention by nearly everyone involved in agriculture. They are once again becoming a very versatile tool that can provide many ecosystem services while also improving a producer’s bottom line. Cover crops are loosely defined as something planted to serve a multitude of purposes while not typically being harvested […]
Continuing to prop up dysfunctional soil by more accurately meting out inputs is not the path to a prosperous future for anyone.