NACD is working to gain clarity on this issue and make it so that farmers who have been following best practices can be rewarded for their efforts too.
By Rob Long
12/23/21
(Opinion) In most Florida counties, SWCDs serve as a conduit for cost share projects and education programs. Through partnership with their local counties, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, SWCDs offer free services to growers, residents, and students.
Audrey Arner and Richard Handeen, owners of Moonstone Farm in rural Montevideo, have been named Chippewa County Outstanding Conservationists of the Year by the Chippewa County Soil and Water Conservation District.
The Conservation District held this year’s annual awards ceremony December 15 at Valley View Farm in Waynesburg, where awards were presented to Gene Saurborn and Bobbi Bailey, owners of Buckshot Cattle Company, and Zachary Frye, a 2021 graduate of West Greene High School.
Laura Judge, Farm Bill biologist at the Lenawee Conservation District, will host an online workshop on how to get financial and technical assistance to promote wildlife on private lands from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, January 11.
Sometimes when Jenny Meisel drives down the highway, she’ll do a double take if she sees a plant she thinks might be invasive. The native and invasive plant specialist with the Marion Soil and Water Conservation District has an eye for those things.
From 2014-2021, the Crow Wing County Highway Department partnered with the cities of Crosslake and Manhattan Beach, Big Pine Lake Association, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, citizen groups, and Soil and Water Conservation District to implement stormwater runoff mitigation projects along County Highway 66 and rock riffles structures.
More and more U.S. farmers are planting cover crops, from grasses like rye and oats to legumes and radishes. While some are converted into biofuels or fed to cattle, most are not harvested because their value is greater if they break down in the soil.
Tennessee and Cumberland County farmers are reaping benefits of national cost-sharing and incentive programs.
There is a lot of discussion these days about building soil health using improved grazing strategies. The currently popular approach is being called “regenerative grazing,” and the focus is to improve soil and animal health.
During the 2021 growing season, a network of farmers across Wisconsin took a step further to improve soil health on their farms.
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) offers several programs to help communities improve land and water resources within watersheds as well as relieve imminent hazards to life and property created by a natural disaster.
Just as cover crops add a variety of above-ground architecture options, they also provide different beneficial architectures below ground, such as deeper, potentially compaction-breaking roots that help open up the soil.
Landowners band together for prescribed burns that boost the prairie's productivity.
Researchers say spending more on efforts to contain invasive species and prevent their spread once they arrive, could help reduce expensive damages.
The New Mexico Department of Agriculture will host two webinars in January to show potential applicants the steps to take to be considered for a grant to improve soil health in the state. NMDA will open its next Healthy Soil Program grant application period in March.
For producers who are interested in building soil health on their farm, utilizing cover crops can be a good place to start.
Hammontonians are connecting with nature and learning more about their environment by using the iNaturalist app on their smartphone.
Only an estimated 2.6 percent of the winter-run Chinook salmon juvenile population survived the hot, dry summer, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife said.
When conditions are extremely dry, it might be best to forgo planting cover crops in western Kansas and eastern Colorado. But if covers can be successfully established, grazing them leaves more valuable residue in the system and helps make up for yield reductions that can occur in subsequent cash crops.
How green infrastructure is defined guides the types of projects that cities implement, with enduring impacts to people and the urban environment.
The Department of the Interior, in coordination with the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce and the Council on Environmental Quality, invited public comment and announced listening sessions regarding the development of the American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas (Atlas), a new tool that will be used to reflect baseline information on the lands and waters that are conserved or restored.
Founders of the Meadowlark Initiative, a new statewide strategy that will team landowners, conservation groups, scientists and others to enhance, restore and sustain native grasslands in North Dakota, could have easily gone another route, considering the number of declining grassland-dependent animals they had to choose from.
(Subscriber Only) Pennsylvania still has a long way to go in reducing nutrient pollution from its farms, jeopardizing the success of the federal-state “blueprint” for achieving restoration of the Chesapeake Bay, a new report from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation concludes.
The researchers found that frequency, rather than quantity, of stover mulching had a significant effect on the structure and functions of bacterial communities and maize production in agricultural soils.
The Phoenix Zoo has worked with conservation partners since 2018 to breed and reintroduce the Pygmy-Owl back into the wilderness. In 2021, Harris and her partners released the first round of owls at two sites in southern Arizona.
(Subscriber Only) “We could not have asked for a better December, in terms of Sierra snow and rain,” said Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth, after DWR conducted the first snow survey of the season last week. “But Californians need to be aware that even these big storms may not refill our major reservoirs during the next few months.”
The fourth generation farmer—who grows onions, cotton, pistachios, and peppers—has been experimenting with other options. One innovative piece of technology he’s been using? The Autonomous LaserWeeder, an automated machine that Johnson says has replaced the need for weeding fields by hand.
(Subscriber Only) With so many consumers disconnected from the resources needed to grow food, it can sometimes be helpful to have a reminder – especially when it comes to an increasingly precious resource like water.
When we think of evolution, many of us conjure the lineage from ape to man, a series of incremental changes spanning millions of years. But in some species, evolution happens so quickly we can watch it in real time.
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