A drive through Farm Country this winter is a revelatory experience. Revelatory in that the impacts of planting the landscape to monocultures of corn and soybeans and plowing the ground… Read more »
Posts By: Brian DeVore, Land Stewardship Project
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,… Read more »
A Disappearing World Beneath Our Feet
As Midwestern farm fields take a long winter’s nap, evidence is piling up that even when the temperature’s above freezing, all that soil is basically in a bit of a… Read more »
Gov. Dayton: This is Farmland, Not Fracland
By Bob Christie NOTE: Land Stewardship Project members and staff met with Governor Mark Dayton about frac sand mining issues on Dec. 4 in Winona, Minn. The meeting began with… Read more »
Healthy Farms, Healthy Frogs, Healthy Land
While walking a piece of North Dakota landscape under a withering summer sun, one’s thoughts turn to moisture—or rather, the lack of it. So when I and other participants in… Read more »
Our Nitrogen Pollution Solution? Livestock, Land & People
By Jim VanDerPol In October, I told the Minnesota House Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Finance Committee that we had begun to listen to our farm, an assertion lawmakers heard… Read more »
Deadline for a Strengthened Sustainable Ag Grants Program Announced
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) announced yesterday that it will award up to $250,000 in 2014 for on-farm sustainable agriculture research or demonstration projects. That funding amount is good… Read more »
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 »
Flash Flood? Flash Drought? Time for a Little Slow Soil
The U.S Drought Monitor released its latest figures yesterday, verifying what we already knew: Minnesota is extremely dry. In fact, 55 percent of our state now falls under the “severe… Read more »