Border plantings provide multiple benefits
Any pollinator-friendly field border is better than no border, but it’s important to understand what strengths different plants bring to the mix, according to Ebony Murrell, a crop protection ecologist…
RUDN: Deep-Rooted Plants Help Slow Down Climate Change, Says A Soil Scientist From RUDN University
A soil scientist from RUDN University found out that plants with deep root systems promote the storage of organic carbon in the soil. This, in turn, can help reduce the…
Perennial Wheat Could Reduce Nitrate Levels in Minnesota Groundwater
(KNSI) – A recently developed crop has the potential to reduce the impact of nitrate leaching from farm fields into water supplies. Kernza wheat, or intermediate wheatgrass, is different from other…
These Kansans See A Way To Fight Climate Change By Breeding Ecofriendly Crops
SALINA, Kansas — Ebony Murrell and a few interns meticulously sort 99 kinds of silphium. It’s a wild relative to a sunflower. And the biologists at The Land Institute — an outfit…
The Unsustainability of Industrial Agriculture
This week’s edition of Eco-Radio, with host, Dave Mitchell, will interview Dr. Richard Cruse, Professor in the Agronomy Department at Iowa State University, and Dr. Timothy Crews, Director of Research…
Summer Soul-stice Going Virtual
The word “apocalypse” is described as “destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale,” according to the Oxford Dictionary. An alternate, less frightening, definition of apocalypse is “to uncover…
Fungal Community Shifts in Soils with Varied Cover Crop Treatments and Edaphic Properties
Cover cropping is proposed to enhance soil microbial diversity and activity, with cover crop type affecting microbial groups in different ways. We compared fungal community compositions of bulk soils differing…
Prairie Research Could Help Farming Become More Resilient, Sustainable
On a still November day, Patrick O’Neal, the burn coordinator at Kansas State University’s Konza Prairie Biological Station near Manhattan, Kansas, convenes a meeting about a planned fire. “The goal…
Book Outlines how Agriculture can be Revolutionized, Supported by New International Bodies
LAWRENCE — Revolutionizing the way humans practice agriculture by implementing new practices supported by international bodies might sound like a radical idea. Yet it’s possible, according to a University of Kansas…
Trees, big fans, and deep-rooted plants: How to suck 2 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere
To have a chance of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, society needs to reach net-zero emissions by 2050—meaning that if we can’t transition to an emissions-free economy by…
Water contamination: In Minnesota, we must reconsider which crops we plant
The news in the Jan. 14 issue of the Star Tribune that 1 in 8 Minnesotans are drinking nitrate-tainted water and that fertilizer escaping from row-crop fields is a main…
Perennial grain Kernza taking root in Minnesota
GOODHUE COUNTY, Minn. — If humans want to continue eating we need to continue farming. But many farming practices that have become common in the 21st century result in pollution…