Tag: soil health

Let’s be matter-of-fact for a moment. Is beef truly bad for the planet? At this year’s annual VFGC Winter Conference we will delve into the topic “The Green Side of Beef: In defense of grassland agriculture.” Our two nationally recognized speakers, Nicolette Hahn Niman and Dr. Alan Franzluebbers, will be diving into the perceived issues […]

Register Now for this Two-Part Workshop! The National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) will host a two-part workshop in August for ag professionals, educators and mentor farmers to provide information and hands-on training on regenerative grazing, soil health, and monitoring. NCAT soil and livestock specialists will be joined by Dr. Allen Williams of Understanding Ag, […]

The Lost Rivers Grazing Academy is a 4-day hands-on workshop for livestock operators and their advisers and consults that want to harvest and sell more of the sun’s energy through grazing, improve soil health, reduce erosion, and reduce costs, primarily on irrigated pastures. The Academy was first held in 1994 in the Lost River Valley, […]

Casey Holland is a native New Mexican and young farmer committed to effecting positive social change around small-scale regenerative agriculture in the Middle Rio Grande Valley. Casey currently runs Chispas Farm – a four acre community focused certified organic farm that grows over 120 varieties of heirloom fruits and vegetables, has 60 laying hens and Sable […]

Can weeds tell you about soil health issues? Well, yes and no. I’ve got a lot of experience with weeds since I’ve spent the last 17 years teaching cattle, sheep, goats and bison to eat them under all kinds of soil conditions and all kinds of landscapes. My observation is that spotted knapweed does well […]

Figuring out your soil’s texture is as easy as mud pie. Here we show you how to do a little hands on testing.

Expert instructors with practical experience will help you find real world solutions to the challenges facing you and your ranch. You will learn proven tools and techniques that will increase your profit, improve the health and productivity of your land and increase your personal effectiveness.

Dr. Ray Weil has spent his whole life looking at and learning about soils and how they work to keep us all fed. In fact, he literally wrote the book on soils. He has a message for farmers and ranchers concerned about how their soils affect forage growth and profitability: Think deeper. Think about more […]

In this nuts and bolts webinar, Dr. Andrea Basche will discuss strategies to boost cover crop benefits, such as ideas for maximizing biomass growth for grazing. Tune in to learn more about why treating your cover crop like your cash crop can pay dividends! Wednesday, June 10, 2020, 2:00pm-3:00pm CT Register Here

Thanks to the folks with NRCS’s “Unlock the Secrets of Soil Health” for their part in developing this article. The abandoned cotton farm Terry and Deborah Chandler purchased was in need of a lot of care. The fields were  highly eroded, and the top soil was absent. Rebuilding soil health was the first thing on […]

Shannon Carmichael thought her husband Bart was crazy when he started fencing the ranch first to half sections and then to quarter sections. “This is not how things are supposed to be done. We ride out, we gather, we calve cattle.” But as the pasture sizes began shrinking, she realized that there was a lot […]

This webinar will focus on cover crops and grazing as ways to stimulate carbon flow to soil biology, and how using these practices can build resilience to weather, pest and disease issues, and increase overall profitability.  Wednesday, April 22, 2020, 2:00pm-3:00pm CT Register Here

A few weeks ago we talked about how plants can adjust their root exudate to encourage microbes to provide them with more nutrients during times of stress. Today, we’re looking at another way that plants and microbes interact to ensure that plants get the nutrients they need from the soil. While plants can get carbon, […]

There are all kinds of interactions between plants and the soils they grow in, and little by little we’re understanding more about what’s going on. Take root exudate for example. That’s the cocktail of carbohydrates – sugars, amino acids and organic acids – that result from photosynthesis and end up in the plant’s roots and […]

From March of 2017, here’s how a disagreement about managing crop residues gave us new insight into what soil microbes need in order to thrive. In June of 2014, Grist reporter Nathanael Johnson reported on a battle between two men in New South Wales Australia. Clive Kirkby and John Kirkegaard were having it out over […]