State and federal leaders have put millions into improving crops and soils so they absorb more carbon dioxide, but across the U.S. that would only cut 3% of agricultural emissions, researchers found.

Thanks to heavy use of nitrogen fertilizer, tiny organisms that flourish in farm fields emit nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas that can warm the planet more than carbon dioxide and stay in the atmosphere for over a century.

Clover lawns are on the rise again: People are looking for lower-effort, pollinator-friendly alternatives to grass that thrives with less water, herbicides and fertilizer.

There are a number of different soil conservation techniques that can be used to support and restore healthy soils around the world.

Cover crops offer agricultural producers a natural and inexpensive climate solution through their ability to capture atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into soils.

Retrieving struvite from wastewater reduces the amount of phosphorus entering the environment, replaces mined phosphorus

During No-Till November, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service promotes the economic and environmental benefits of not disturbing the soil and “keeping the stubble” to improve soil health. To make the most of these benefits, Iowa no-till farmer Will Cannon focuses on the biology of the soil – instead of the chemistry of farming.

...maybe it’s time to come up with a new look and terminology for marketing some of our older, more successful farming practices, such as those that deal with soil erosion and conservation. “There is a pervasive belief that we know all there is to know about soil erosion and soil conservation,” he says.

Soil health depends on a complex group of microbes. These bacteria and fungi recycle nutrients and prepare the soils to better support plants.

Slightly more than half of the country’s biggest farmers say they planted cover crops this year, indicating a broadening acceptance of the crops’ benefits for soil health

For over four hundred million years, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi have been forming symbiotic relationships with plants around the globe. Found on almost every continent and in approximately 80% of vascular plants, these important fungi play a pivotal role in plant nutrient uptake in diverse ecosystems.

Did you know that wildfire can affect forest soils? The effect of fire on trees, shrubs, and herbaceous (non-woody) plants are easily visible. It is not so easy, however, to see the effect wildfire has on the forest soil. There is more under your feet than what you see with the naked eye. Whole communities of organisms live in the soil contributing to the health of the forest itself.

When wildfires rage across the landscape, whether on grasslands or in forests, the massive plumes of smoke that rise into the air and travel for miles can carry more than a thousand different types of microbes with them. Yet until University of Idaho associate professor Leda Kobziar came along, there was essentially no research on what bacteria and fungi might be carried in that smoke, how far those microbes might travel, or how they might impact soil ecology both where the fire started and where the microbes land.

In 2017, he tried subterranean clover in his NE field. Subterranean clover is a cool-season annual legume that produces seeds during the summer at or below the soil surface (hence the name subterranean). Seeds then germinate in the fall after the first rains and grow rapidly through the fall/early winter. It may go dormant for a time during the winter, but becomes active again in early spring. It grows in densely matted clumps that are 6-15 inches tall. The clover spreads through rootless runners reaching up to 3 feet in length. After a few years of trial, Fred reports that the “Subclover cover crop, in what is now our nine-year-old hazelnut orchard, is working very well and is quite easy to manage. Plus, now as the trees have sent roots out in the row centers, we are getting some nitrogen benefits. This orchard was visibly greener than our other orchards last spring. Every year it [the cover crop] gets better without having to add any seed since it is self-seeding.”

But beneath fields covered in tightly knit rows of corn, soybeans, wheat and other monoculture crops, a toxic soup of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides is wreaking havoc, according to our newly published analysis in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science. The study, the most comprehensive review ever conducted on how pesticides affect soil health, should trigger immediate and substantive changes in how regulatory agencies like the EPA assess the risks posed by the nearly 850 pesticide ingredients approved for use in the U.S.

The May 7th, 2021 Sustainable, Secure Food Blog explores how wind erosion affects farming in Washington and some solutions farmers can use. According to blogger Andrew McGuire, “Wind erosion is a soil health thief. In both sandy and fine-grained silt soils of Eastern Washington, wind erosion lifts, sifts, and then carries away the best part of the soil. Lost are the tiny particles of clay and silt with the organic matter that is stuck to them.” Local soil conditions make matters worse. Low rainfall produces sparse vegetation, therefore low soil organic matter levels.

Earth's land ecosystems absorb a large portion of all the carbon dioxide emissions produced by human activities, helping to slow global warming. On average for a given year, plants and soil take up, or ...

“Soil Health is, simply put, the ability to produce marketable outputs with minimal inputs. It’s very important for people to understand that multi-dimensional property is dynamic, it changes over time and it’s dependent on environmental conditions like temperature, moisture and even the microorganisms and worms and all other life that’s present there.”

Extolled as a defense against erosion and nutrient loss during fallow seasons, cover crops are being planted on a larger portion of U.S. cropland than before, said USDA economists.

The new era of climate mitigation on the farm would look like a beefed-up version of longstanding USDA conservation programs, augmented by a carbon bank that sets a floor price for carbon sequestration and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, said leaders of the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance (FACA) on Wednesday. “That’s what we’ve modeled it after,” said Chuck Connor, a founding member of the alliance and a former deputy agriculture secretary.

U.S. Farmers & Ranchers in Action (USFRA) —in conjunction with World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), The Mixing Bowl, and Croatan Institute has issued a new report that analyzes the state of soil health technology. The report also identifies opportunities to find new sources of capital to scale up the adoption of climate-smart agriculture on U.S. farms and ranches.