Manure can play a valuable role in crop production because of its ability to build soil fertility and soil health. Ironically, manure can pose a waste disposal issue for livestock producers. Why does this situation…
It used to be that livestock and crops were integrated on a single farm and manure provided an important source of fertility for crop production. However, the advent of commercial fertilizer, increased specialization on farms…
Here is an ammonia joke for you: Why do chemistry students like studying ammonia? Because it’s pretty basic stuff! So basic, in fact, that high levels of ammonia in dairy wastewater inhibit algal growth. For researchers at WSU looking to use algae as a natural way to extract high levels of nitrogen…
Composting rather than landfilling organic waste, such as food waste and yard trimmings, has several benefits from a climate perspective. A recent study in Washington concluded that composting organic waste…
Our most recently published case study on resilience to climate change describes Brenda and Tony Richards’ family cow-calf operation in Murphy, Idaho. Over the last few years at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural…
Soil health management can be distilled to two principles: Maximize photosynthesis & minimize tillage. These are principles; they do not tell you what practices you should use but rather, what the practices you choose to implement should provide…
Biochar has potential to draw down atmospheric carbon when applied to agricultural soils (as discussed in my previous article on this topic). There is currently not a robust way for farmers…
How much is enough soil organic matter? “The more, the better” is often the assumed answer, or at least as much as the native soil had before crops were grown. There are a few papers…
In a recent study, Jim Amonette at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Washington State University Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources developed an improved method to estimate the technical potential for biochar…
One of regenerative agriculture’s extraordinary claims is that it can drastically reduce or even eliminate nutrient inputs, fertilizers. How is this possible? The go-to explanation is often “soil biology” – revved up soil biology makes nutrients available that plants can’t normally access. As it often the case, there is a bit of truth here. Regenerative ag can reduce inputs, and soil biology is involved along with other natural processes, but the whole truth may be much more ordinary.
