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April 15, 2022 Each year the University of Nebraska receives questions on termination timing of cereal covers. This question occurs as farmers consider trade-offs between a positive return on investment from the cover crop, by allowing more biomass growth with the potential for yield loss if termination is delayed too long. Information being shared can be confusing, with one source saying to terminate pre-plant while another says to plant green into the cover. What’s the “right” answer? We don’t know…

April 12, 2022 Benefits of cover crops can include improved weed control, reduced herbicide inputs, increased water infiltration and improvement of soil health and water quality.[1–3] Adequate cover crop growth is needed to maximize these benefits, but the window of time for such growth is limited by federal crop insurance rules. When asked about his motivation to conduct this trial, Sam Bennett replied, “To contribute to a dataset that shows that planting soybeans into living rye and terminating that rye up…

March 31, 2022 Last week, water experts marked the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act with a dire warning: After evaluating over 700,000 miles of rivers and streams across the country, they concluded that half of those waters are too polluted to fish or swim in—and agriculture is often to blame. Read more

March 22, 09:00 AM A new study in the journal Earth’s Future led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows that, since Euro-American settlement approximately 160 years ago, agricultural fields in the midwestern U.S. have lost, on average, two millimeters of soil per year. This is nearly double the rate of erosion that the USDA considers sustainable. Furthermore, USDA estimates of erosion are between three and eight times lower than the figures reported in the study. Finally, the study’s authors conclude that…

March 17, 09:00 AM In this episode of Voices from the Field, NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Specialist Mike Lewis is joined by Shawn Lucas, an assistant professor of organic agriculture at Kentucky State University, in a conversation about cover crops.

March 10, 09:00 AM As they have looked at, researched and implemented some of the regenerative agriculture practices, Fensky says it all starts with the proper mindset, making a paradigm shift in thinking, being prepared to educate yourself and being prepared to take a few risks. “One of the first things I had to learn was to get rid of the ‘Y’ word — yield,” says Fensky. “It is not about pushing production to maximize yield, we need to be…