Climate Change & Conservation News
Agriculture
All Articles
Agriculture
Communications
Community
Economy
Natural Areas
Renewables
Take Action
Wildlife
How the Inflation Reduction Act helps rural communities
The Inflation Reduction Act recognizes the critical role that America’s farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners play in addressing the climate crisis. The law will:
- Invest in helping farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners deploy climate-smart practices that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase storage of carbon in soils and trees, and make their operations more productive.
- Support innovative, cost-effective ways to measure and verify climate benefits, including through USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Conservation Stewardship Program, Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, Regional Conservation Partnership Program, and Conservation Technical Assistance.
- Help up to 280,000 farmers and ranchers apply conservation to approximately 125 million acres of land.
Agrivoltaics looks at farming around/among solar panels
Double cropping solar power and organic dairy production works successfully here, but the concept – called agrivoltaics – is still very new.
Agrivoltaics is a new umbrella term defined as any farming practices on the land supporting solar power.
Around the world, innovators are looking for ways that solar panels and agriculture can benefit from the other. Flowers, pollinator plants, alfalfa, grass, vegetables and greens, and fruits and berries are some of the potential crops that people are planting in conjunction with solar panels…
Tweaking cows’ diets can reduce climate-warming pollution
[T]weaking a cow’s diet can cut those emissions by up to 40%, according to some estimates. Providing feed that’s easier to digest, adjusting the proportions of nutrients, and supplementing with certain additives can help reduce the methane produced.
Wightman says it also boosts milk production because less of the energy contained in the feed goes to waste.
Climate change’s impact on soil moisture could push land past the ‘tipping point’
The impact of climate change on soil moisture could push land past a “tipping point” — turning it from a net carbon “sink” to a source of CO2, one study finds.
The research, published in Nature, shows that levels of soil moisture — which are impacted by rising temperatures and extreme events such as droughts — can have a “large negative influence” on the land’s ability to store carbon…
Agrivoltaics looks at farming around and among solar panels
If you are driving to the West Central Research and Outreach Center (WCROC), look along U.S. Highway 59 for large pastures where cows graze among solar panels.
The cows, under the direction of Bradley Heins, Ph.D., University of Minnesota, use the panels for shade and shelter.
Double cropping solar power and organic dairy production works successfully here, but the concept — called agrivoltaics — is still very new…
Cover crops not enough to improve soil after decades of continuous corn
Although about 20% of Illinois cropping systems are planted with continuous corn, it’s nearly impossible to find fields planted this way for decades at a time. Yet long-term experiments like one at the University of Illinois, including over 40 years of continuous corn under different nitrogen fertilizer rates, provide incredible learning opportunities and soil management lessons for researchers and farmers alike…
Regenerative ranching is better for the environment, but can it be profitable?
Ellis tells me that she did the math, and the amount of beef she produces on her ranch in a year is about the same quantity that McDonald’s uses globally in 45 minutes. “I’m this tiny blip on the radar,” she says. “But if I could get all ranchers across the nation doing the job sustainably, then we’d have a lot of clout.”
She says most consumers have no idea if their beef comes from a ranch with environmental goals. “I want to give them that choice”…
Farms under threat: the state of the States
American Farmland Trust’s new report used spatial mapping analyses of agricultural land conversion to provide unprecedented insights into the status and fate of American farmland. Our findings and maps of agricultural land at the state, county, and even sub-county levels show that between 2001 and 2016, 11 million acres of farmland and ranchland were converted to urban and highly developed land use (4.1 million acres) or low-density residential land use (nearly 7 million acres).
SunCommon financing program helps Vermont organic farmers go solar
SunCommon, headquartered in Waterbury, Vermont, launched a program that offers to help Organic Valley farmers go solar with zero upfront costs. Organic Valley is the largest farmer-owned organic cooperative in the US with a footprint of 100+ Vermont farms. The program provides Organic Valley farmer-members with financing for solar and other renewable energy projects. Farmers benefit from a fully-funded solar installation with no upfront costs, and they save on their energy bill…
The extent of soil loss across the US Corn Belt
“Soil erosion in agricultural landscapes reduces crop yields, leads to loss of ecosystem services, and influences the global carbon cycle. Despite decades of soil erosion research, the magnitude of historical soil loss remains poorly quantified across large agricultural regions because preagricultural soil data are rare, and it is challenging to extrapolate local-scale erosion observations across time and space…”
- « Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next »