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National & World Ag News Headlines |
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New Pocket Guide Outlines How Ag Can Help Clean Water
USAgNet - 10/20/2017
At a time of skyrocketing water pollution levels and increasing climate-related calamities, a new resource released today describes how farmers in Minnesota and the rest of the Midwest can play a key role in helping fix these serious environmental
problems. The Land Stewardship Project's "Soil Health, Water & Climate Change: A Pocket Guide to What You Need to Know" provides an introduction to the latest innovations in science and farming related to building soil health, and how
implementing such practices on a wide-scale basis can make agriculture a powerful force for creating a landscape that is good for our water and our climate.
The pocket guide includes mini-profiles of farmers in the region who are utilizing cover cropping, managed rotational grazing of livestock, no-till and other methods to protect the landscape's surface while increasing biological activity below, thus
creating a resilient, "soil smart" type of agriculture. The key to these farmers' success is their ability to build soil organic matter, a resource that can sequester an immense amount of carbon while increasing the land's ability to efficiently manage
precipitation and runoff.
"It turns out the twin problems of polluted water and climate change share a common solution: the building of soil organic matter, which makes up just 5 percent of the soil profile but controls 90 percent of its functions," said guide author Brian
DeVore, who has interviewed dozens of farmers, scientists and conservation experts that are part of recent efforts to build and maintain functional biological activity in soil. "We have farmers right here in the Midwest who are proving you can build
organic matter in a matter of years using practical, financially viable methods. It's an exciting time for agriculture."
Utilizing easy-to-understand graphics and summaries, this pocket guide shows how building soil organic matter can sequester massive amounts of greenhouse gases. Combined with energy conservation and alternative energy sources, making
agricultural soils a net carbon sink could play a major role in helping prevent disastrous changes to the climate. In addition, healthy, biologically active soil has been shown to dramatically cut erosion levels, as well as the amount of farmland fertilizer and
other chemicals flowing into our rivers, streams and lakes.
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