conservation

Deep in the heart of the Corn Belt, a different kind of agriculture is taking root in the city of Peoria, Illinois. Back in 2016, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) awarded Chicago-based Greenprint Partners a Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG). Partnering with the city and other local community groups, a long-vacant lot in downtown Peoria has been transformed into a vibrant community gathering space with green infrastructure, an urban forest, and a working farm.

Have you ever wondered about the soil you are standing on, at any given spot in the United States? Curious about what soil type it is? How about if the soil is easy to dig? If the soil is ideal for supporting the weight of a house or a barn? Or simply, if it will help you grow better tomatoes?

Food sovereignty – the ability to create a self-sufficient food system – is at the heart of the opportunities and challenges facing the Navajo Nation. This spring, Diné College students Tyler Begay, Korrie Johnnie, and Orean Roy were recognized for their exploration of this topic during the American Indian Higher Education Consortium Student Conference in Billings, Montana.

Agriculture is dynamic, adjusting in response to changes in the economy, technology, the environment, and policy – and agricultural production affects a wide range of natural resources.

Earlier this week, I was honored to meet with members of the National Association of Farm Broadcasters here at USDA headquarters. These women and men, many with decades of broadcasting and farm experience, are among the familiar voices, faces and bylines we hear and see each day through radio, television, newsletters, and social media across America.

On any sunny day in Faulkner County, Arkansas, you will find people boating, swimming, and camping at Lake Bennett in Wooley Hollow State Park. This 40-acre lake was named after Dr. Hugh Hammond Bennett, the first chief of USDA’s Soil Conservation Service, today known as the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

At USDA, we celebrate Earth Day 2019 by offering big thank-yous to farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners for all they do. Every day, we recognize their efforts to conserve natural resources while producing food, fiber, and fuel for people in their communities and around the world. They’re doing what needs to be done to make sure we all enjoy the benefits of clean and plentiful water and healthy soils, ecosystems, and wildlife habitat.

“Resilience” is the ability to recover from change, or when you think about landscapes, the ability to recover from disturbances like wildfires. A new model takes the idea of resilience and applies it to the natural environment, specifically, to sagebrush. This resilience model is one of the core elements of the new Science Framework for Conservation and Restoration of the Sagebrush Biome (Part 2).

Increasingly, food companies, environmental organizations, and agricultural commodity groups are setting ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from farms. These goals are realized through conservation practices such as reduced tillage farming, and precision technologies, like autosteer tractors. Yet, there’s not much nationally consistent data to help farmers and policymakers know which practices are being used, and how the adoption of those practices is changing over time.

Plunging his shovel into a wheat field covered in soybean residue, Gary Hula hefts up a mound of crumbly soil with a grin. The county is under moderate drought and it’s just above freezing outside, but the soil in his shovel is full of moisture and riddled with worm holes—sure signs of healthy soil.