CRP

Since launching with the 1985 Farm Bill, the Conservation Reserve Program has set out to reduce soil erosion, improve water quality, and restore wildlife habitat. It does so by paying farmers and landowners to take marginal farmland out of active production.  In place of traditional farm crops, which can deplete soil health and fertility overtime, farmers establish

Farmers have long employed various methods to disrupt soil, using sticks, hoes, ards, rakes, and plows to turn the ground and prepare farmland. This is process is known as tillage.   Tillage serves a number of purposes including seed bed preparation, burying crop residue, leveling soil, spreading nutrients, mixing in fertilizer, and activating pesticides. It’s also very helpful with

Growing the same crops in the same spot year after year can take a toll on soil, depleting it of certain nutrients and leaving it unbalanced. As the soil’s health decreases, water runoff and erosion increases, damaging the soil further. Ultimately, this results in weaker crop yields.  Farmers have long employed techniques to combat this.  One of the more aggressive methods of keeping soil balanced

In 1929, the United States stock market crashed, kickstarting a decade long period known as the Great Depression. The exact causes for this crash are heavily debated to this day, though common factors typically include overproduction of crop and industrial materials, overpricing of stock values, and easy credit/loan practices.   Farmers were already in a tough spot leading

This past month, we’ve been examining the effects that agriculture and the environment can have on each other. While farming does immeasurable good for people around the world, certain modern practices can take a toll on soil, water supplies, animal habitat, carbon emissions, and more.   Meanwhile, changes in the earth’s climate have caused disruption to the seasons and cycles that

Natural wildlands are good at caring for themselves (as long as they’re protected from outside dangers such as pollution, human-caused wildfires, etc). Wind, rain, animal grazing, and other events help maintain a balance. In grasslands, for example, these natural disturbances remove excess woody vegetation and allow flowering plants to reseed and thrive.  While CRP aims to recreate natural habitat by establishing native CRP seed, it requires a more hands-on approach to stay on

Have you ever wished you could enjoy the environment-enriching benefits of CRP without taking entire fields out of active production? Then you might be interested in the new CP-43 – Prairie Strip practice.  CP-43 falls under CRP’s CLEAR initiative, which we talked about last week. Like all CLEAR practices, CP-43 places a special emphasis on reducing runoff and