The Blogger's Garden

Adopted from Lester Brown's Plan B 2.0, a look at soil conservation and farming in the U.S.

Another tool in the soil conservation toolkit–and a relatively new one–is conservation tillage, which includes both no-till and minimum tillage. In addition to reducing erosion, this practice helps retain water, raises soil carbon content, and reduces the energy needed for crop cultivation. Instead of plowing land, discing or harrowing it to prepare the seedbed, and then using a mechanical cultivator to control weeds, farmers simply drill seeds directly through crop residues into undisturbed soil, controlling weeds with herbicides.

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Read more from this blogger: Earth Policy Institute Update #212

If you're in the North Carolina area, you might want to check out this soil conservation meeting.

Also on the evening’s agenda for those of you in the Piedmont, is a hearing of the legislative Land and Soil Conservation Commission. Stop by if you can. 7 p.m. Greensboro - Guilford Technical Community College, Auditorium, 601 High Point Rd., Jamestown. Worried about global warming, loss of forests and disappearing farms? These are the folks who will be writing legislation to try and deal with these things. Land for Tomorrow has more on the ideas.

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Read more from this blogger: Morning Post: Tonight