Entries by Cathy Svejkovsky

The Quest for Montana Food Self-Reliance—What Will It Take?

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By Tammy Howard, NCAT Agriculture Specialist I recently attended a summit session convened by NCAT’s Montana partners at Alternative Energy Resources Organization to discuss a collective strategy to increase Montana’s food self-reliance. The backdrop of this gathering was a report titled A Regional Approach to Food System Resilience, the result of recent efforts in New […]

Right Livelihood: Reflecting on my 24 years working for NCAT’s ATTRA program

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By Guy King Ames, retired NCAT Horticulture Specialist This past summer I found myself stranded in the Manchester, NH, airport where I had landed three or four hours later than scheduled because of flight delays. It was a Sunday night around 11 p.m. and Andy Pressman and Mike Lewis, my co-workers who had been there […]

More Than a Farm: Setting Your Agribusiness Up for Success

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By Hakeem Holmes, NCAT Agriculture Specialist Farming—one of the world’s oldest professions—encompasses enterprises that individuals start for multitude of different purposes, whether for desire for self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship, family tradition, or entrepreneurial ventures. Farms, no matter the reason they begin, have all the elements of a complex organization, including people, processes, culture, technology, strategy, structure, […]

Agroecological Crop Selection, Part 1

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By Justin Duncan, NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Specialist For the past couple years, NCAT has worked with the Southern Risk Management Education Center to provide training to farmers on how to better decide which crops to plant based on agroecological methods. This blog series will summarize the subject matter we shared with producers during those classes. […]

High Tunnel Soil Management for Season Extension

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By Chris Lent, NCAT Agriculture Specialist When I began to see how unique the growing conditions in my high tunnel are compared to open-field growing, I started to think differently about how to maintain soil health and manage soil fertility for high tunnel growing and season extension. Soil fertility is the soil’s capacity to hold […]

Adopting Water-Smart Practices in the Rio Grande Valley

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By Katelyn Amador, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley The Hub of Prosperity is an urban 5-acre farm managed by sustainable agriculture students like me at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg, Texas. At the Hub, alongside UTRGV classmates, coworkers, and community members, we dive deeper into building a sustainable food system […]

Diagnosing Soil Compaction on Grazing Lands

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By Justin Morris In an earlier blog, we discussed the causes of soil compaction, largely driven by overgrazing, which reduces rooting depth, root exudation, and soil aggregation. Now that we know the cause of soil compaction, how can we determine if soil compaction is present and the severity of it? Read on to find out. […]

Blueberry: Respect Both Kinds of Roots

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By Guy K. Ames, NCAT Horticulture Specialist I know of no fruit-bearing bush or tree killed with greater frequency by home gardeners than blueberry plants. I’ve been a fruit-plant nurseryman for over 40 years, and my customers asked so often for free replacements for their dead blueberry plants that we just stopped carrying them in […]

Climate-Smart Farming in Central and Southern Appalachia

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By Tammy Barnes, NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Specialist I love fall’s golden quaking aspens nestled amongst the evergreens in western U.S. mountain ranges, but autumn in Appalachia is all about color! The oranges, reds, burgundies, purples, and bronzes of the mixed hardwoods offer a glorious paint palette. The science of leaf color is complex and not […]