Proofing Station, an impact-first charitable investment fund, announced that it has provided a $1 million low-interest debt investment to The Conservation Fund’s Farms Fund. This will enable the Farms Fund to purchase and conserve critical farmland in the Chicago region and provide a patient path to farmland ownership for new and disadvantaged farmers. The Farms […]

Nebraska shepherds Megan Landes-Murphy and Tom Murphy found it a challenge to utilize the low-value wool from their Shropshire sheep until they purchased a pellet mill and began making fertilizer pellets from it, reports Midwest Messenger. Their company, Kestrel Ridge Pellet Co., is one of just 10 wool pellet manufacturers in the United States. In […]

Emory University reports that environmental scientists have combined field-level data with machine-learning techniques to estimate soil organic carbon at the U.S. continental scale. This new estimate indicates that soil contains about twice as much carbon as the atmosphere and plants combined, and it provides a benchmark to guide adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices. The estimate […]

USDA Economic Research Service published Farmland Rental and Conservation Practice Adoption, a report that explores patterns across cropland owner-operators and cropland renters in the adoption of conservation tillage, cover cropping, and six permanent structural practices (riparian buffers, filter strips, field borders, terraces, grass waterways, and contour farming). Contrary to popular belief, this study found little […]

A study by a University of British Columbia researcher, published in Environmental Research Letters, sheds light on the link between diminishing numbers of wild pollinators and reduced farm productivity. Matthew Mitchell and his colleagues are deeply concerned about declining populations of wild bees—mason bees, carpenter bees, sweat bees and bumble bees—and other wild pollinators like […]