Sustainable Agriculture Archives

An Oregon farmer grew tomatoes, potatoes, squash, garlic and beans for 40 years without irrigation; careful soil preparation kept stored moisture in the root zone

He started dry farming in California but moved to a 9.6-acre site near Veneta, Oregon, in 2007 Someone has rightly said that ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’. Over decades, weather patterns became less predictable across the Pacific Northwest, and farmers contended with hotter temperatures, drought and shrinking snowmelt that strained water supplies. It was […]

A Spanish vineyard has gone more than 20 years without irrigation or pesticides; its cover-cropped topsoil now has over twice the organic matter of nearby tilled soil

Representative Image (AI-generated) For more than two decades, the soil between rows of grapevines in a Spanish vineyard has remained covered with spontaneous vegetation instead of being repeatedly tilled. The unusual approach was associated with a striking difference beneath the vines: soil managed with long-term vegetation cover contained more than twice as much organic matter […]

In 2024, a Minnesota dairy began turning manure from more than 2,000 cows into renewable gas; the project can produce up to 480,000 gasoline-gallon equivalents a year

Clean Energy’s latest RNG production facility at Minnesota dairy begins injecting into pipeline On a 55-acre dairy farm in rural Minnesota, manure from more than 2,000 milking cows is being turned into ultra-low-carbon vehicle fuel that is sent directly into interstate natural gas pipelines. The renewable natural gas (RNG) facility at Ash Grove Dairy near […]