Search results for 'Changshu City'

Spring is about to pop - Benton City, WA

By #SoilMatters

Published 1 years, 2 weeks ago

Soil temperatures have risen 4-6F in the past week. This has signaled these Chelan #cherry buds to swell. This is an early ripening variety. Which means the number of days a farmer has to grow and nurture the crop are limited. This means every day counts from bloom until harvest and are critical to develop the fruit in preparation of harvest...

How Yield Champions Use Cover Crops for Growing Higher Bushels

By Laura Barrera

Published 10 months ago

There are many factors that can influence corn yield. In fact, Fred Below, a plant physiologist at the University of Illinois, identified seven of them, which he dubbed the “Seven Wonders of the Corn Yield World. ”The seven wonders, ranked in order of most influence on yield, are:WeatherNitrogenHybridPrevious cropPlant populationTillageGrowth regulatorsWhile Below was referring to the cash crop rotation in the fourth wonder, some farmers are taking it one step further by seeding cover crops. The benefit of added crop diversity along with improvements to soil health is paying off, as some of these farmers are achieving the highest yields in the country... His goal for using cover crops is to increase organic matter — which on most fields has gone from 2% or less to 7% and higher — break up the soil hardpan and increase the soil’s water-holding capacity...

The Story of AgFuse

By Pat Rogers

Published 8 months ago

In July of 2014, I sat in the audience on the last day of the InfoAg Conference in St Louis. It was my first major farm conference trip outside of somewhat local events that had been put on near my home in the Carolinas. Frankly, my mind was blown with this experience. I had taken in more new information in a three-day period than I had in the previous five years combined... In the future, we’ll also have the capacity to add classified ads, job postings, personalized event calendars and local marketing bids...

On the Offensive with Cover Crops

By Pat Rogers

Published 1 years, 2 months ago

In the past few years, we have made a concerted effort to increase the usage of cover crops and other conservation practices on our farm. I have learned a lot of lessons from this experience but one stands out above the rest. Being a good steward of the environment and aiming to produce high yields don’t have to be mutually exclusive... So what does this have to do with cover crops? As mentioned above, in years where water is your limiting factor cover crops can help mitigate some of the water stress by increasing the soil’s water holding capacity and also by providing shade to the soil surface... Cover crops help row crops access additional nutrients in the soil profile through four different biological processes: 1) The breakdown of carbon from decaying cover crop residue, 2) Roots from the cover crops produce “exudate acids” which convert minerals in the soil into plant available nutrients 3) The cover crops act as a host plant for arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, which are microbes that have a direct effect on plant health and nutrient storage capacity of the soil within the root zone of the plant and 4) By producing additional Nitrogen with leguminous cover crops...

Ten Ways to Increase Your Farm's Profits in 2019

By AgFuse Exclusive Content

Published 5 months ago

So, what about smaller purchases that you know will make you more efficient, purchases that you’ve been putting off because times are tight? You can easily become more efficient by upgrading your nurse tank capacity or buying a portable welder... What Is Equipment Efficiency? There is an optimal size for your farm based on whatever acreage capacity your equipment currently has... To gain field capacity, you want to optimally go wider with these machines rather than adding additional units... When we look at this cropping system annually, we ask ourselves where the bottleneck is based on our current equipment capacity... The 800 acres for each is optimal based on our current equipment capacity...

Categories: Agribusiness, Marketing, Cover Crops

7 Ways to Measure Soil Health Improvements

By Laura Barrera

Published 2 weeks ago

While there are numerous reasons for using cover crops, a primary one is improving soil health. In fact, it’s the one benefit most farmers using cover crops have experienced: In the most recent Cover Crop Survey Annual Report, of those who rated the statement, “Using cover crops has improved soil health on my farm,” 86% agreed or strongly agreed. The report notes that it’s interesting and heartening that “soil health reflects an embrace of a long-term, hard-to-quantify benefit of cover crops, and that for the past two surveys, it has achieved the top spot by garnering 86% of the responses... In a Penn State Extension article written by soil scientist Sjeord Duiker, he recommends using the penetrometer when the whole profile is at field capacity, which is approximately 24 hours after a soaking rain... Higher Organic MatterAlong with infiltrating water faster, cover crops should also help your soil’s water-holding capacity, as it increases the soil’s organic matter...

Categories: Cover Crops

What Farmers Need to Know About Mycorrhizae

By Laura Barrera

Published 5 months ago

If someone asked you, “How do plants take up the water and nutrients they need?” you’d probably tell them through the roots. But did you know that for many crops, those roots aren’t working alone?That’s because most plant species associate with mycorrhizal fungi. What is mycorrhizal fungi? University of Alberta biological scientist JC Cahill says that mycorrhizas are actually the interaction between a fungus and a plant. Although there are many different types of mycorrhizae, the only one crop farmers need to be concerned about is arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), as 65% of plant species associate with it... “We know that adding fertilizer doesn’t always increase crop yield because there are going to be some farms and conditions that have enough fertilizer, or you get toxicity,” he explains...

Categories: Cover Crops

How Bacillus mucilaginosus can Prevent drought in the summer？

By Darren Chan

Published 9 months ago

When it comes to drought prevention,everyone thinks that they may need more watering. Now,there is a better way that we can use microbiological fertilizers like Bacillus mucilaginosus to prevent drought. The reason is that:Bacillus mucilaginosus is also called silicate bacteria,it has strong potassium-dissolving ability,which is selected from the roots of crops and produced by industrial fermentation with a specific medium. Through its life activities in the soil,it increases the supply of plant nutrient elements,stimulates crop growth,inhibits harmful microbial activity,and has a strong effect of increasing production... Bacillus mucilaginosus can decompose silicon in the soil for the use of plants, making the waxy layer of plants thicker and improving the water holding capacity of plants...

Categories: Agribusiness, Marketing, Organic

5 reasons to choose chitosan oligosaccharide in organic agriculture

By Darren Chan

Published 2 months ago

In the application of agricultural production, chitosan oligosaccharides not only make crops grow better and robust, but also has obvious effects in stress resistance and pest resistance. Numerous studies have shown that chitosan oligosaccharides can induce broad-spectrum resistance, enhance the plant’s own defense ability, inhibit the growth of a variety of plant pathogenic microorganisms, and it is non-toxic and can be microbial degradation, and will not pollute the environment. This makes it an important role in agricultural production as a new type of green production. 1... The role of chitosan oligosaccharides in agricultureChitosan oligosaccharides have wide adaptability to plants, good affinity, no toxicity, no side effects, no harm to humans and animals, biodegradability, no soiling in the soil, slow degradation to small molecular carbohydrates, no pollution to the environment, an excellent pure natural ecological preparation...

Categories: Agribusiness, Irrigation, Organic

What Does CRISPR Mean for Modern Agriculture?

By Amanda Allworth

Published 10 months ago

The USDA began reporting corn yield estimates in 1866. That year, the average farm was harvesting 24. 3 bushels per acre; today that same farm averages 176. 6 bushels of corn per acre... The specificity and simplicity of CRISPR technology have agricultural scientists excited about the future...

Categories: Agribusiness, Corn, Soybeans