AgribusinessThe Purdue University-CME Group Ag Economy Barometer fell from 135 to 123, and only 48% of farmers said the country was heading in the right direction, the lowest since the question was first asked in July 2025.
EnvironmentAbout 40 people from the EPA, the Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA, universities and farm groups spent three days in Minnesota and South Dakota looking at how conservation and spraying practice can protect listed species.
OrganicA North Carolina study found that enzyme activity, microbial biomass and microbial necromass can act as early proxies for soil carbon under cover crops and reduced tillage, years before carbon itself can be measured.
CropsCover crops cost $42 to $120 an acre to establish, but South Dakota research found grazing them returned $17.23 an acre in the first year and $43.61 in the second, and EQIP can cover up to 75 percent of costs.
EnvironmentThe Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development is funding five studies on how PFAS gets into fields, which crops take it up and how farmers can test for it cheaply.
CropsThe second edition of Cover Crops: Improving Soil Health, Stewardship and Profitability on the Farm adds new chapters and the experience of 12 farmers, and can be read free online.
CropsThe National Cover Crop Variety Testing Program compared commercial varieties of six fall-planted cover crops across 13 US sites; at the New York site cereal rye ND Gardner gave the most spring biomass.
AgrotechA USDA-funded project is collecting more than 13,000 soil samples from about 6,000 fields to rebuild the free SHAPE online tool so it gives farmers local soil-health benchmarks and practice recommendations.
CropsThe Weed Science Society of America says well-timed fall cover crops can suppress herbicide-resistant weeds and cut herbicide and nitrogen costs, if they build enough biomass.
The Wolfe family's 1,500-acre Fairfield County farm, run on no-till, strip-till and cover crops, has won an Ohio Conservation Farm Family Award.
CropsAn overwinter cover crop of endophytic meadow fescue, rolled and sprayed off before strip-tilled sugar beet, left just 0.3 aphids per plant against five after a standard cover crop in a British Beet Research Organisation trial at Morley Farms, offering growers a non-chemical lever against virus yell
The ninth CTIC/SARE/ASTA survey, released 1 September at the Farm Progress Show from 657 farmers in 46 states, finds average cover-crop acreage of 397.9, a 3.5 bu/ac corn and 1.4 bu/ac soybean yield gain after covers, one in three users grazing them, 16.3% using drones, and 81.6% of farmers paid an
A Natural Resources Conservation Service soil health specialist argues that the yield penalty farmers once suffered when switching to no-till is far less likely today, provided the soil's biology is rebuilt before the change.
