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4 Ecosystem Processes: Nutrient Cycle Part 3
How Life Uses Atoms As we learned from Part 2 of this series, the ingredients for life are all around us. Some atoms, like nitrogen and oxygen, are abundant, so it comes as no surprise that living organisms have them in abundance in their bodies. Others, like boron and zinc, are less abundant so they […]
Adapted Cows
As I travel across the United States working with ranchers, I’m often asked where to focus time and energy to make the greatest impact on profitability. In many of my presentations, I close with a couple of summary slides that highlight the highest-leverage decisions-those that can drive meaningful improvement in the shortest amount of time. […]
Regenerative Farms: Build It, Share It, Leave It
During a beautiful, abnormally warm February day this past winter, my two-year-old grandson was looking out the window and pointing at the heifers along my driveway and rambling about “da cows”. I decided to let him see them up close. Like most young, curious, and gentle cattle, they lined up shoulder-to-shoulder and slowly moved closer […]
4 Ecosystem Processes: Nutrient Cycle (Part 2)
Where the Wild Atoms Are Learning the story of nutrient cycling is a necessary first step to memorizing the nutrients and how to manage them appropriately. Most of us were “taught” the latter without the former, which is an extremely difficult way for our brains to remember something. The story provides the substance for the […]
Knowing Your Numbers: A New Webinar Series on Soil Testing
In my last article I made the case that conventional fertility programs are costing farmers real money – and that the soil tests driving most of those programs don’t actually measure what we think they do. Understanding what’s wrong with the current approach is step one. Knowing what to do instead is step two. That’s […]
Silvopasture: Benefits to Livestock and Land
What is a Silvopasture? Silvopastures are grazing systems where trees, forage crops, and livestock are integrated on the same land. This blended microecosystem creates many beneficial symbiotic relationships between the soil, the plants, and the livestock. Silvopastures consist of a diverse mix of trees-such as hardwoods, conifers, fruit and nut producers, and nitrogen-fixing species-and support […]
The Fertilizer Fallacy: Pushing Yields Up and Profits Down
There’s a deeply held belief in modern agriculture that more fertilizer equals more yield, and more yield equals more profit. It sounds reasonable on the surface. But when you sharpen your pencil and run the numbers, the math often tells a very different story. For many farmers, a significant chunk of their fertilizer bill is […]
Fed Feed vs Grazed Feed
Have you heard the saying, “Anytime you place a piece of equipment between the mouth of the cow and her feed source, it has just cost you money.” This statement is generally true. That doesn’t mean the cost is never profitable or justified-it’s just that in cow-calf or stocker operations, it only makes sense occasionally. […]
Turning Crop Residue into Winter Feed Profit
I live in a cold part of the northern Great Plains in southern Saskatchewan. We have snow for four and a half to five months every year. December, January, and February rarely get above freezing. Our biggest cost in raising a cow is winter feed. To be successful, we need to be very aware of […]
Making a Farm Financially Resilient
At Understanding Ag, we often talk about how focusing on the Six Soil Health Principles leads to resiliency of the Four Ecosystem Processes on our farms. That is extremely important and doing so certainly significantly lowers input costs, helping to make our farms more profitable, but if we genuinely want our farm to be financially […]
4 Ecosystem Processes: Nutrient Cycle (Part 1)
The nutrient cycle is one of the four foundational ecosystem processes, along with the energy cycle, water cycle, and cycle of life. It’s also one of the most overlooked drivers of farm profitability and long-term resilience. Just think about what you spend on ag inputs every year. Whether you’re a farmer, rancher, gardener or “yardener”, […]
Diversity. Life. Profit. Rediscovering Opportunity Through Crop Diversity
New Season Brings New Opportunities As we come into a new planting season, it’s easy to get excited about new opportunities. I’ll admit that for many years the idea of polycropping, intercropping-or whatever fancy term came along next-felt pretty intimidating to me. You’ve likely heard of The Three Sisters Method, but how do we apply […]