From Our Experts
Change One Thing, Change Everything Why Systems Thinking Is the Key to Farm and Ranch Survival By Brian Dougherty Farm and ranch profitability depends on more than crop yields, livestock performance, or input costs. These factors are connected through a larger system, and decisions that improve one area can create costly problems elsewhere. Systems thinking […]
Stockpiled Forage for Winter Grazing, Part 2: How to Supplement Forage and Develop Adapted Cattle In Part 1 of this series, we explored how stockpiled forage can help reduce winter feeding costs and keep cattle grazing when pastures go dormant. But making stockpiled forage work through winter takes more than simply leaving grass standing. Forage […]
Stockpiled Forage for Winter Grazing, Part 1: Growing and Managing Stockpiled Forage By Fernando Falomir Managing livestock in brittle environments requires us to grow enough forage during the growing season to carry the herd through the dormant months, but growing the forage is only half of the equation. We also have to ration that stockpile […]
Phytonutrients: Nature’s Pharmacy Bite into a deep purple blueberry, a bright orange carrot, or a deep red tomato and you’re tasting more than protein, carbs, and fat. You’re also tasting phytonutrients, the compounds that give food unique colors, flavors, and much of its power to protect health. Never heard of them? Well, you’re not alone. […]
Rain is Free. Runoff and Ruts are Expensive: Make your dairy more resilient to compaction and extreme weather. By Brian Dougherty Soil Compaction Is a Growing Challenge for Dairy Farms Where would compaction rank on your dairy farm’s list of top challenges? Recent research suggests it should rank higher than most of us admit. The […]
The Essential Cycles of Regenerative Agriculture The Real Cost of Not Knowing Regenerative agriculture has done a lot of good for a lot of operations, but somewhere along the way it also turned into a marketing word. Biological inoculants. Soil-boosting amendments. Proprietary blends with names that sound like they were focus-grouped by a pharmaceutical company. […]
Diversity matters! We say this all the time. It is emphasized twice in Understanding Ag’s 6-3-4TM Framework. One of the six soil health principles is adding diversity. Our cropping and grazing systems have simplified nature incredibly. If we want to fix our degraded soil, we need to make changes in how we farm. You never […]
A Season to Recharge Don’t let solar energy go to waste this fall By Brian Dougherty Everyone has probably dealt with a dead car battery at some point. It doesn’t matter how big the battery is; eventually it will go dead if the alternator doesn’t recharge it. Soil works the same way. It is the […]
6-3-4™ Changes Explained By Kyle Richardville, Understanding Ag, LLC If you’ve spent any time in an Understanding Ag workshop, webinar, or consultation, you’ve heard us talk about the 6-3-4™: the Six Principles of Soil Health, the Three Rules of Adaptive Stewardship, and the Four Ecosystem Processes. It’s the framework that informs every recommendation, and it […]
What We Learned in Part 5 In Part 5 of this series, we introduced the biological cast of characters that make nutrient cycling actually happen: the Soil Food Web. We drew the line between abiotic nutrient release (slow, rock-and-weather-driven processes) and biotic cycling (fast, life-driven processes measured in minutes and days), and walked through the […]