The National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) will host an important national webinar on Jan. 23, 2014, to discuss the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) recent efforts to assure greater uniformity and clarity on its policy related to farmers who currently grow cover crops or may grow them in the future.

In the minds of many, a freshly tilled field is picturesque — clean and ready for the next planting. But according to a soil health expert, what looks good to the eye, isn’t always good for the soil — or a farmer’s bottom line.

Farm Foundation, NFP and The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation announced the launch of a new initiative designed to bring attention to the critical role of soil health in the challenge of feeding 9 billion people by 2050.

Corn that contains proteins that protect it from insect damage has been grown in the U.S. since the mid-1990s.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is opening the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) for new enrollments for federal fiscal year 2014.

In a publication brought to the public’s attention by news release from the University of Illinois several weeks ago, S.A. Khan, Richard Mulvaney and a colleague in the Department of Natural Resource and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois challenged a number of basic tenets of soil fertility, especially practices related to use of potassium (K) fertilizer.

The number of cover crop acres has increased dramatically over the past five years in Iowa — from less than 10,000 acres in 2009 to about 300,000 acres this fall.

The Bremmer family has raised cattle and produced crops in northwestern Illinois for more than a century.

A team of University of Kentucky researchers, led by plant pathologists Pradeep and Aardra Kachroo, has discovered an important component in plants’ ability to resist bacterial and viral pathogens.

Soybean cyst nematode (SCN) is found generally wherever soybeans are grown.