The 11th Annual Sustainable Ag Expo will be held November 16-17, 2015, at the Madonna Inn Expo Center in San Luis Obispo, California. The expo, hosted by the Vineyard Team, promises educational information for growers of many crops. “The Expo started as a way to explore various issues affecting different types of ag professionals,” said Kris Beal, Executive Director for The …
Ag Biologicals Can Play Starring Role in Productivity
Colin Bletsky, Vice President of BioAg, Novozymes was a participate in the panel discussion following the 2015 Gap Report release during World Food Prize. In an interview, he says that Novozymes came on board with Global Harvest Initiative because the company has a mission to help develop sustainable technologies. Bletsky is also passionate about this mission in his role as …
Soil Selected as Topic of Ag Journalist Award
International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are gearing up for the IFAJ-FAO Award for Excellence in Global Food Security Reporting. And with harvest approaching in the northern hemisphere and planting getting ready to roll in the southern, now is the perfect time to address the contest’s topic– soil. The topic comes from …
Soil Renaissance and Phytobiomes Initiative Collaborate
Today the Soil Renaissance and Phytobiomes Initiative announced announced a collaboration aimed at understanding how soil health and the broader phytobiomes in which plants exist impact food production for a growing population. In December 2013, The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation and Farm Foundation, NFP, launched the Soil Renaissance to bring attention to soil health’s critical role in feeding a global …
Soil Health Partners Work Together
The Soil Health Partnership (SHP) was launched just shy of a year ago with seed funding in part from Monsanto and technical support from The Nature Conservancy (TNC). That may seem like a case of strange bedfellows, but everyone has the same goal of healthier soils. At the first Soil Health Summit last week in St. Louis, Monsanto Sustainability Business …
Research to Quantify Cover Crop Benefits
A common theme at last week’s 2015 Soil Health Summit in St. Louis was the need to quantify the benefits for farmers of using cover crops. Purdue University economics professor Dr. Wally Tyner is trying to do just that. “I’ve worked in a lot of different areas in economics and this is the hardest nut to crack,” he said. “Because …
Soil Health Partnership Scientific Advisers
The Soil Health Partnership includes an impressive and distinguished panel of scientific advisers who are happy to be involved in an effort they consider to be critical to the future of the world. Most of those advisers attended the first Soil Health Summit held this week in St. Louis. Dr. Wayne Honeycutt, deputy chief for science and technology with USDA’s …
Soil Health Partnership Holds Summit
The Soil Health Partnership (SHP) was officially launched at last year’s Commodity Classic so it will just be one year old in another month. But Nick Goeser with the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) says the concept had a relatively long gestation period. “The idea for the Soil Health Partnership started in 2011, so within three years we came to …
2015 Designated as International Year of Soils
The United Nations has designated 2015 as the International Year of Soils (IYS) to increase awareness and understanding of the importance of healthy soil for food security and essential ecosystem functions. Soil Renaissance, a group led by our friends at Farm Foundation, is celebrating IYS and its first year in existence as a movement to make soil health the cornerstone …
Calcium Products Opens World Headquarters in Iowa
Calcium Products recently celebrated the grand opening of its new headquarters located at the Iowa State University Research Park, including a new research and development laboratory and customer support center. Calcium Products produces of precision soil amendments that improve soil quality to maximize nutrient uptake and strengthen yields. “Our new headquarters and R&D lab is located in the heart of …