On a brown, August-dry field in Eastern Washington, a farmer in a combine cuts a 24-foot swath across a field of wheat. The harvested grain then begins a journey, first to the storage bin, then to the local elevator, on…
Read More Agriculture Requires Fertilizer Inputs, and That’s Good
Behind many efforts to make agriculture more sustainable is the idea that our farming systems need to be more like nature. According to agroecologist Miguel Alteri, “By designing farming systems that mimic nature, optimal use can be made of sunlight,…
I recently saw an infographic that stated, “There are no life forms in the soil, which is sterilized…” What was it talking about? Soils on the moon? A toxic chemical spill? Soils around Chernobyl? Nope, this was the description of…
The director of the WSU Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, Chad Kruger, posed the question, "For farm and food system sustainability, is it possible to shift our existing system in the right direction with small, positive changes or…
Read More Stepping, rather than jumping, towards sustainability
Almost everything we do in life must focus on sustainability in order to guarantee the possibilities of continuing those practices in the future. However, lately it seems the term sustainability has become more of a buzz word that implies something…
Written by Matt DiLeo Pioneer and K State are jointly releasing a set of new herbicide resistant sorghum varieties, which will incorporate resistance to ALS and FOP herbicides. Ironically, these non-genetically modified varieties invoke one of the classic bogeymen of anti-GM…
Read More Herbicide Resistant Johnsongrass: Coming soon to a farm near you!
Written by Matt DiLeo Among plant geneticists, breeders are always held up as the pragmatic experts who know what matters in the Real World. But not all fields perceive breeders this way...Sustainable agriculture was a popular session topic at the…
Written by Matt DiLeo The "perennial grain" story seems to pop up every few months. The basic idea is that perennial crops would have higher yields and lower environmental impacts than their annual kin.The picture on the left explains pretty…
Written by Matt DiLeo Variety IR8 is the original "Miracle rice" of the 1960s. This carefully-crafted variety has a stunted, semi-dwarf phenotype, which increases it's harvest index (the proportion of grain biomass to total biomass), and allows it to resist…
Read More Climate Change and the Importance of Maintenance Breeding
