Management strategies/practices for increasing storage of organic C and N in soil in cropping systems in the Northern Great Plains of North America

Non-Peer Reviewe

Alternative Intensive Animal Farming Tactics That Minimize Negative Animal Impact and Improve Profitability

Animal agricultural businesses strive to improve efficiencies, reduce input costs, and maintain healthy animals with minimal disease control intervention. Bovine respiratory disease is a disease complex that increases when cattle are reared in confinement costing the North American beef cattle industry three-billion dollars or more annually. Principles of soil health define the need to reduce tillage, keep the soil surface covered, rotate crops and plant cover crops for greater plant diversity, maintain living roots in the soil for as long as possible, and integrate livestock grazing into cropping systems. As beef calves age they experience more viral and microbial challenges which stimulate an immune system response resulting in greater disease resilience and well-being when commingled with unfamiliar cattle for confinement feedlot finishing. Wintering calves after weaning in November for modest growth of 0.59 kg/day (1.30 lbs./day) combined with integrated grazing of a sequence of native range and annual forages grown in a diverse multi-crop rotation is a management mechanism that increases calf age (200+ days), promotes structural growth, and delays feedlot entry. Retaining ownership using a vertically integrated business model from birth to slaughter accounting for all business inputs and outputs has resulted in improved environmental balance and business profitability

Some Aspects of Mineral and Organic Nutrition for Improved Yield and Oil Contents of Mustard (Brassica Juncea)

Fertilizers are a powerful control instrument for plant products. For more objective estimation of the role of fertilizers in development and crop formation of mustard (Brassica juncea), it is necessary to have data on rates and character of absorption of nutrients. The maintenance and as the sizes of receipt of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium culture crops depended on their features and nutrient conditions. The experiment was conducted during the 2008-2009 (2009), 2009-2010 (2010) and 2010-2011 (2011) growing seasons on a meadow chestnut soil at the experimental station "Agrouniversity" of the Kazakh National Agrarian University of Almaty in Kazakhstan to evaluate the effect of mineral and organic fertilizers, their combination on nutrient uptake, yield and oil content of mustard (Brassica juncea) in short crop rotations (three year rotations). Fertilizers rate had a significant effect on N, P, and K at all vegetation stages. It has been established that annual application of N75P50К45 mineral fertilizers or 30 Mg/ha of cow dung a time in three year is necessary to get the seed yield 2.32 and 2.18 Mg/ha. With fertilization, the product quality enhances, i.e. crude oil content, which maximum quantity was recorded in case of manure and vermicompost treatments

Effects of Mineral Nutrition on Seed Yield and Quality of Mustard (Brassica Juncea)

Mustard (Brassica juncea) is a significant component of the world production of vegetable oils. Mustard is a thermophilic and very drought-resistant plant well adapted for dry continental climates. Mustard (Brassica juncea) is a drought-resistant crop which can tolerate water stress and can be grown in rotation with other crop species. Mustard is relatively undemanding to soil and it can even grow on saline soils. The nutrients most important for the growth and development of mustard are nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). The study was conducted during the 2009, 2010 and 2011 growing seasons on a meadow chestnut soil at the "Agrouniversity" experiment station of the Kazakh National Agrarian University at Almaty, Kazakhstan to evaluate the effect of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers on the production of mustard in short crop rotations. Nitrogen rates of 0,40 and 75 kg ha-1 gave seed yields of 1.628, 2.095 and 2.191 Mg ha-1, respectively. Protein yields were 0.402, 0.543 and 0.573 Mg ha-1 and oil yields were 0.352, 0.498 and 0.505 mg ha-1 for the three respective N rates. Seed, protein and oil yields were 119%, 123% and 127%, respectively, when soil test P was increased to 25 kg ha-1 from 15 kg ha-1 indicating a need to maintain high soil P in mustard production systems

Developments in Agricultural Soil Quality and Health: Reflections by the Research Committee on Soil Organic Matter Management

The North Central Education and Research Activity Committee (NCERA-59) was formed in 1952 to address how soil organic matter formation and management practices affect soil structure and productivity. It is in this capacity that we comment on the science supporting soil quality and associated soil health assessment for agricultural lands with the goal of hastening progress in this important field. Even though the suite of soil quality indicators being applied by U.S. soil health efforts closely mirrors the “minimum data set” we developed and recommended in the mid-1990s, we question whether the methods or means for their selection and development are sufficient to meet current and emerging soil health challenges. The rush to enshrine a standard suite of dated measures may be incompatible with longer-term goals. Legitimate study of soil health considers soil change accrued over years to decades that influence on- and off-site function. Tailoring of methods to local conditions is needed to effectively apply and interpret indicators for different soil resource regions and land uses. Adherence to a set suite of methods selected by subjective criteria should be avoided, particularly when we do not yet have adequate data or agreed upon interpretive frameworks for many so-called “Tier 1” biological indicators used in soil health assessment. While pooling data collected by producer-groups is one of the most exciting new trends in soil health, standardizing methods to meet broad inventory goals could compromise indicator use for site or application-specific problem solving. Changes in our nation’s research landscape are shifting responsibility for soil stewardship from national and state government backed entities to public-private partnerships. As a result, it is critical to ensure that the data needed to assess soil health are generated by reproducible methods selected through a transparent process, and that data are readily available for public and private sector use. Appropriate methods for engagement need to be applied by public-private research partnerships as they establish and expand coordinated research enterprises that can deliver fact-based interpretation of soil quality indicators within the type of normative soil health framework conceived by USDA over 20 years ago. We look to existing examples as we consider how to put soil health information into the hands of practitioners in a manner that protects soils’ services

Developments in Agricultural Soil Quality and Health: Reflections by the Research Committee on Soil Organic Matter Management

The North Central Education and Research Activity Committee (NCERA-59) was formed in 1952 to address how soil organic matter formation and management practices affect soil structure and productivity. It is in this capacity that we comment on the science supporting soil quality and associated soil health assessment for agricultural lands with the goal of hastening progress in this important field. Even though the suite of soil quality indicators being applied by U.S. soil health efforts closely mirrors the “minimum data set” we developed and recommended in the mid-1990s, we question whether the methods or means for their selection and development are sufficient to meet current and emerging soil health challenges. The rush to enshrine a standard suite of dated measures may be incompatible with longer-term goals. Legitimate study of soil health considers soil change accrued over years to decades that influence on- and off-site function. Tailoring of methods to local conditions is needed to effectively apply and interpret indicators for different soil resource regions and land uses. Adherence to a set suite of methods selected by subjective criteria should be avoided, particularly when we do not yet have adequate data or agreed upon interpretive frameworks for many so-called “Tier 1” biological indicators used in soil health assessment. While pooling data collected by producer-groups is one of the most exciting new trends in soil health, standardizing methods to meet broad inventory goals could compromise indicator use for site or application-specific problem solving. Changes in our nation’s research landscape are shifting responsibility for soil stewardship from national and state government backed entities to public-private partnerships. As a result, it is critical to ensure that the data needed to assess soil health are generated by reproducible methods selected through a transparent process, and that data are readily available for public and private sector use. Appropriate methods for engagement need to be applied by public-private research partnerships as they establish and expand coordinated research enterprises that can deliver fact-based interpretation of soil quality indicators within the type of normative soil health framework conceived by USDA over 20 years ago. We look to existing examples as we consider how to put soil health information into the hands of practitioners in a manner that protects soils’ services

North American Prairie Wetlands are Important Nonforested Land-Based Carbon Storage Sites

We evaluated the potential of prairie wetlands in North America as carbon sinks. Agricultural conversion has resulted in the average loss of 10.1 Mg ha- of soil organic carbon on over 16 million ha of wetlands in this region. Wetland restoration has potential to sequester 378 Tg of organic carbon over a 10-year period. Wetlands can sequester over twice the organic carbon as no-till cropland on only about 17% of the total land area in the region. We estimate that wetland restoration has potential to offset 2.4% of the annual fossil CO2 emission reported for North America in 1990