Row Crops Articles

Crops face a greater risk of slug damage and if left untreated, this can become extremely expensive for farmers, and is estimated to cost the potato industry up to £53 million per year*, as any slug damage reduces saleability and ultimately profitability of a crop. Slugs are most damaging to potatoes during the early stages of tuber bulking, which is starting to happen now. So make sure you ...

Jul. 29, 2016

By Certis UK

The presence of orderly arranged rows and spacing of crop vegetation increases the anisotropy of the Earth's surface, and affects the resistance of the surface to overland flow. However, few studies have addressed how the orderly arrangement of crop vegetation affects the resistance of the surface to overland flow. In the present study, we consider that flow resistance has anisotropic ...

Jun. 23, 2016

By IWA Publishing

Today from InfoAg, FarmLogs, the leading all-in-one field monitoring platform and trusted partner to over 25% of U.S. row crop farms, announced the release of FarmLogs Flow, the first connected machine product to generate instant yield maps. The small plug-in hardware device integrates with the FarmLogs platform and automatically creates yield maps, eliminating the complex and manual time ...

Aug. 26, 2015

By TractorExport

Nearly 80% of all pesticides applied to row crops are herbicides, and these applications pose potentially significant ecotoxicological risks to non‐target plants and associated pollinators. In response to the widespread occurrence of weed species resistant to glyphosate, biotechnology companies have developed crops resistant to the synthetic‐auxin herbicides dicamba or 2,4‐D, and once ...

Jul. 17, 2015

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Following in Rachel Carson’s footsteps, a new generation of scientists investigates a new generation of pesticides. Christy Morrissey is driving her white pickup truck along Canada’s endless prairie highway, windows open, listening for birds. She points to the scatter of ponds glinting in the landscape, nestled among fields of canola that stretch as far as the eye ...

Sep. 25, 2014

By Ensia

In Hungary, the MARGINS project is being conducted near Lake Balaton - the largest lake in Central Europe. The lake is renowned for its beauty and wildlife. Its surrounding hilly landscape is covered with rich brown forest soil. This landscape is, however, prone to soil erosion -in particular, rills develop when soil is weakened by excessive tillage and exposed to intense rainstorms. If not ...

Jun. 23, 2014

By Syngenta

By Lester R. Brown As food supplies have tightened, a new geopolitics of food has emerged—a world in which the global competition for land and water is intensifying and each country is fending for itself. We cannot claim that we are unaware of the trends that are undermining our food supply and thus our civilization. We know what we need ...

Mar. 12, 2014

By Earth Policy Institute

Food & Water Security: Protecting our Most Precious Resources will be a major issue discussed at GLOBE 2014, taking place in Vancouver Canada march 26-28. This article by Lester R. Brown, reprinted here with the kind permission of the author, puts the issue of water and food security ...

Mar. 12, 2014

By GLOBE Foundation

A fable of six blind men and an elephant originated centuries ago somewhere on the Indian continent. In it the blind men try to identify an elephant by touching only one part. According to the fable each man came to a different conclusion as to what the elephant was. The parable illustrates that though opinions may vary, there’s some truth to be found in all of them. That’s the way it ...

Feb. 11, 2014

By National Farmers Union

We describe the prevalence and severity of intersex in the form of testicular oocytes (TO) in largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides; LMB) collected over a 5 yr period from a variety of surface waters on the Delmarva Peninsula, USA, a region dominated by poultry production and agricultural land‐use. During a 2005–2007 survey of approximately 200 male specimens representing 6 fish and 2 frog ...

Feb. 1, 2014

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In the period between the 1930s and 1992, farm bills generally instituted compensation policies that took the form of price supports. These policies were designed to manage the surplus production that resulted from centuries of developmental policies while allowing U.S. farmers the chance, with hard work and good management skills, to provide their family with a livelihood. Compensation policies ...

Jan. 10, 2014

By National Farmers Union

Estuarine eutrophication as a result of agricultural land use including the use of chemical fertilizers is increasing worldwide. Prince Edward Island, Canada has very high agricultural intensity by international standards with approximately 44% of the land area under production, and some watersheds in excess of 75% agricultural land‐use. The type of agriculture is also intensive with primarily ...

Jan. 10, 2013

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Despite increased attention and demand for the adoption of agroforestry practices throughout the world, rigorous long-term scientific studies confirming environmental benefits from the use of agroforestry practices are limited. The objective of this study was to examine nonpoint-source pollution (NPSP) reduction as influenced by agroforestry buffers in watersheds under grazing and row crop ...

Feb. 22, 2011

By Soil Science Society of America (SSSA)

In environments with limited rainfall, skip-row configuration (planting one or a group of rows alternated with rows not planted) under rainfed conditions may increase yield of grain sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] due to conservation of soil water between widely-spaced crop rows that is not accessed until late in the growing season. A field study was conducted over 10 site-years in Nebraska ...

Jan. 1, 2010

By Soil Science Society of America (SSSA)

Despite high volumes of manure production in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, there are still areas of forage production that are nutrient deficient because manures have traditionally been applied to higher-value row crops. This study was conducted to compare the effects of poultry litter and inorganic fertilizers on soil fertility and forage production. Two sites had the same treatments ...

Jan. 1, 2010

By Soil Science Society of America (SSSA)

Red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) use as an underseeded cover crop in winter cereals has declined due to inability of growers to consistently establish uniform stands. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of light and soil moisture competition on underseeded red clover establishment and end of season dry matter production. Field trials were conducted at multiple locations in 2005 ...

Nov. 30, 2009

By Soil Science Society of America (SSSA)

Managing forages as living mulches during row crop production requires suppressing the forages to produce economical crop yields. The objective of this research was to identify forage plants with varied growth habit, persistence, and yield potential to provide desirable ecosystem functions in a multifunctional cropping system. Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), kura clover (Trifolium ambiguum Bieb.), ...

Aug. 31, 2009

By Soil Science Society of America (SSSA)

Epicuticular wax forms an outer coating on the aerial surfaces of many crop plants and is implicated in tolerance to several environmental stresses including drought. Advances in knowledge of biosynthesis and secretion of these leaf surface waxes could lead to improvements in crop-stress tolerance. To study the genetics of epicuticular wax deposition, we screened for bloomless (bm) and ...

Jul. 18, 2009

By Soil Science Society of America (SSSA)

Full retention of sugarcane (interspecific hybrids of Saccharum spp.) postharvest residue may reduce ratoon crop yields. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of different residue removal timings and methods on sugarcane yield. A two-factor (timing and method) experiment was conducted on both clay and silt loam soils in southeastern Louisiana. Removal timings consisted of the ...

Jun. 27, 2009

By Soil Science Society of America (SSSA)

Current demand for soybean grain [Glycine max (L.) Merrill] may lead to a conversion of pasture and Conservation Reserve Program fields into soybean or corn (Zea mays L.) production. Our objective was to determine the effect of soybean seed inoculation with Bradyrhizobium spp. and fertilizer N application rate on soybean productivity planted 1 and 2 yr after conversion to row crop production. ...

Jun. 27, 2009

By Soil Science Society of America (SSSA)