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Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

montanafreepress.org

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Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#41

Post by hammock »

cjrp wrote: post #39
mastax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drip irrigation works best when delivering water directly to the roots of small annual plants. Trees have large root systems, and are planted closely enough that you need to water the entire ground. Perhaps a network of smaller sprayers below the leaf canopy would reduce evaporative losses.

I wonder if there's any benefit to water hitting the leaves on the way down to the soil, i.e. cleaning the leaves. I know indoor plants require cleaning, but perhaps that's specifically because they're indoors.

Depends. In many cases that's something to avoid, e.g. moisture can promote the growth of undesirable molds or other pathogens, or wash off pesticides that you wanted to stay.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#42

Post by gruez »

kickout wrote: post #40
gruez wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>until the land is so marginal it collapses. Where has this happened?

Probably referring to dust bowl era land like Oklahoma. I don't like the word collapse, but I'm guessing there are implying that the ground is x% less productive for crop production or grazing). The risk of land collapsing is probably greatest West of the Missouri river where historic rainfall is less and historic topsoil is less (Dakotas, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, etc).

>Probably referring to dust bowl era land like Oklahoma.

But in that case the use of chemical seems to be unrelated?

>severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent the aeolian processes (wind erosion) caused the [dust bowl] phenomenon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#43

Post by mooreds »

topkai22 wrote: post #37
kilovoltaire wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume any Spotify-only podcast is because Spotify is paying them to be exclusive?

Spotify bought Gimlet (the podcast company) a few years back, so they presumably owned the rights to begin with.

Ah, TIL.

More here if you want to learn about the reasons why: https://www.vox.com/2019/2/7/18214941/alex-blumberg-matt-lie...

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#44

Post by greenie_beans »

blueyes wrote: post #24

Montanan here: This is true. One of the regenerative crop types are pulses (lentils, chick peas), and MT produces a lot. https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/pulse-info/resources-pdf/Growing... The state often appears in stories about agriculture in precarious environments (See Jared Diamond's "Collapse" for one example.) Montana is largely a semi-arid desert, especially over the 2/3's of the state that are northern Great Pla…

where would one go to read about the cherry crops on the flathead? (such a lovely area!)

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#45

Post by kickout »

gruez wrote: post #42
kickout wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably referring to dust bowl era land like Oklahoma. I don't like the word collapse, but I'm guessing there are implying that the ground is x% less productive for crop production or grazing). The risk of land collapsing is probably greatest West of the Missouri river where historic rainfall is less and historic topsoil is less (Dakotas, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, etc).

>Probably referring to dust bowl era land like Oklahoma. But in that case the use of chemical seems to be unrelated? >severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent the aeolian processes (wind erosion) caused the [dust bowl] phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

Maybe not what they are referring too, but you can absolutely 'brick' land by over applying chemicals ('salting the earth'). There is a continuum depending on which chemical and how 'bricked' you make it.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#46

Post by durkie »

Is there an economic argument to be made for increasing the amount of money spent in the local economy?

I often hear it cited as a benefit in situations like this, and it has a certain feel-good quality to it, but instinctively it feels like it means people pay higher prices: if you're buying seed from the local seed & feed, it's almost certainly more expensive than if you buy it from XYZ megacorp.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#47

Post by gdubs »

kaycebasques wrote: post #2

Has anyone here undergone a soil restoration project (big or small)? Did you happen to blog about the progress? There's so much I don't know, like how you even determine that your soil is degraded, or how you measure progress.

My wife and I bought a farm in Oregon and we're in the process of doing exactly this. We don't have a blog yet – working on it - but we do have an instagram account if anyone's interested:

http://instagram.com/cleryfarm/

The previous owner had a soil test done, and through that we were able to assess how eroded it was (very). We switched the hay fields over to organic practices, but the biggest projects so far have been roughly 20 acres that we've put into conservation, including an oak woodland and an 'upland prairie' - both vanishing ecosystems in the state of Oregon.

Long term we're moving towards agroforestry practices, and thinking through the lens of carbon sequestration. In the short term, we've been heavily focused on brush removal, tree limbing, etc, for wildfire prevention and suppression.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#48

Post by NoSorryCannot »

cjrp wrote: post #39
mastax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drip irrigation works best when delivering water directly to the roots of small annual plants. Trees have large root systems, and are planted closely enough that you need to water the entire ground. Perhaps a network of smaller sprayers below the leaf canopy would reduce evaporative losses.

I wonder if there's any benefit to water hitting the leaves on the way down to the soil, i.e. cleaning the leaves. I know indoor plants require cleaning, but perhaps that's specifically because they're indoors.

There are rarely any good reasons to wet the top of a plant and several downsides.

Dust generally isn't an issue for outdoor plants, especially not in Washington or Oregon, and especially not for deciduous trees.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#49

Post by jazzyjackson »

black_puppydog wrote: post #7

"How to save a planet" just has an episode out on the same topic: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/76hmbge/soil-... I found it an interesting listen. Of course it's a fairly shallow entry into the topic, but that's what they are about after all; get you interested, give you pointers for more if you feel like it. Just too bad they'll go spotify-only and thus seize to be a podcast... I'll have to stop rec…

a gentle fyi: s/seize/cease

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#50

Post by jazzyjackson »

_huayra_ wrote: post #13
mooreds wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just too bad they'll go spotify-only and thus seize to be a podcast... I'll have to stop recommending (and listening...) Yes, that bums me out too. It must make economic sense (for both parties; presumably the data in the app and exclusive content is a win for Spotify), but it's a real bummer that they are moving from a format that lets me, the listener, control how I want to listen, to a format that requires me to…

I don't know why they just don't use something like Acast which will take care of distribution (or maybe others I don't know of). The worst part of it is that Spotify's android app is buggy. Actually, that's an understatement: it's garbage. I shouldn't have it hang waiting for network connection just to navigate the offline portions of the app (e.g. downloaded podcasts). Anyone who writes a simple "music player" andr…

Don't feel left out, the iOS app is also garbage and doesn't even manage to pause during a phone call.
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