A new cover crop, Nuseed Carinata, set to launch this fall in the south, should pique the interest of farmers looking to boost their bottom line in between main food crops. Nuseed is targeting Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and the Carolinas for its debut in the U.S.

Besides building healthy soil, living roots are the tool to fix marginal lands. Salt-affected soils are an example of a hard-to-fix marginal land situation in South Dakota. There are annual and perennial plants that can tolerate more soil salts

It has been hard for scientists to predict how much extra water farmers can expect when they use regenerative agriculture practices that improve soil carbon. This is important because many farmers consider water management to be the biggest reason to adopt soil health management practices like cover crops.

To help understand cover crop decomposition and N release throughout the growing season, University of Nebraska researchers designed a study using “litterbags” — a common method to research crop decomposition. This research is part of the Precision Sustainable Agriculture (PSA), a collaborative project supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative’s Sustainable Agricultural System Coordinated Agricultural Projects from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).