West

Best Practices for the Sustainable Urban Farm

For decades, urban farms and community gardens have helped meet the demand for fresh, local produce. Urban farms are diverse and adaptable, ranging from small farms on repurposed vacant lots to multilevel vertical farms and rooftop gardens. Often, they combine ecological farming practices with some form of infrastructure. Urban growers make clever use of their […]

Choosing the Right Tools For Your Farm

A manual created by Ain Chike and Georgia Organics outlines hand tools, small engines, their utility descriptions and where to source them for growers in the Southeast. It allows readers to understand each tool and their practical uses. This short 4-page PDF acts as a overview for important tools to ensure efficient and productive yields […]

The Peri-Urban Agriculture Network: Strategies for Agricultural Viability in Urbanizing and High-Land-Use-Pressure Regions

Many peri-urban regions in the western U.S. are in a state of acute juxtaposition between formerly rural agricultural communities and growing, modern urban centers. Urbanization challenges agricultural viability through land use pressures and a slow unraveling of historically land-based economies and culture. These agricultural circumstances can be very destabilizing and highlight the need for agriculture […]

Guide to Honey Bee Queen Banking

This guide will walk you through the step-by-step process of establishing and maintaining a queen bank. The guide starts with the basics and walks the reader through each step to create a successful honey bank that includes a queen bee. Because queen bees are so critical in maintaining a bank, beekeepers center their focus on […]

Farm Education for the Deaf Community—Introduction (American Sign Language)

In this video, Monu introduces the video series created to provide farm education to the deaf community. The series is available in both in American Sign Language and Nepali Sign Language.

What is Sustainable Agriculture?

This award-winning report provides a sampler of best practices in sustainable agriculture—from marketing and community vitality to cover crops and grazing—as well as eight profiles of producers, educators and researchers who have successfully implemented them.

Leaders in Sustainable Agriculture Featured on America's Heartland

SARE partnered with PBS KVIE to produce an episode of RFD-TV's America's Heartland that features four farmers describing their commitment to sustainability, how they plan to meet farming challenges of today and tomorrow, and how SARE has impacted their farming and ranching practices.  The full 24-minute video is available, as is each segment featuring the […]

Farming with Soil Life

This handbook, created by The Xerces Society, dives into soil biology. It provides a connection between healthy soils and healthy invertebrates found in temperate agricultural soils. Farming with Soil Life starts with a review of soil basics, including the functions, classifications and properties (physical, biological and chemical) of soil. It provides detailed methods on how […]

Manage Weeds on Your Farm Video Series

In this series, experienced farmers from around the country talk about how they have found success controlling weeds by following ecological principles, and without resorting to the use of herbicides. To do so, they rely on a range of cultural and mechanical practices, including diverse crop rotations, well-timed cultivation and targeting weeds when they're at […]

Transitioning to Organic Production

Transitioning to Organic Production lays out many promising conversion strategies, covering typical organic farming production practices, innovative marketing ideas and federal standards for certified organic crop production.