Cover Crops

Farmers: Share Your Thoughts on Cover Crops in the National Cover Crop Survey!

Farmers are invited to share their thoughts on cover crops in an online survey at bit.ly/CoverCrop23. Why do you plant cover crops...or why don't you? What do you want to know? Your insight will help guide research, communications, seed development, and more. This National Cover Crop Survey is the seventh since 2012 conducted by the USDA-NIFA […]

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.

Manage Weeds on Your Farm: An Ecological Approach

SARE’s newest book, "Manage Weeds on Your Farm: A Guide to Ecological Strategies," examines the biology and behavior of common weeds and provides an integrated set of non-chemical control strategies that exploits their weaknesses.

Soil Health Principles and Practices Videos

Experienced farmers and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) provide information on managing and improving soil health. Farmers discuss practices such as cover cropping, and using mulch and compost to improve soil health.

Manage Weeds On Your Farm

Manage Weeds on Your Farm is a definitive guide to understanding agricultural weeds and how to manage them efficiently, effectively and ecologically—for organic and conventional farmers alike.

Building Soils for Better Crops

The fourth edition of Building Soils for Better Crops—enhanced and expanded—explains how to use ecological principles to build soil health and boost fertility, yields and overall sustainability.

Smart Water Use on Your Farm or Ranch

As producers throughout the nation grow increasingly concerned about water scarcity, farmers, ranchers and agricultural educators are beginning to explore new, conservation-oriented approaches to water use.

A Whole Farm Approach to Managing Pests

This 16-page bulletin helps producers—and the educators who work with them—use ecological principles across the entire farm to control pests.

National Farmer Survey Documents a Wide Range of Cover Crop Benefits as Acreage Continues to Expand

Despite the crippling rainfall that significantly delayed planting across much of the country in 2019, more than 90% of farmers participating in a national cover crop survey reported that cover crops allowed them to plant earlier or at the same time as non-cover-cropped fields. Among those who had "planted green," seeding cash crops into growing […]

Cover Crop Economics Report Now Available in Print

Cover Crops Offer Options in Wet Soil As more farmers across the nation begin to incorporate covers into their rotations, they find that this valuable conservation practice pays in more ways than one. Many farmers in states suffering from oversaturated fields that prevented or delayed planting are considering cover crops. To help farmers evaluate the […]