Cultural Control

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.

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.

A Sustainable Approach to Controlling Honey Bee Diseases and Varroa Mites

This fact sheet describes efforts to breed honey bees, Apis mellifera, resistant to diseases and parasitic mites to reduce the amount of antibiotics and pesticides used in bee colonies and to ensure that our breeding methods and stock are accessible to beekeepers everywhere.

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.

Conservation Tillage Systems in the Southeast

This production manual provides comprehensive guidance on conservation tillage systems for farms in the southeastern United States. It covers the core components of conservation tillage systems and includes both regional considerations and producer experiences.

Cover Crop Economics

Cover crops can build soil health, control weeds, conserve moisture, provide grazing opportunities and more. But when do they start to pay for themselves? This analysis looks at the economics behind different management scenarios to determine if cover crops are likely to improve profitability in one, three or five years of use in corn and soybean rotations. 

What is Soil Health?

Soil health plays an essential role in raising healthy, productive crops and livestock. With this interactive infographic, learn how practices such as cover crops, no-till, crop rotation and the integration of livestock work in concert to improve soil health.

Vegetable and Weed Degree-day Models

Pest managers are familiar with the concept of using degree days to predict pest outbreaks. Insects, like many other organisms, develop according to the temperature around them and degree days are a way to measure accumulated temperature. Plants – at least in part – also develop based on temperature, so a team in Oregon is […]

Cover Crop Innovators Video Series

Find short video profiles of farmers around the country who are using cover crops on their land. 

2015/2016 Report from the Field

Read about SARE-funded work in the areas of sustainable dairy cropping systems, soil health assessments, nutrient management, cover crops, beginning farmers, pollinators, technical assistance programs for women farmers, and more. This edition includes highlights of projects funded through the graduate student program, and the highly regarded Sustainable Agriculture Fellowship, a professional development program coordinated by SARE and NACAA.

Investing in the Next Generation of Agricultural Scientists

Sustainable solutions to today's agricultural challenges arise when scientists, educators and producers work together to test theories in real-world, on-farm situations. For this approach itself to be sustainable, there must be opportunities for the next generation of agricultural scientists to use collaborative, applied research to address the real-world needs of farmers and ranchers. The SARE Graduate Student grant program is one such opportunity—since 2000, the program has supported the work of 600 master's and Ph.D. students.

Cover Crops for Sustainable Crop Rotations

Cover crops are one of the best ways to improve soil health, reduce off-farm inputs and protect natural resources. Find a wealth of educational materials developed out of decades of SARE-funded cover crop research.

Ecological Management of Key Arthropod Pests in Northeast Apple Orchards

Apples are an important crop in the Northeast, grown for both fresh market and processing. Growers have a challenging task managing insects, mites and diseases. By some estimates, growers may spend up to 25 percent of their production costs on pest management. This technical bulletin outlines strategies developed from SARE-funded projects in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, including biologically based pest control, orchard architecture and development of materials approved for organic production.

Cutting Edge Research: Helping Bees Help Themselves

Diseases, pests and the mysterious phenomenon of colony collapse disorder pose a dire threat to the U.S. beekeeping industry and, in turn, to the $20-billion-a-year crop industry that relies on insect pollination. Because of these increasing pressures, the ranks of managed bee colonies have plummeted in recent years: On average, beekeepers are losing 30 percent […]

Moving Nursery Producers Toward Sustainable Practices Fact Sheets

These fact sheets discuss alternative containers, marketing and crop selection, alternatives to synthetic herbicides and integrated pest management in commercial nursery plant production.

Cover Crops and No-Till Management for Organic Systems

This Rodale Institute fact sheet reviews the use of cover crops and no-till in organic systems, including selection, establishment and mechanical termination of cover crops; crop rotations; and energy and production budgets.

Tomato Grafting for Disease Resistance and Increased Productivity

Researchers around the world have demonstrated that grafting—the fusing of a scion (young shoot) onto a resistant rootstock—can protect plants against a variety of soil-borne fungal, bacterial, viral and nematode diseases invarious climates and conditions.

Crop Rotation on Organic Farms

Crop rotation strategies that can be applied under various field conditions for conventional or organic crops to improve soil quality and health, and manage pests, diseases, and weeds