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Sod is grown on specialist farms. For 2009, the United States Department of Agriculture reported 1,412 farms had 368,188 acres (149,000.4 ha) of sod in production. [9]It is usually grown locally (within 100 miles of the target market) [10] to minimize both the cost of transport and also the risk of damage to the product.
Sodbuster was a program created by Title 12 of the Food Security Act of 1985 designed to discourage the plowing up of erosion-prone grasslands for use as cropland. [citation needed] In congressional hearings for the Agriculture and Food Act of 1981, Idaho governor John Evans urged Congress strongly to enact legislation for sodbuster programs, in combination with a conservation reserve program. [1]
A sod farm structure in Iceland Saskatchewan sod house, circa 1900 Unusually well appointed interior of a sod house, North Dakota, 1937. The sod house or soddy [1] was a common alternative to the log cabin during frontier settlement of the Great Plains of Canada and the United States in the 1800s and early 1900s. [2]
The distinction is significant in crop rotation strategies, where land is planted with row crops, commodity food grains, and sod-forming crops in a sequence meant to protect the quality of the soil while maximizing the soil's annual productivity.
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. [1] Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities.
No-till farming (also known as zero tillage or direct drilling) is an agricultural technique for growing crops or pasture without disturbing the soil through tillage. No-till farming decreases the amount of soil erosion tillage causes in certain soils, especially in sandy and dry soils on sloping terrain.
In agriculture, a harrow is a farm implement used for surface tillage. It is used after ploughing for breaking up and smoothing out the surface of the soil. The purpose of harrowing is to break up clods and to provide a soil structure, called tilth, that is suitable for planting seeds.
Horticulture emerged as a distinct field from agriculture when humans sought to cultivate plants for pleasure on a smaller scale rather than exclusively for sustenance. Emerging technologies are moving the industry forward, especially in the alteration of plants to be more resistent to parasites, disease and drought.