top of page
Can Healthy Soils Replace Fungicides? Van Mansheim Thinks So
Some of Van’s Soils – Insets are Saprophytic Fungi that consume residue and mineralize nutrients (left), mycorrhizal fungi that live in...
6 min read
How Cover Crops Reduce Fertilizer Costs and Save Money
Ray Weil and a Student collecting Soil Nitrate Samples down the Soil Profile Introduction: Beyond Erosion — The Scavenging Power of Cover...
6 min read
Ray Archuleta on Bare Soil, Fungicides, and Rethinking Soil Health
Iconic Ray Archuleta Image captured ca. 2013 before a Slake Test Demonstration. Introduction In 2010, I met Ray Archuleta on the farm of...
5 min read
How the Michalski Ranch Turned Marginal Cropland into a Diverse, Profitable Pasture
On the South Dakota Coteau, the Michalski family transformed marginal cropland into a thriving, diverse pasture. Discover their grazing...
4 min read
The Spiral of Soil Regeneration: How Small Changes Boost Profit and Soil Health
Soil Regeneration Spiral. Source: Anderson 2005 We pulled into the parking lot at the USDA-ARS facility in Brookings, South Dakota,...
3 min read
Cows on Cover Crops: South Dakota Farmer Adds $86/acre and 70 Bu Corn
On our spring tour of South Dakota farmers integrating livestock, my partner in crime, Joe Dickie, and I left Huron, and a couple of...
3 min read
Sorting Goldenrod Fact from Fiction: Toxic Weed or Overlooked Forage?
We recently posted a video short of Pete Bauman talking about goldenrod on the July "Our Amazing Grasslands" video, and it took off!...
3 min read
Diversity into Dollars: Rethinking What Forage Is Really Worth
This past Friday morning, I was sitting in my local coffee shop, enjoying a cup of joe and catching up on the latest Our Amazing...
2 min read
“Long Rotations Leave Too Much on the Table!” Really?
Over the past few weeks, the tillage and no-till debate has sparked surprising and passionate discussion among our readers. We've...
3 min read
No-Till, No Yield? Are We Putting Corn Above Soybean Yields?
As a response to several requests for more peer-reviewed material on the economics of no-till (NT) vs. conventional tillage (CT), I went...
3 min read
Where the Hills Begin: A Visit with Nate Hicks of Yankton
By the Growing Resilience Team I’ve visited Vermillion, South Dakota, several times, usually under slate-gray skies and spring winds that...
3 min read
Learning About Salinity: A Journey from Confusion to Clarity
Anthony Bly In 2023, NRCS’s Marcia Deneke and Kent Vlieger generously took time to guide me through the salinity challenges of South...
2 min read
Blending No-Till, Cover Crops, and Stocker Cattle: Cody Merrigan’s Regenerative Farming Model in Clay County, SD
By Buz Kloot An old friend of mine grew up in Utah’s Cache Valley, where his dad, a worn-out dairyman, would shake his head after a long...
3 min read
Beyond No-Till: Why Crop Rotations Matter More Than You Think
Natalie Sturm By the Growing Resilience Team For decades, no-till has been hailed as a cornerstone of regenerative agriculture—an...
3 min read
A Field of Miracles: My Visit with Dawn Butzer
By Buz Kloot In late April, Joe Dickie and I traveled up to South Dakota, chasing a spring that felt just out of reach. Our first stop...
2 min read
When Does No-Till Work? Two Major Studies and What Farmers Told Us
By the Growing Resilience Team When we posted a video of Dr. Dwayne Beck explaining how tillage destroys soil structure and reduces...
3 min read
Karlie Kammerer is Letting the Land Lead in South Dakota's Grasslands
Photo Credit: By Joe Dickie In western South Dakota, where the prairie stretches wide and the wind speaks in long, slow sentences,...
3 min read
Goats, Cedar, and the Sixth Principle of Soil Health: A Lesson from Clinton Rasmusson
By: the Growing Resilience Team I’ve long been a champion of the five principles of soil health — things like keeping the soil covered,...
3 min read
Rooted in the Prairie: How Kate Rasmussen is Building a Future for Grasslands through Collaborative Conservation
By: Buz Kloot The prairie does not demand attention. It whispers, it hums, it endures. But to those who know it well, who grew up...
4 min read
Meet Johnathon Neuharth: The Young Rancher Leading Grassland Restoration in South Dakota
By: Buz Kloot In the heart of South Dakota, where the wide-open spaces of the Great Plains meet the horizon, Johnathon Neuharth is not...
3 min read
bottom of page