Livestock

On average, Americans eat more than 50 pounds of beef each year (according to USDA estimates). But what do beef cattle eat? In the eastern United States, beef cattle often eat tall fescue, a “cool-season” grass. As the name suggests, cool-season grass grows best in temperate conditions: temperatures between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit and abundant rainfall. But it’s not always cool and wet in the eastern U.S., and come the summer months, cool-season grasses tend to not do well.

Winter grazing is part of what is called an integrated crop-livestock system. It is a process where livestock, such as cattle or goats, are allowed to graze a crop field during the winter. It is more common in climates with mild winters. Rather than eating the cash crop the farmer sells, the livestock eat the cover crop that was planted to grow over the winter.

Not that long ago, weeds spread at a much slower rate. Seeds would spread to nearby soil and move perhaps a few feet each year or would be transplanted by birds who flew with them several miles away. In today’s interconnected world, though, weeds can hitch a ride on a truck, boat, or even an airplane. What once might’ve taken generations to spread weeds from one region to another now takes no time at all.

The Great Plains in the United States are well known for a rich history and expansive grasslands. This region is synonymous with ranchers herding cattle across the plains and a valuable resource for a growing population.

Cover crops do far more than cover soils. They provide an array of benefits, such as the ability to reduce soil erosion and increase soil health. They can help attract pollinators, repel pests, turn into ‘green manure,’ or can be used as feed for livestock.

Each year, American farmers raise billions of chickens, more than enough for a “chicken for every pot,” as Herbert Hoover’s campaign once promised.

In the dry air and soil of Texas’ Southern High Plains, improving soil health can be tough. We usually think of healthy soil as moist and loose with lots of organic matter. But this can be hard to achieve in this arid area of Texas.

By late fall, much of the Midwest is a pleasing landscape of dry, harvested corn fields. It makes for a bucolic rural scene on highway drives. But the corn litter that’s left over doesn’t seem useful, at least to untrained eyes.

Sorghum, a common food item in regions of Africa and Asia, has one missing puzzle piece. The missing piece? Protein digestibility, which researchers in the Department of Agronomy at Kansas State University are trying to find. 

For most of us, our closest encounter with the element fluorine is likely to be our toothpaste or a municipal water supply with added fluoride.

But excess fluorine can be a problem. For example, high levels of fluorine in the soil can hurt plants. Fluorine in soils may also affect microbes and other organisms higher along the food chain.