Project Overview
Annual Reports
Commodities
- Agronomic: corn, wheat, grass (misc. perennial), hay
- Animals: sheep
Practices
- Animal Production: feed/forage, free-range, manure management, grazing - rotational
- Crop Production: biological inoculants, continuous cropping, cover crops, fallow, multiple cropping, no-till, nutrient cycling, organic fertilizers, conservation tillage
- Education and Training: demonstration, extension, on-farm/ranch research
- Farm Business Management: new enterprise development, budgets/cost and returns, agricultural finance, whole farm planning
- Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity
- Pest Management: competition, mulches - living, mulching - vegetative
- Production Systems: agroecosystems, holistic management, integrated crop and livestock systems
- Soil Management: green manures, organic matter, nutrient mineralization, soil quality/health
- Sustainable Communities: new business opportunities, public participation, sustainability measures
Abstract:
Within the region, Medicago rigidula has the greatest potential for "ley farming". It has the necessary winter survival potential, seed survival and staggered seed-softening. Annual forage pea rotated with cereals might help sustain the dryland agriculture. Austrian winter pea/sheep grazing produced more than twice the profit of wheat/fallow. Identification of pea lines for optimum winter survival has advanced to a farmer cooperator evaluation phase. Further selection should generate adapted peas of multiple market classes. No-till legume green manure increased soil carbon. With biomass additions limited by lack of moisture, no-till was critical to the storage of soil carbon and nitrogen.
Project objectives:
1. Determine the feasibility of utilizing ley cropping systems to integrate livestock into the winter wheat-summer fallow rotation (WY).
2. Determine the efficiencies of water-use, biomass and N-fixation when incorporating peas and medic into the wheat-corn-summer fallow cropping system (CO).
3. To evaluate the economic effectiveness of incorporating alternative legume crop and livestock grazing rotations with a traditional winter wheat-fallow system (WY).
4. Demonstrate the effectiveness of incorporating legumes into the agroecosystem through on-farm research and demonstrations, field tours and media dissemination (WY, CO).