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Tofu. That’s what most people think soybeans are grown for. But most soybeans in the U.S. are grown for oil and livestock feed. It’s big business. America is the world’s largest producer and exporter of soybeans with almost 75 million acres planted annually.

In our quest to profit from the land and feed a hungry planet with annual crops such as corn and soybeans, we have abandoned one of the most powerful conservation practices known to science – contour farming.

The story of 2XT and Allan Bocock Allan Bocock was a grain farmer in Stuarts Draft, Virginia. He planted over 1,000 acres of annual crops each year including corn, soybeans, wheat, and barley. I met Allan in the late 80’s when I moved to the Shenandoah Valley as a District Conservationist for the Soil Conservation […]

In our quest to profit from the land and feed a hungry planet with annual crops such as corn and soybeans, we have abandoned one of the most powerful conservation practices known to science – contour farming. Used since ancient times to slow the flow of water across the land to make it soak into […]

Tofu. That’s what most people think soybeans are grown for. But most soybeans in the U.S. are grown for oil and livestock feed. It’s big business. America is the world’s largest producer and exporter of soybeans with almost 75 million acres planted annually. It is second only to corn, planted on roughly 84 million acres. […]

I drove onto a farm in Northern Virginia this week and noticed a row of baled up corn stalks.  That’s a red flag for me…I have learned over the past 30 some years as a conservationist that when I am on a farm and see rolled up – baled, corn stalks, I almost always see […]

There has been a lot of talk about “T” these days because of the Chesapeake Bay TMDL.  I hate jargon so here’s a quickie on these two terms. The TMDL is the agreed upon pollution diet for the Bay; it stands for Total Maximum Daily Load.  It’s the maximum amount of pollution loading on a […]