Technology
Deployment of sensing, computational and
information technologies to improve the profitability and sustainability of agriculture
What is digital agriculture?
Place, year, and level in atmosphere when Charles Keeling first measured carbon dioxide
What is <320 ppm at Mauna Loa Observatory (Hawaii) in 1958?
Type (category) of ecosystem service that includes pollination, water purification, and restriction of pest populations
What is a regulating ecosystem service?
Sustainable management practice used by Rick Villnave to reduce soil erosion.
What is cover cropping? Also reducing tillage with chisel plowing instead of moldboard plowing.
Two approaches to developing perennial grain crops
What are: 1) domesticate a wild perennial, 2) cross annual crop with a perennial relative
Full name for acronym NDVI
What is Normalized Difference Vegetation Index?
In addition to extreme weather such as heat waves, droughts, and flooding, another reason why many agricultural regions will experience declines in crop and livestock production
What is increased stress due to weeds, diseases, insect pests?
Only agroecological practice that contributes to all seven ecosystem services evaluated (based on table from Kremen and Miles 2014).
What is cover cropping?
Most important practice for weed management according to Dan Galdstone (Thor Oechsner's farm)
What is a diverse crop rotation?
The planting of trees or shrubs in rows with grain, forage, or horticultural crops cultivated in the alleys between the rows of woody plants
What is Alley Cropping?
Type of geo-locationing system that allows for sub-inch accuracy.
What is Real Time Kinematic Technology (RTK) ?
Three components of the resilience triangle?
What are 1) absorptive capacity, 2) adaptive capacity, and 3) recovery capacity?
Predecessor to the H-2A guestworker program established during world war II that was criticized as “a system of ‘legalized slavery’”
What is the Bracero program?
At least one climate change adaptation strategy AND at least one climate change mitigation strategy used by Ian Merwin at Black Diamond Farm
What are crop diversification, installing irrigation, digging ponds for adaptation AND installing solar panels for mitigation?
First perennial grain crop to be incorporated into commercially available products. Selected for domestication by Peggy Wagoner in 1980's then developed further at The Land Institute.
What is intermediate wheatgrass (aka Kernza)?
Type of management used to reduce skips or overlap (of seeds and other inputs), especially in irregularly shaped fields.
What is Point-Row Management?
Best strategy for improving water infiltration according to Dr. Basche's (Soils into Sponges) analysis of management practices.
What is provding "continuous living cover"?
Social actors’ ability to make and enact decisions that affect their political future. - From Social Justice reading
What is collective agency?
Approach Thor Oechsner uses to overcome the backwards business model in agriculture.
What is vertical integration, adding value, and direct sales through seed cleaning, milling, and the bakery?Backwards business model is buying at retail (buy high) and selling at wholesale (sell low).
Agricultural landscapes where you see the greatest benefit from increasing perennial vegetation.
What are landscapes dominated by annual crops?
Decision support tool based on a dynamic simulation model that allows farmers to adjust nitrogen application rates based on site-specific conditions. Developed at Cornell by Dr. Harold van Es.
What is Adapt-N?
Largest source of GHG emissions (in terms of CO2 equivalents) associated with soil management for crop production?
What is N2O from nitrogen fertilizer?
Thing Marty Travis did in the film "Sustainable" to help him and other farmers be profitable.
Created a cooperative (Stewards of the Land) that acted like a food hub to facilitate direct sales to restaurants in Chicago.
Strategy used at Dilmun Hill to reduce weeds prior to planting without using soil tillage
What is tarping (e.g., covering the soil with large tarp for an extended period)?
Combining timber, livestock, and forage
production on the same land.
What is silvopasture?