“Even though it just seems like dirt, it’s a very complex and intricate system. And the more we study it, the less it seems like we know,” says Keith Berns of Green Cover Seed.

It’s no surprise that soil health is still a buzzword. Though the idea of soil health is an old one, there has never been a quantifiable measure of what one would call a “healthy soil.” Many top researchers have been working on developing this measure for decades.

Like a lot of their neighbors, the Seymours raised beef and tobacco – and just for good measure, they did a bit of tree farming and logging. But changing times brought about a new vision for Randy Seymour, his son John and their operation, which had been in the family since the 1860s.

For those of us working in agriculture, knowledge of improved technologies and new resources demand we look twice at our management strategies.

Grazing corn stover has long been used to supplement winter grazing for cattle in many parts of the country.

Cool-season annual mixtures are highly nutritious and are a great forage option during the fall, winter and into the spring.

Many plants produce compounds called phytoestrogens that are very similar to estrogen, the primary female sex hormone. When phytoestrogens are consumed in large quantities by livestock or humans, they can act like estrogen in the body.

At the 2017 NCBA Cattlemen’s College in Nashville, Dennis Hancock from the University of Georgia discussed managing forages to meet beef cattle nutritional needs.

Many stockmen who do a lot of rotational grazing create permanent paddocks with traditional fencing or electric hard wire (such as high-tensile electric wire) and then divide those paddocks with portable fencing like poly wire.