For decades, USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in the northern plains have kept meticulous records on cattle weight gains during the growing season. Although their main focus was on trends in livestock and forage production, they also tracked weather conditions as part of their studies.

“Manure disposal is a big concern for cattle feedlot operators,” says USDA, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) agricultural engineer John Gilley. “Fortunately, producers can reduce their use of commercial fertilizer – and their production costs – by using manure to fertilize their fields.”

In a recent study conducted by the USDA, Agricultural Research Service (ARS), scientists indicated that just three compounds in beef manure were responsible for generating over two-thirds of detectable odors.

Scientists from the USDA and their colleagues have conducted research showing the potential response of rangeland plants in arid regions of the U.S. to the conditions that will occur with climate change, according to a paper published recently in Nature.

Agricultural Research Service scientists at the Agroecosystems Management Research Unit in Lincoln, Nebraska, have been conducting some very thorough investigations on the microbes that dwell in cattle manure – what they are, where they thrive, where they struggle and where they may end up.

Plants can adapt to extreme shifts in water availability, such as drought and flooding, but their ability to withstand these extreme patterns will be tested by future climate change, according to a study by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and their cooperators. The study was published in Nature by a team of Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists led by Guillermo Ponce Campos and Susan Moran and an Australian team led by Alfredo Huete from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS).

Cattle that graze on rangelands in the western U.S. may soon have a new forage option, thanks to work by a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist.

In Idaho, where the number of dairy cows has increased around 88 percent in the past 12 years, USDA scientists are collecting data on greenhouse gas emissions from dairy facilities and identifying how those emissions fluctuate daily and throughout the year.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are leading the way in learning more about "biochar," the charred biomass created from wood, other plant material, and manure. The studies by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists at laboratories across the country support the USDA priorities of promoting international food security and responding to global climate change. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency. Soil scientist Jeff Novak at the ARS Coastal Plains Soil, Water and Plant Research Center in Florence, South Carolina, is coordinating the multi-location effort. In one project, he led a laboratory study to see if different biochars could improve the sandy soils found on the Carolina coastal plain, and Pacific Northwest silt loam soils derived from volcanic ash.