Organic farmers don’t use chemicals to control weeds, so they often rely on tilling the soil. But too much tilling and plowing can cause soil to wash away or blow away.
Sheep
Let sheep be the cover crop terminators, fertilizers
Montana State University has completed a five-year USDA project ending in 2017 that integrated sheep into organic rotational farming systems - in a way that should prove to be more profitable to both crop and livestock producers.
“The main goal of this research was to investigate the use of sheep as cover crop terminators compared to using the more conventional way of terminating the cover crop with herbicides and tillage,” said Devon Ragen, MSU research associate. Here, Ragen brings sheep into a rotation.
The innovative “Feedlot on Fields” project was created by Devon Ragen, Montana State University research associate, as part of the USDA projec…
Sheep prefer some weeds more than others.
