{"id":1042,"date":"2019-01-20T17:44:01","date_gmt":"2019-01-20T22:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/?p=1042"},"modified":"2019-01-20T17:44:01","modified_gmt":"2019-01-20T22:44:01","slug":"protecting-water-quality-on-the-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/2019\/01\/protecting-water-quality-on-the-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting water quality on the farm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the December 2018 issue of the\u00a0Vegetable growers magazine, there is an article titled &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/digital.vegetablegrowersnews.com\/i\/1054883-december-2018\/19?\">It&#8217;s all about water quality for Ward&#8217;s Berry Farm<\/a>&#8220;.\u00a0 In the\u00a0article, the author talks about how the USDA NRCS has worked with Jim Ward on his farm to improve soil health and how NRCS can help farmers access their farm to better manage soil health. Cover crops are used on the Ward farm to build soil health.\u00a0 As a water person, I like the following statement made in the article and fully agree with the\u00a0statement&#8230; &#8220;By redus=cing tillage and growing cover crops, farmers will see benefits such as improved water holding capacity of their soils and better drought resistance.\u00a0 The living roots and the\u00a0above-ground biomass of cover crops conserve a lot of water and contribute significant quantities of carbon (the food source) for beneficial bacteria and fungi in the\u00a0soil.&#8221;\u00a0 In addition to this, the article discusses\u00a0how improving soil health helps protect water quality.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Conservation tillage\u00a0is one way to increase soil organic matter, improve soil health and as a result improve water resource management\u00a0on a\u00a0farm.\u00a0 This article discusses the practices on farms, but the same concepts of covering the\u00a0soil in home gardens and flower beds can improve water holding capacity and save water resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the December 2018 issue of the\u00a0Vegetable growers magazine, there is an article titled &#8220;It&#8217;s all about water quality for Ward&#8217;s Berry Farm&#8220;.\u00a0 In the\u00a0article, the author talks about how the USDA NRCS has worked with Jim Ward on his farm to improve soil health and how NRCS can help farmers access their farm to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-water-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1043,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions\/1043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/water\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}