“Wagner discovered the benefits of creating winter bird habitat by accident. After one wet growing season, his fields were getting badly rutted by machinery. So the farm just plugged up the drains and let a little water sit on the field through the winter…

That year, ducks and geese arrived in abundance.

Ahead of the next growing season, when the farm drained off the water, Wagner found that the soil was ready to be planted. The birds’ feet, along with the movement of the water, had done the same task of mixing and flattening out the soil that his farm team would usually do with heavy machinery…

While Wagner figured out his process through trial and error, research backs it up. A study on Two Brooks Farm in the winter of 2017-18 found that bird droppings were contributing almost a third of recommended nitrogen for rice in the highest instances, likely linked to the sheer number of birds and the compounding effects of repeating the practice over time. On average, researchers estimated that producers using winter field flooding could cut synthetic nitrogen fertilizer by more than 13 percent…

Winter field flooding is a relatively cost-effective proposition for farmers, Baker notes. It takes place in the off-season, and usually doesn’t require much additional infrastructure on top of what a farm already has.”

From Reasons to be Cheerful.

“The cultivation of rice—the staple grain for more than 3.5 billion people around the world—comes with extremely high environmental, climate and economic costs. But this may be about to change, thanks to new research led by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and China’s Jiangnan University. They have shown that nanoscale applications of the element selenium can decrease the amount of fertilizer necessary for rice cultivation while sustaining yields, boosting nutrition, enhancing the soil’s microbial diversity and cutting greenhouse gas emissions. What’s more, in a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they demonstrate for the first time that such nanoscale applications work in real-world conditions.”

From University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“Like almost all of Africa, prior to 2019, Nigeria had never grown any kind of GM food crop despite having an agricultural sector that constituted 22 percent of its GDP. But that year, the Nigerian government approved the cultivation of Bt cowpea. The Bt cowpea proved popular with farmers and is estimated to add $336 million to the Nigerian economy over the next 25 years. More importantly, the governmental bodies responsible, the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA, which regulates GM crops) and the National Biotechnology Research and Development Agency (NBRDA, which conducts research and field trials), demonstrated that they could safely develop and regulate Nigeria’s first GM crop for human consumption.

And success with Bt cowpeas quickly paved the way for other GM crops.

In 2024, Nigeria started growing its first GM cereal — TELA maize — which has proven resilient to both drought and several of the region’s most pernicious insect pests.”

From Asimov Press.

“Mtseteka lives with her ailing husband and two grandchildren in Chisemphere village, about an hour’s drive from the capital Lilongwe. It is a cluster of small, mud-brick houses surrounded by fields.

She has never owned a smartphone or a computer, but her crop was saved by an artificial intelligence bot designed to help subsistence farmers like herself. It’s called Ulangizi AI. 

‘Ulangizi’ means advice in Chichewa. It was developed by Opportunity International, a U.K. nonprofit, to answer farmers’ questions through text and voice, as well as diagnose problems found in farmers’ photos of crops and livestock. It has been trained on government guidelines and traditional know-how, and can be delivered through WhatsApp.”

From Rest of World.