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Strategies for Continuous Living Cover

Green Lands Blue Waters is implementing five strategies for deploying continuous living cover in production agriculture: 1) perennial edible grains, 2) perennials for livestock, 3) agroforestry, 4) perennial biomass, and 5) cover crops.

Our approach includes supporting regional working groups that serve as hubs for research, and link research with extension and promotion of farm-based adoption of the most viable and promising perennials and other continuous living cover systems.

While Green Lands Blue Waters is focused on applications in Middle-America, the working groups incorporate specialists from outside the region, bringing their expertise to the region and sharing our results and outputs across the U.S. and globally.

Landscape with alley cropping, silvopasture, short rotation woody crops, riparian buffer.
Photo courtesy of USDA National Agroforestry Center, Lincoln, NE.

Journal Articles:

Atwell, R.C., L.A. Schulte, and M.L. Westphal. 2010. Linking resilience theory and diffusion of innovations theory to understand the potential for perennials in the U.S. corn belt. Ecology and Society (14)1:30.

Glover, J. D. 2010. Harvested perennial grasslands: ecological models for farming's perennial future. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 37: 1-2.

Jordan, N. and K.D. Warner. 2010. Enhancing the multifunctionality of U.S. agriculture. Bioscience 60(1):60-66.

While each working group is unique, our goal is for them to share the following attributes:

• Participation of researchers, extensionists, farmers / ranchers, agricultural advisors, and business leaders.
• Promote breeding programs for improvement of plant materials.
• Promote research and testing of agronomic methods to determine best sowing rates and conditions, optimal use of agrochemicals, cultivation requirements, and harvest methods.
• Promote large-scale production and the businesses that support new production, provide inputs, and bring to market the resulting new products and services.
• Support education programs to inform policymakers and the public about the new products and services and the associated economic and environmental benefits.
• Identify indicators and participate in programs to measure and monitor economic, social, biophysical, and environmental impacts of farming with continuous living cover.

In addition to the working groups, GLBW develops and supports rural development initiatives that implement new cropping systems from all five strategies, as integrated programs on landscape scales that are economically significant and ecologically sound.

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Photo credits for banner: Combine harvesting wheatgrass, The Land Institute; Hazelnut bushes, Brent McCown; Black Angus steer, Selket Jewett; Watonwan River, Linda Meschke/Rural Advantage.