In April 2023, Dr. Alex Woodley shared the following update about the Farming Systems Research Unit and Agroforestry Research Unit:
Recent Changes in Treatments and Crop Rotation in the FSRU:
At the FSRU, we have successfully carried out all the field activities to ensure the continuation of the project and followed protocols to guarantee that the data generated is accurate. It has been almost 25 years since the beginning of the project, and our plan is to continue providing outcomes for a better understanding of the long-term effects that different agroecosystems can have on the productivity and the environment. Most successful long-term experiments need periodic changes to improve or to adjust to new realities and our project is not the exception.
Starting in spring 2021, we had several meetings to discuss possible changes in the experiment. Considerations for these changes included:
- Fewer treatments (9 compared with 14) with common crop rotation cycles among all cropping treatments.
- More realistic farming systems with a gradient from simple, contemporary systems (conventional) to more ecologically complex systems.
- Focus on key management approaches among a diversity of farming styles.
- Desire to simplify management, despite the complexity of such a large and complicated experiment.
- Approach to focus on realistic production output through grain, forage, and cattle components among systems of the experiment.
The implementation of the new treatment approaches started in fall 2021 as follows:
| Treatment | New Approach |
|---|---|
| Organic-legume | Organic cash grain with legume N input |
| Organic-livestock | Organic integrated crop-livestock with grazing and manure inputs |
| Tilled-conventional | Changed to full tillage with winter annual weeds and no planted cover crops |
| Conventional no-till with cover crops | Changed to full conservation approach with multi-species winter cover crops and planting green in the spring |
| Pasture-crop rotation phase 1 | The rotation cycles changed to be in 4-year phases to match cropping systems in both conventional and organic treatments, and simplified so that cropping will appear every year in one of the three treatment rotations. |
| Pasture-crop rotation phase 2 | Described above |
| Pasture-crop rotation phase 3 | Described above |
| Silvopasture | Convert timber plots to a common silvopasture treatment, designed with permanent fencing around all four species of trees within a replication and planted with native warm season grasses. |
| Successional | This treatment remains the same. |
Main Field Activities in the FSRU and Agroforestry Research Units:
The following is a list of the main field activities carried out at the FSRU and the Agroforestry Research Experiment since last July:
- April 2023 – Building fences around Organic-livestock plots. With the new approach, these plots include cover crops for grazing with cows that, according to the rotation plan, will occur in the late summer-early fall this year. We will be measuring cover crop production and grazing time.
- March-April 2023 – Sampling winter cover crops to estimate biomass production. This took place in Organic-legume, Conventional No-till with Cover Crops, and Pasture-Crop Rotation treatments.
- March 2023 – Nitrogen fertilization and herbicide application to warm season pasture fields in the Pasture-Crop Rotation treatment.
- February 2023 – Poultry litter application as fertilizer to organic wheat in the Organic-livestock treatment. Wheat will be harvested for grain.
- November 2022 – Routine soil sampling for chemical analysis in all crops and pasture fields to determine fertilization needs for the following cropping season.
- October 2022 – Planting various types of winter cover crops. This year we planted a mix of radish/clover/vetch/triticale/rye in the Conventional No-till with Cover Crops treatment; clover/rye in the Organic-legume treatment; wheat for grain in the Organic-livestock treatment; and ryegrass/clover in the Silvopastoral treatment.
- September 2022 – we ended the grazing season for the year on the Pasture-crop rotation treatment currently with warm season grasses. The warm season grazing started in May and included grass sampling, pasture maintenance (fertilization, weed control, and old grass clipping) and the weekly movement of cows in a rotational grazing system. We also pruned trees and sampled hay in the Agroforestry project.
- August 2022 – Corn sampling for yield and biomass estimations; machine harvest followed this. This year all the cropping fields in both organic and non-organic fields had corn.
Although these are a combination of agronomic and research related activities for the long-term project, they also offer opportunities for demonstration, training, and educational purposes to the various individuals and groups of people from different organizations who visit the FSRU and Agroforestry site every year.
Visitors:
The following are groups that visited the FSRU and the Agroforestry Research Unit since last June.
| Organization/Event | Date | # Participants | Objective |
|---|---|---|---|
| International, multidisciplinary group from Brazil/US Department of State |
April 5, 2023 | 18 | To know about the FSRU and the Agroforestry project as part of a leadership program on climate change. |
| NC State – Plant and Microbial Ecology Dept. | March 23, 2023 | 2 | A new NC State microbiologist with a technician visited the FSRU and the Agroforestry Project to explore potential research opportunities in these sites. |
| College of Natural Resources NC State/North Carolina Foundation for Soil and Water Conservation |
March 9, 2023 | 8 | Visit to the FSRU and Agroforestry Project as part of a new project on FloodWise — disaster resilience. |
| NCSU SSC 428 class | November 13, 2022 | 10 | Undergraduate students visited the FSRU and the AGF to know general aspects of these projects and more specifically about the GHG project. |
| ASPIRE Interns | June 17, 2022 | 20 | Undergraduate students from diverse disciplines visited the FSRU and the AGF project to know general aspects of these projects. |