Ciera Gardner
The practice featured in the film that stood out to me is the cover crops. Cover crop is a term that refers to plants, most of the time not sold for profit, that cover a specific plot of land for the purpose of protecting and building soil health. This stood out to me because using this method addresses the issues that would be seen if farmers were to till and uproot their crops each growing season. Issues such as runoff, wet spots, erosion, and lack of soil nutrition. In the video, owner of Harborview farm, Trey Hill states, “as long as we don’t till that soil, that carbon is now secured in the soil.” This statement is true and further validates using cover crops for soil conservation in addition to carbon sequestration.
Picture of green roof description, taken at UMD campus on 6/27/24 by Ciera
Most of my internship I have been working to process biomass data from farmers throughout the Eastern Shore, during that time I saw how many farmers are interested in growing cover crops. When the results of the C/N for the biomasses collected come back, we will better understand how different cover crops performed during the spring.
I have had the opportunity to a firsthand look at precision agriculture during my mentor’s watermelon drone experiment. This experiment entailed a $20,000-30,000 drone spraying pesticides on a pre-mapped plot of watermelons. During this experiment we were able to learn the pros and cons of using drones for spraying like wind causing drifts.
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