by Erica Romkema and Mae Rose Petrehn
The Peterson Ranch, owned by Chad and Jenny Peterson, extends across 4600 acres of the Nebraska Sandhills. In this landscape of wide skies and mixed grass prairie, the ranch is among the first ranches in the U.S. to practice what has become known as mob grazing. Mob grazing is a method of intense rotational grazing, putting a large amount of livestock in a relatively small paddock and moving them every few hours, in order to closely manage grass recovery time and plant utilization. Read More | Comments
By Asher M. Wright
by Dan Kiprop Kibet
Sectors of Production
For coffee production in Vietnam, we strongly recommend the establishment of the perennial peanut or Arachis pintoi, also called rhizoma peanut or Arachis glabrata. Perennial peanut is used throughout Vietnam mostly as an ornamental plant along roads or highways and in city landscapes. Originating in Brazil, this tropical legume is well adapted to low fertility soils. It is a stoloniferous plant, which means it is a creeping horizontal plant that takes root along its length to form new plants. This persistent plant has an impressive list of advantages to any other tropical groundcovers, such as shade tolerance (requires only 20% sunlight), drought resistance, high growth rate, high nutrient value/protein content, and low sward height. The perennial peanut helps to control erosion and flowers, acts as a heavy nitrogen fixer, and spreads like a blanket, making it an ample ground cover. Although its growth rate is not as high as it’s temperate counterparts, such as clover or alfalfa, the perennial peanut has one of the highest growth rates for tropical leguminous grasses. 
Maintaining a garden has its various setbacks especially when pests overrun your garden. Your instant reaction is to reach out immediately for the commercially produced chemical pesticides. While they are instantly effective, these harsh chemicals are harmful for us in the long run. Keeping in tune with organic living, there are natural remedies for pests that you can easily concoct at home.
As many NGO’s, governments and outreach programs strive to aid developing world farmers, the real struggle is to implement low cost, long term solutions to environmental degradation. In developing countries, farmers plant permanent cash crops, close together to maximize their production and thus increase their income. This is often the case in Vietnam where coffee, tea, and fruit plantations cover the rolling hills of the central highlands. The environmental and economic problems associated with these mono-crop systems are tremendous, leading to erosion, nutrient loss, loss of topsoil, polluted water sources and compacted soils. Most of these environmental issues increase the dependence on the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, which can have severe consequences to human health and the earth’s future food productivity. Several organizations focused on outreach recognize these issues and search to find practical solutions for farmers. When creating realistic answers to these problems we need to break the common monoculture mold and create low cost, low-labor, permanent solutions to restore soils. 
One of the easiest and most effective ways to improve and build soil fertility in any gardening situation is to use a method known as sheet mulching. Thick layers of mulch are placed directly on the soil, simulating the thick leaf litter and humus found in natural forest systems. Sheet mulch provides multiple benefits, including water retention, weed suppression, slow release of nutrients and increase of beneficial soil organisms. 
