Cover Crops for Soil Health and Insect Life

Thursday, July 16
11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m Central Standard Time

Free Webinar

Mike Bredeson of the Ecdysis Foundation will share how using cover crops to increase plant diversity within cropland, particularly corn, results in a completely changed and much more diverse insect community. The paraphrase is true - if you plant them (cover crops), insects will come. You will also learn how you must consider the impact of neonicitinoid insecticides in your own regenerative farming system as they will make their way into beneficial insect communities from outside your land in a variety of ways. Bredeson will give considerable attention to the many benefits of using multiple species of cover crops as well.

This webinar is part of a series of webinars on farming and insect life. It is vital for the future of life on this planet that we find ways to produce food while also enabling insects, birds, fish and other life to prosper. Food produced in ways that benefit the life around us, including soil life, tend to give us healthier food and more profitable farms.  

This webinar is also part of a larger set of educational offerings being provided with special attention for farmland owners, both public and private. We believe that farmland ownership bring stewardship responsibility and also the opportunity to be part of the movement to create a form of agriculture that is better for the land, the health of families, communities, and farmers.

QUESTIONS? Please contact:

Nathan Aaberg (Liberty Prairie Foundation) – nathan@libertyprairie.org or 847-507-5989

SPEAKER

Dr. Mike Bredeson (Ecdysis Foundation)

Growing up as a hunter, fisherman and farm kid, Dr. Bredeson knew that the work he did on a daily basis at the farm was contrary to his passion for the outdoors. So he lived life assuming that, while conventional farming was destructive to natural resources and wildlife, it was nevertheless a necessary practice if we were to be a productive society. This idea was turned on its head when he started an internship in a laboratory studying the effects of regenerative agriculture on farm productivity and natural resource quality. Since then he has been studying how certain novel farming practices (no-till, cover crops, ecological pest management) can result in productive and profitable farms while conserving resources on working land. 

Mike Bredeson earned his PhD in Biological Sciences at South Dakota State University and heads up the Ecdysis Foundation’s Grove City branch in Minnesota.

Through regenerative agriculture, the Ecdysis Foundation is convinced that humanity can grow food and conserve biodiversity and environmental health. The Ecdysis Foundation works to provide the independent research and development needed to make innovative practices scalable and transferable to as many farm operations as possible.