Menoken Farm: A Soil Health Demonstration in North Dakota

January 15, 2018 by Green Cover Team

Menoken Farm is a combination of natural resource education and systems approach conservation. This 150-acre demonstration farm, located just east of Bismarck, N.D. was established in 2009 and draws people from all over the United States and beyond.

The farm is owned and operated by Burleigh County Soil Conservation District, which has offices in Bismarck, N.D. Additional financial and technical support is provided by:

Section 319 Nonpoint Source Pollution Control Program through the North Dakota Department of Health/Water Quality Division
Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

After identifying a number of resource concerns across the Menoken Farm landscape, work focused on providing these basic building blocks to improve soil health:

Soil armor
Minimal soil disturbance
Plant diversity
Continual live plant/root
Livestock integration

The systems approach management at Menoken Farm enhances erosion protection, sunlight harvest, plant diversity, carbon, pollinators, beneficial insects, wildlife, salinity control, livestock forage and more.

Green Cover Team

This article was written by the Green Cover Team. Made up of farmers and cover crop specialists spread across multiple states, team members have hands-on experience in everything from row crop farming and ranching to animal husbandry, seed industry experience, and low-rainfall dryland production. Each year we run extensive cover crop trials on our farm in Bladen, Nebraska, testing hundreds of species, varieties and mixes to understand what actually works in the field. Together, we've spent decades helping growers in all 50 states find the right cover crop mix for their land.

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Menoken Farm: A Soil Health Demonstration in North Dakota

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