Rich Sanders, USDA/NRCS
Agriculture is intrinsically linked to the environment: roughly half of all land in the lower 48 States is farmland, including cropland, land in the Conservation Reserve Program, pastureland, and rangeland. Both crop and animal production generate pollutants that enter the air as well as surface and ground waters. The Natural Resources Conservation Service estimates that the annual loss of soil from water erosion is approximately 1.07 billion tons per year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates, based upon areas sampled, that pollutants originating from this runoff contribute to an estimated 60 percent of impaired river areas, 30 percent of impaired lake areas, 15 percent of impaired estuarine areas, and 15 percent of impaired coastal shoreline.

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Tags: agriculture,Farm and Field,grazing,Livestock,market,pollution,production,topsoil,wetlands
Categories: Farm and Field
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LONGHORN CATTLE. The Texas longhorn is a hybrid breed resulting from a random mixing of Spanish retinto (criollo) stock and English cattle that Anglo-American frontiersmen brought to Texas from southern and midwestern states in the 1820s and 1830s. A few old-timers, J. Frank Dobie^qv wrote, "contend that both the horns and bodies of the Texas cattle were derived from importations from the States out of Longhorn Herefords of England,"

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Tags: breed,fever,history,hybrid,longhorn,market,range
Categories: Farm and Field, Livestock
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