Soils Saturated Heavily - What Now?

Jan 27, 2023

By Mark Bolda

Along with the rising waters of the past few weeks, concerns about the status of our strawberries have risen as well.

For their part strawberry roots, as you can see from paragraph #6 out of the book "Small Fruit Management” by Galleta and Himelrick, depend on oxygen. Soil waterlogging will kill the feeder rootlets important for plant development and nutrient uptake; of course as conditions improve they will be replaced, but all of this takes time and energy from the plant. The magnitude of damage for each field is going to depend on the length of the waterlogging and the temperatures (read – the warmer the better for the plant). Too, and this is underlined by the writing on paragraph #6, this waterlogging also favors the development and the root invasion of damaging fungi, which for our area usually means Phytophthora.

I've been asked about what the extent of the damage here will be, and of course the answer is going to be it depends. We are already in the main lagging by a week or two because of the cool and dark conditions of the past few weeks, and fields that are saturated or even under water for lengthy periods of time will be set back more than that.

Phytophthora

Source : ucanr.edu

Video: Understanding the Basics of the Renewable Fuel Standard

On Friday, April 24, 2026, from 12 noon–1:00 ET, the Penn State Center for Agricultural and Shale Law, alongside the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s (PDA) Agricultural Business Development Center (ABDC), presented this webinar in the Understanding Agricultural Law Educational Series, a course designed to develop subject matter literacy and competence on fundamental issues of agricultural law for attorneys and business advisors who work with or represent agricultural or rural clients but may not necessarily specialize in agricultural law:

“Understanding the Basics of the Renewable Fuel Standard”

The Clean Air Act’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program requires transportation fuel sold in the United States to contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels such as ethanol, biodiesel, or advanced biofuels. Established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and later expanded by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the RFS is implemented by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in collaboration with the Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

This webinar provides an overview of the legal authority and structure for the RFS program and explain how it works, including the program’s system of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) and categories of renewable fuels. Additionally, this webinar addresses EPA annual volume requirement rulemaking and associated recent legal issues.