The USDA’s North Central Region-Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (NCR-SARE) program released its annual call for Research and Education Grant Preproposals, available online at http://www.northcentralsare.org/Grants/Our-Grant-Programs/Research-and-Education The […]

Claudio Gratton, CIAS Faculty Associate, was named 2022 Entomological Science of America Fellow for his work on the landscape ecology and conservation of beneficial insects […]

Join us for a beautiful 100k, or half-day, ride in Green County on June 4th, 2022. Our 18th Annual Ride to Farm event will start […]

UW-Madison researchers explored whether limitations on the inputs allowed in organic farming may result in differences in plant-soil dynamics compared to conventional dairy operations, necessitating different grazing techniques. They found relevant scientific literature to be scarce.

Calculating greenhouse gas emissions of different farming systems is complex, and the results of each study depend on the geographic area considered and specific assumptions about management.

While contributing to successful weed management, cover crops provide other benefits by reducing erosion, building soil organic matter, and, depending on the cover crop, retaining or providing soil nutrients.

Do pastures under management-intensive rotational grazing (MIRG) differ from grasslands under other management in terms of forage quality and quantity, carbon sequestration and biological soil activity? Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison set out to answer these questions and discover some of the reasons behind differences in pasture productivity.

The Wisconsin Integrated Cropping Systems Trial (WICST) was established in 1989 in response to farmers and others making a case for long-term research on low-input farming. WICST set out to investigate both the benefits and limitations of alternative agriculture through replicated research on the productivity, profitability and environmental impacts of both sustainably and conventionally managed production systems.

Despite more than 40 years of largely voluntary efforts by federal, state, and local government, and tens of billions of US dollars of investment in conservation, nationwide progress on nutrient control has not yet been achieved.

Because agriculture is a major nonpoint phosphorus pollution source, there is strong interest in identifying and managing farm sources of phosphorus runoff. On dairy farms, possible sources of this runoff include cropland, grazed pastures, and outside cattle holding areas such as barnyards and overwintering lots. A new study based on modeled data for four dairy farms that use managed grazing found that these farms have very low phosphorus losses on a whole farm basis.