Grassland 2.0Grassland 2.0The latest news from the Grassland 2.0 team on grassland-based agriculture and sustainable agriculture.
Grassland 2.0’s Summer Meeting Recap By Greta Landis “Until we build visions and models for the future, we won’t know where we are going, or how to chart our course to get there,” said Randy Jackson, one of the principal investigators of Grassland 2.0. A barn full of 50 farmers, researchers, and conservation and policy […]
Grassland 2.0 goes global with Carl Wepking, Grassland 2.0 Program Manager, featured on a podcast by Proagni, an Australian-based company dedicated to reducing the environmental and social footprint of agriculture while improving farm economics. That’s a mission we can all get behind.
William D. Hoard’s enlightened understanding of the importance of livestock to soil health, coupled with his courageous advocacy work, helped pull Wisconsin agriculture from the depths of despairing wheat production in the late 19th century. When year after year of wheat production led to devastating disease pressure, he opened a door to unimagined prosperity. Hoard ignited the concept of America’s Dairyland by understanding the importance of diversified cropping to break disease cycles, the role of livestock in recycling nutrients, and the importance of peer-to-peer education to making change.
Hoard’s lore, captured in the booklet “Hilltop Decision,” speaks of how Governor Hoard saw “good farmers” exiting the industry all around him, and he realized the importance of education and technical support to maintain families on the land. We might call his work agricultural innovation because he transformed the industry. That is, Wisconsin agriculture was never the same, and that was a good thing . . . “back in the day.”
As a dairy farm kid from southwest Wisconsin, Jacob Marty had no desire to return to his family’s farm. He was set on attending UW-Stevens Point and pursuing a career in conservation. Studying wildlife ecology pointed him in an unexpected direction, however: back to the farm.
“I got interested in how we can harmonize food production while also providing habitat for wildlife,” says Jacob. “That led me down this road.”
Watch Jacob Marty share why he had a change of heart, all while fending off an overzealous ram!
This story was written by Grassland 2.0 members Randy Jackson, Michelle Miller, Pam Porter and Lindsey Day-Farnsworth and was originally published by the Washington Post in 2017 and has been republished here.
A recent article by Tamar Haspel argues that the local and organic food movement can’t fix our food system. If this movement were solely focused on “buy fresh, buy local” at farmers markets and upscale restaurants, we would agree. However, bigger changes are underway for sustainable agriculture. Farmers and others in the sustainable food movement pursue a broader vision of change in agriculture