Story by Corey Blant
We are excited to announce that Grassland 2.0 has a podcast; it’s called GrassCast! You can find it on Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts, or at grasscast.buzzsprout.com.
The podcast features a series of narrative accounts from producers and other grazing practitioners based on interviews conducted by Grassland 2.0 graduate students Marnie MacGregor, Kase Wheatly, and Corey Blant. Each episode is 20 minutes long and focused on a different theme, including: the social dynamics of grazing, farm labor in grassland-based systems, and intergenerational transitions of long-held family land—just to name a few! Episodes will be released monthly and are currently focusing on graziers and grazing practitioners from across Wisconsin.
Our latest episode, featuring Serge Koenig a Conservation Technician for Sauk County, was released yesterday. Serge is passionate about his work–helping landowners think about how to best preserve the water and soil that they steward. Though he started out his career 25 years ago focused on technical fixes that address the symptoms of the problem, for the last decade Serge has working on getting to the root of the larger conversation challenges that his community faces. Now, he’s one of the biggest grazing advocates in all of South-Central Wisconsin! He’s supported countless farmers as they transitioned their land from annual crops to fenced in pasture.
In this episode of the podcast, Serge shares about his approach when working with farmers, some of the social and cultural barriers that impede the switch to grazing, and the snowballing benefits he’s witnessed when folks are able to embrace change.
Listen here:
Listen to it while you’re out doing tractor work or consider including it as part of a class assignment. Or if you are in the public sector, you might find Serge’s experiences can help inform your work. Either way, we hope each episode will serve as a vehicle for farmer-to-farmer education, and so much more!
Stay tuned for more episodes and exciting new projects that will be featured in the GrassCast feed in 2021!