Sustainable Ag News

The Organic Research Forum at the 2023 Marbleseed Conference in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, February 23-25, 2023 includes a poster session documenting completed and ongoing research projects related to organic agriculture. Researchers, academic faculty and staff, graduate/undergraduate students and farmer researchers may submit poster proposals related to topics such as organic production, organic insect and disease management, nutritional quality and economics of organic foods, and consumer and market trends for organic products. Space is limited to 25 posters, and awards are offered for 1st through 3rd place. All accepted poster presenters receive full conference admission, but poster presenters are responsible for all lodging and travel costs. Entries are due by December 29, 2022.

University of California Cooperative Extension and the USDA California Climate Hub are launching CalAgroClimate, new web-based tools to provide farmers with locally relevant and crop-specific information to make production decisions that reduce risk. Growers and crop consultants can use CalAgroClimate’s crop and location-specific tools and resources to help make on-farm decisions, such as preparing for frost or untimely rain and taking advantage of expected favorable conditions. CalAgroClimate currently includes heat advisory, frost advisory, crop phenology, and pest advisory tools.

California Department of Food and Agriculture is accepting public comments until December 15, 2022, on a draft Request for Grant Applications (RGA) for the Healthy Soils Block Grant Pilot Program and the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP) Block Grant Pilot. Under the block grant pilot program, qualified organizations across California may apply for state funding up to $5 million to disburse to eligible farmers/ranchers or agricultural operations for on-farm projects. Additionally, awarded organizations would provide technical assistance to implement on-farm projects or will partner with technical assistance providers to provide this support.

Future Harvest is accepting applications for the Agricultural Leadership Development Initiative, a program designed to help BIPOC and BIPOC Veteran Farmers in the Chesapeake Region gain the skills they need to advance their farming careers and become leaders in their communities. The program will offer tailored, culturally sensitive training consisting of nine months of free, multi-modal training (including classroom curricula, on-farm and online learning, and one-on-one mentorship). Through the Initiative, these farmers will access enhanced training, education, and mentorship, enabling them to master skills needed to advance their careers and master the skills necessary to run a successful and profitable farming operation. The Agricultural Leadership Development Initiative is intended for intermediate-level farmers from Maryland, DC, and Virginia, who have approximately three to five seasons of experience.

Michigan State University (MSU) Center for Regional Food Systems is offering of a free, virtual, learning series for all farm producers of color representing the global majority diaspora. The learning series will support Black, Indigenous, Latinx, New Immigrants, and Persons of Color who farm in Michigan by offering education on the importance and process of keeping good financial records and understanding historical inequities in agriculture and financial systems. This course is for any size farm business in operation; urban to rural; with various ownership structures: owned, leased, nonprofit, or co-operatively operated. This six-month series will provide comprehensive, group-style farm business and finance management skill development. Registration is open through November 28, 2022, and the series runs through May 2023.

USDA announced a nearly $24 million investment through the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program across 45 organizations and institutions that teach and train beginning farmers and ranchers. USDA says the investment supports a wide range of professional development activities across an array of important topics for new farmers and ranchers, such as managing capital, acquiring and managing land, and learning effective business and farming practices. A complete list of funded projects is available online.

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach published a new, four-page guide, Measuring Soil Organic Carbon: A Crucial Iowa Resource, to help landowners and others better understand the importance of soil organic carbon and how to measure it. The free online publication contains photos and graphics that show how testing is done and at what depth. The publication also explains that soil organic carbon is closely related to soil organic matter, but the two are measured differently.

A new grant program in Minnesota, managed by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA), will offer dollar-for-dollar matching up to $15,000 for qualified small farmers to purchase farmland. MDA’s Rural Finance Authority (RFA) will award this funding using a first-come, first-served application process that will open at 9 a.m. on January 4, 2023. The Minnesota Legislature appropriated $500,000 in fiscal year 2023 for these grants. The RFA expects to award between 30 and 40 grants in this cycle, depending on the size of requests. A second cycle of $750,000 in funding has been secured and will be made available on July 1, 2023. Farmers must be Minnesota residents who will earn less than $250,000 annually in gross agricultural sales and plan on providing the majority of the day-to-day physical labor on the farm for at least five years. Applicants must not have previous direct or indirect farmland ownership.

USDA announced new resources and new agreements of the USDA Indigenous Food Sovereignty Initiative, which promotes traditional food ways, Indian Country food and agriculture markets, and Indigenous health through foods tailored to American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) dietary needs. USDA is partnering with tribal-serving organizations on these projects to reimagine federal food and agriculture programs from an Indigenous perspective and inform future USDA programs and policies. The new resources include a manual titled “Transitioning from Cattle to Bison,” regional seed saving hubs, 12 videos on foraging wild and Indigenous plants, and 12 recipes and instructional cooking videos using Indigenous foods.

Agricultural producers are invited to take an online survey to help the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) improve and increase access to its programs and services for America’s farmers, ranchers, and forest managers. USDA encourages all agricultural producers to take the survey, especially those who have not worked with USDA previously. The survey gathers feedback on programs and services available through USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Risk Management Agency (RMA). The survey is available online in 14 different languages, at farmers.gov/survey, and producers should complete it by March 31, 2023.

An international research team found that complex crop rotations made soils more resilient to drought conditions. Their work, published in Soil Biology and Biochemistry, revealed that while drought conditions made application of nitrogen fertilizer less effective, soils that were managed with complex crop rotations were able to pool nitrogen that was available to plants even during a drought. New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station scientist Stuart Grandy explained, “[U]ltimately, what we learned from this study is that the greater the crop diversity, the greater the potential to increase soil nitrogen, and the greater the ability of those plants surviving—or even thriving—during drought conditions.”

A study led by Stanford University found that cover cropping, as currently practiced in the Corn Belt, can lower crop yields. Although cover crops can play an important role in reducing water pollution and soil erosion, as well as providing weed control, satellite monitoring found that fields with cover crops saw yield declines of 5.5% for corn and 3.5% for soybeans. Researchers attribute the drop to cover crops using nitrogen and water that would otherwise be available to the cash crop. They advise tailoring the choice of cover crop to local conditions and using cover crops in areas that are less prone to water stress in order to prevent yield losses.

Hazelnuts are poised to become an important cash crop in Wisconsin, reports Agri-View. New hybrid varieties of hazelnut offer the size of European hazelnuts with the disease-resistance of American hazelnuts, and efforts are underway to develop commercial varieties, processing infrastructure, and production knowledge that can aid farmers in producing commercial crops. Hazelnuts offer growers numerous benefits, including soil stabilization, windbreaks, alley-cropping potential, and multi-year production, as well as crop diversity.

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and GRAIN have released The Fertiliser Trap, a report that highlights the rising cost of farming’s addiction to chemical fertilizers on a global basis. The report concludes that increased production of chemical fertilizers will not resolve our food and climate crises, but there are proven sustainable, agroecological farming systems that can build soil health and dramatically reduce our fertilizer dependence. These include strategies such as choosing a diversity of crops, establishing perennials, and incorporate grazing in agricultural systems.
Related ATTRA resource: Toolkit: How to Reduce Synthetic Fertilizer Use

On November 14, 2022, USDA is publishing a final rule that adds two substances to the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances for organic production and processing. The rule adds paper-based planting aids, also known as “paper pots,” for transplanting crops on organic farms. It also adds low-acyl gellan gum for use as a thickener, stabilizer, or gelling agent in organic products. The rule also corrects a spelling error on the National List, changing “wood resin” to “wood rosin.”

The VINE, an initiative of the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, the AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems (AIFS), farm-ng robotics company, and the Fresno-Merced Future of Food (F3) Innovation coalition are inviting university or college students in the United States to participate in the Farm Robotics Challenge. The three-month competition, February 1 through May 13, 2023, asks student teams to address a production farming topic on any crop or size of farm, with a desired focus on small farms, by automating an essential farm-related task using the farm-ng robotics platform.

Research led by the University of Reading and published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B showed that air pollution reduced the number of parasitic wasps controlling aphids in crop fields. In testing, exposure to diesel exhaust and ozone caused significant drops in the number of beneficial insects available to control aphid pests in oilseed rape crops.

USDA has published a recorded webinar that provides a broad overview of USDA investments in the Food System Transformation (FST) Framework available to the organic community. To frame the discussion on an upcoming November 15 Listening Session on pinpointed organic market development, AMS encourages the organic community to view this recorded webinar to better understand existing programs accessible to organic producers. The webinar highlights programs administered by the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) and USDA Rural Development that support developing local and regional food supply chains.

The Pasture Project at the Wallace Center has released Beginner’s Resource Guide to Direct Marketing Meat, an interactive online guide listing resources that are organized to help a farmer determine how direct marketing can work for their farming enterprise. It is intended to be a “first resource” for new and existing farmers interested in starting or adding one or more direct-marketing enterprises to their farm. The goal of this guide is to make it easy as possible for a farmer to identify and choose the information that will be most helpful. The guide offers resources on direct marketing, business planning, processing, marketing, labeling, and where to sell.
Related ATTRA publication: Direct Marketing Lamb: A Pathway

USDA Economic Research Service has published Rotational Grazing Adoption by Cow-Calf Operations. The report is the result of a study that found about 40% of cow-calf operations use rotational grazing, but less than half of those are under intensive systems. The study found that rotational grazing is most common in the Northern Plains/Western Corn Belt and Appalachian regions. The 38-page report also provides details on how frequently or “intensively” grazing operations rotate livestock between paddocks, key system characteristics such as average paddock size, and how outcomes such as stocking density and cost relate to system characteristics.
Related ATTRA Publication: Paddock Design, Fencing, Water Systems, and Livestock Movement Strategies for Multi-Paddock Grazing