This annual workshop short course takes a comprehensive approach to understanding general meat processing technologies. Participants will learn the practical science and manufacture of sausage and whole-muscle products.
D’Angelo, a UW-Madison graduate, has known since childhood he wanted to grow food for people and to do it on land he owned. He enjoyed working on his parents’ Christmas tree farm while growing up in New Jersey. But his parents, who never owned their own land, lost the farm when the landowner sold the property.
Farmers, agronomists, and agricultural professionals will gather in Arlington, Wisconsin, on September 2, 2026, for the third annual Wisconsin Extension Weed Management Workshop.
Hosted by UW-Madison Extension and the WiscWeeds team, the full-day event will focus on practical approaches to controlling weeds as herbicide resistance becomes an increasing challenge for growers.
The workshop, scheduled from 8:15 a.m. to 4 p.m., will feature field plot tours, educational presentations, networking opportunities, and a farmer panel highlighting successful weed-management experiences from across Wisconsin.
Previously, the Wisconsin 4-H Foundation supported the state’s 4-H program. Now, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension is leading fundraising efforts.
This change helps centralize fundraising efforts, decrease fundraising costs and ensure donations go directly to support Wisconsin 4-H youth.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural & Life Sciences recently received a $5,000 grant toward the project. One year from now, the plot is expected to grow and be shared communally, allowing for elders and youth to learn more about hemp production and weaving through a Hmong cultural lens.
Working with Wisconsin-based multicultural and Hmong organizations, Shelby Ellison, a UW-Madison associate professor and hemp geneticist, applied for the grant following a meeting with an expert hemp weaver visiting Wisconsin from Thailand last year.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed RuFaS, an open-source model that simulates dairy-farm operations before management changes are made. The platform is intended to help veterinarians and herd managers assess veterinary, nutritional and environmental interventions across an entire farm.
Recent Wisconsin Farm Related Fatalities reports indicate that injuries and deaths remain a persistent issue.
“This is incredibly unfortunate, given the many other challenges farm families and farm workers are facing here in this day and age,” said one of the reports’ co-authors, John Shutske, University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor and Agricultural Safety & Health Specialist. “We saw a high of 41 deaths in 2017. And, then a low of 28 in 2020, but climbing back in these last three years, we looked at around 30-35 deaths.”
Summer Hammann of Barron, Wisconsin is majoring in dairy science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her goal is to become a herdsman, working hands-on with dairy cattle, focusing on herd health, reproduction and overall performance. Her guidance towards this goal has been her background on her family’s dairy, as well as highly relevant internships and leadership in extracurricular activities.
Preliminary results from a regional study conducted in Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa by Harkirat Kaur, an assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences, compared BMR, conventional tall and short-stature corn hybrids.
If you are a sheep or goat producer, you’ll want to save-the-date for this year’s Parasite Patrol Tour when it stops in Wisconsin. It’s your opportunity to sharpen your parasite management skills through this multi-state educational program.
The Iowa State University Extension and Outreach is working in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension and will be in Outagamie County on Friday, Sept. 25.
Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, has launched the 2026-2027 Parasite Patrol Tour, a multi-state educational program designed to help sheep and goat producers improve parasite management.
The tour began on August 4 and will stop in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, on Friday, September 25.
The workshop addresses one of the biggest challenges facing small ruminant producers parasite resistance to traditional deworming treatments.
As the only veterinary medicine school in the state, UW-Madison is working to recruit rural veterinarians as early as high school.
The program is called Food Animal Veterinary Medical Scholars. Students likely to pursue careers in food-animal veterinary medicine receive guaranteed admission and are placed on track to complete their undergraduate studies within three years.
“I know they’re getting some really beneficial rain in the eastern part of the state today,” said James Otkin, a drought expert at UW-Madison. “But for us here in Dane County, it’s been another hot, dry week. And generally speaking, it’s been pretty much dry across much of the state again.”
A trip to your local farmers market may be doing more than filling reusable bags with fresh produce. New research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison shows those visits are also helping build a stronger, more connected community.
The study, published in Information, Communication & Society, found that people who regularly attend farmers markets report higher levels of community participation. They also have a stronger sense of belonging than those who rarely or never attend.
For 25 years, Discovery Farms has bridged the gap between science and practice by putting data collection directly into the hands of farmers, creating a legacy of water stewardship that is both data-driven and practitioner-led.
A part of UW–Madison Extension, Discovery Farms is a farmer-led research program that conducts studies on farms across Wisconsin to better understand the complex relationships between agricultural practices and water quality.
At the Rhinelander Agricultural Research Station in Rhinelander, UW-Madison professors and grad students are working hard and trying to find new ways to help potatoes grow.
Hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, the field day will provide attendees with practical information on soil conservation, nitrogen management, and strategies to improve soil health and farm profitability. Participants will have the opportunity to learn from Extension specialists and conservation professionals who are working directly with Wisconsin farmers and agricultural landscapes.
The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition says a recent federal court ruling clarifies that agencies cannot terminate funding because a new administration has different policy priorities.
Deputy Policy Director Sophia Kruszewski tells Brownfield, “The court says in its opinion that authority applies to the priorities as they were at the time the agreement was entered into.”
“It doesn’t create this broad authority for the agency to change its mind and then hold existing agreements to new and changing priorities,” she explains.
Aerica Bjurstrom, a regional dairy educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, said interest in the product is good news for the state’s dairy farmers.
“I think a lot of this innovation is coming from people in their own kitchens,” she said. “I think a lot of this boom in cottage cheese is coming from social media.”
Weather forecasters expect this to be one of the warmest growing seasons on record for much of the Midwest.
The early July heat wave prompted crop growth while heavy rains fell across parts of Wisconsin. USDA data showed corn condition at 82% good to excellent, while soybean condition remained unchanged at 78% good to excellent, with 20% of the crop blooming.
At UW-Madison, it was Steven Babcock, who in 1890 developed his groundbreaking butterfat test, according to the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. The Babcock Tester paved the way for higher standards in milk quality and reduced the practice of watering down milk.
The first dairy school in the U.S. was established at UW-Madison in 1890.
At first, only two students attended the first class, before the program’s enrollment jumped to 75. The enrollment jump was around a year after Prof. Stephen Babcock developed an inexpensive and practical test that measured the butterfat content of milk. The “Babcock test” provided an incentive to produce high-quality milk and allowed farmers to be paid accordingly.
UW-Madison Extension will host a beef cow-calf workshop Tuesday, July 28, at 6 p.m. at Starck Century Farm near Cadott.
This program is designed for cow-calf producers seeking to improve pasture and herd management practices while increasing profitability. Topics will include managing pastures for long-term production, breeding decisions for cow longevity, and marketing the fall calf crop. The Starck family will also discuss their transition to rotational grazing and efforts to improve herd genetics.
As solar power makes up a bigger piece of our electricity puzzle, there’s a worry about a trade-off, especially in rural areas: If we build more solar farms, are we losing land for crops?
But University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists are asking the question: Why can’t we have both?
As the horticulture outreach specialist with UW-Madison Extension Dane County, Johnson, 62, should have all the gardening answers you seek, and if not, she can surely find the right expert who does.
The United States is one of only a handful of countries that allows companies to hold patents on plant varieties. As a result, a small number of corporations can – and do – suppress competition in the seed industry, stifle innovation and turn taxpayer subsidies intended for farmers into corporate profits.
Julie Dawson is a Professor and Extension Specialist in the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She told “Wisconsin Today” parts of Bayer’s rebate program would discourage smaller seed sellers — who buy seeds from seed giants like Bayer and re-sell those directly to farmers — from testing products from multiple companies and specializing what seeds they sell to their region or customer base.
The history of the Laufenberg family farm has roots in the year Wisconsin became a state.
It was a time when the size of most dairy herds could be counted on your hands, and horses and oxen were used to pull plows, rakes and wagons.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will host a free pop-up field day on Thursday, July 9, 2026, at the Arlington Agricultural Research Station’s Plant Pathology Office in Arlington, Wisconsin.
The hands-on educational event will focus on corn and soybean diseases as well as herbicide injury, providing valuable information for farmers, crop advisers, and agricultural professionals.
While rising prices can put a strain on both farmers and consumers, interest in organic products continues to remain high. In 2025, U.S. organic food sales grew three times as fast as the overall food market. This interest extends to organic beef, eggs and dairy, a trend that bolsters demand for organic feed grain.
Q: I eat frozen yogurt regularly, assuming it’s better for me than ice cream. Is it?
Since frozen yogurt took off in the 1970s, it has been pitched as a healthier alternative to ice cream. In TCBY advertisements from the 1990s, their low-calorie, nonfat version was said to have “all of the pleasure, none of the guilt.” Today, some Greek yogurt shops tout gut-friendly probiotic benefits.
A new federal rule aimed at increasing access to nutritious foods for SNAP recipients is raising questions for some small grocery stores in rural communities.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in May that retailers participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will be required to carry a wider variety of staple foods beginning in November.
Last month, when the Trump administration reached an agreement with Bayer to curb what officials lambasted as anticompetitive practices, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins hailed it as a win for farmers. But she cautioned the concentrated nature of the seed industry required continued antitrust vigilance.
A researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has published a paper that demonstrates hybrid combinations of lignocellulosic feedstock pretreatment methods can achieve high glucose yields with reduced energy consumption.
Dairy producers across Wisconsin now have a new tool to help manage one of summer’s biggest challenges: heat stress. It costs the U.S. dairy industry significantly each year through reduced milk production, lower fertility, and added health expenses. At the same time, the cost of running the fans and ventilation systems that prevent those losses keeps rising, making smart decisions on the farm matter more than ever.
In many regions of the country, dairy farmers experience all four seasons, and that includes hot, humid summers that can leave dairy cattle — and the farm’s profits — struggling to cope.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension has a one-stop website with science-based resources for dealing with heat stress.
Resistant and emerging pests are on the rise, leaving farmers scrambling for information on control options.
Corn earworm flexed its might last year in Wisconsin fields.
Professional Dairy Producers will feature two educational sessions this week through its weekly The Dairy Signal program, offering dairy producers updated information on herd management and market conditions affecting the industry in 2026.
The Tuesday, May 26 episode will focus on improving reproductive performance on dairy farms. The session will examine current reproductive protocols, management strategies, and recent research findings designed to help producers strengthen herd efficiency and productivity.
As part of its 80th anniversary celebration, Woods Equipment is making financial contributions to agriculture programs at universities and local organizations across the Midwest. Among the universities is UW-Madison.
“For 80 years, our equipment has worked alongside farmers and the next generation of land stewards,” said Jillian Love, Marketing Manager at Woods Equipment. “These partnerships are our way of giving back and making sure there is a next generation ready to carry that work forward.”
The Dairy Innovation Hub held its fifth annual Dairy Symposium on Tuesday, May 12, at the Memorial Union on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. During the day-long event, which drew over 200 attendees, scientists shared and discussed their Hub-funded work with researchers, students, campus colleagues, and others.
Testing for avian flu among Wisconsin dairy cows is being reduced, thanks to recent changes at both state and federal levels.
But one animal health expert worries that reduced support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture could leave continued surveillance of the highly-contagious virus on shaky ground.
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On June 1, Maria Woldt will become the third director of the Dairy Innovation Hub, a state-funded initiative that brings together scientists, farmers, businesses, and educators to explore new ideas to ensure Wisconsin’s $52.8 billion dairy sector remains globally competitive while advancing economic, environmental, and social sustainability.
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“Researchers worked with the audiology lab on the UW Madison campus to help extend that squeak so that people all over the nation can enjoy them, which helps maintain that economic viability of Wisconsin dairy,” Hagenow said.
As Wisconsin farmers prepare for the 2026 growing season, the University of Wisconsin–Madison Division of Extension is launching another year of Badger Crop Connect webinars, a twice-monthly series providing timely, data-driven insights for the state’s corn, soybean, small grain, and forage farmers and industries.
When considering the expansion, Westby sought advice from the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Greenwalt commented that in Europe, cottage cheese is made in closed vat systems, but it isn’t commonly done that way in the United States. The CDR helped the co-op to find the right systems for its expansion.
It can be difficult to remove rodents once they’re inside your home. To keep them out, the University of Wisconsin’s rodent and pest bird management guide recommends sealing any exterior entry points larger than a quarter-inch.
Wisconsin currently has 370 active or pending concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) permits, most of which are dairy farms with about 700 or more cattle. Wisconsin dairy farms produce roughly 12 billion pounds of manure annually, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension office.
Scientists at the Wisconsin Crop Innovation Center are pioneering the future of hemp farming. Researchers at UW-Madison have received deregulation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 3 gene-edited hemp lines, allowing field cultivation without special permits.
Senior research scientist Mike Petersen explained they use a tool called CRISPR to gently edit the plant’s DNA, giving it traits like no THC or resistance to disease. Back in November 2025, the first line approved was Badger G, high in CBG, and known to reduce inflammation and other pharmaceutical benefits.
Ron Kean, University of Wisconsin-Madison’s poultry specialist, told Wisconsin Public Radio that poultry producers are also growing frustrated by a lack of solutions in this new era of avian flu response.
“There’s going to have to be more work on vaccination, which is a big international political issue,” he said. “That I think is one of the big frustrations for the poultry industry.”
Wisconsin currently has 274 licensed hemp growers, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Last November, that number was 470.
The decline could be due to people waiting to see how the law plays out and if the loophole will close or not, said Shelby Ellison, an agricultural professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It might be clearer in another month how many people reapply for licenses through the USDA.
“It’s going to hang in that $18 to $19 per hundredweight price for 2026. It doesn’t look like it’s going to rebound very strong this year,” said Aerica Bjurstrom, a regional dairy educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension. “Everybody has a different breakeven point; that’s not breakeven for a lot of dairy producers. It’s going to be a tough year.”
“They don’t solve the long-run problem of higher input costs and low prices; they are a Band-Aid to get us through this short-term problem,” said Paul Mitchell, the director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Agriculture professor and economist Steven Deller, also of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a similar view.
“We’re hemorrhaging thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and they’re giving us pennies,” Deller said, adding that farmers want “fair markets” and a “level playing field.”
“For schools that were looking for ways to provide cheap and nutritious meals for school children, one of the easiest ways to do that was just to provide milk, even before they were able to provide meals,” explained Andrew Ruis, research scientist in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the book “Eating to Learn, Learning to Eat: The Origins of School Lunch in the United States.”
Left unmanaged, deer can do a lot of damage in the UW Arboretum, which is why it hires sharpshooters who work after dark in winter to control the population.
“We do it to protect our plants, both in our gardens and in our natural areas,” said Michael Hansen, the Arboretum’s land care manager. “We also do it to maintain the health of the deer herd here.”
Leaders in Wisconsin agriculture are warning the state’s farmers to brace for another tough year for trade and market conditions.
The discussion at the annual Wisconsin Agricultural Outlook Forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focused both on the economic hardships weighing on farmers and what some producers are doing to try to get ahead.
Botulism spores are common in the environment and can be found in most foods at very low levels, said Kristin Schill, a botulism expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Healthy adults consume Clostridium botulinum spores every day without becoming sick. But babies have immature guts that may not be able to prevent the spores from germinating and growing. Once they do, the spores produce a toxin that can cause paralysis and death.
Spores can be found everywhere, including in milk, though typically at low levels, Schill said. Pasteurization doesn’t kill the germs. They can be present in the processing environment, too.
An assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences wants to improve sheep’s quality of life.
Sarah Adcock focuses her research on the welfare of farm animals, including specializing in the docking of lamb tails, a routine procedure on farms that can lead to acute and sometimes even chronic pain for the animal.
From 2020 to 2024, preliminary figures show the state has seen reports of 495 manure spills and incidents, according to Kevin Erb. He’s the manager of the Conservation Professional Training Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, which trains manure applicators. Erb did not have figures on the amount of manure spilled, saying releases are often estimated.
Consolidation continues to be the biggest factor shaping the number of farms in the state, according to Steven Deller, agricultural and applied economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“If you’re in your mid-60s, it just doesn’t make sense to be operating a dairy farm with 150 cows,” he said. “That’s demanding work, that’s really hard labor, and you hit a certain point where you just say, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’”
