Boiling is an even more aggressive form of heating than pasteurization, which was developed to kill pathogens while minimizing changes to milk’s flavor and composition, says John Lucey, a food science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and director of the university’s Center for Dairy Research. “Boiling is a very substantial heat treatment whereas pasteurization is much gentler,” he notes.
A program of UW-Extension and a free community resource, Covering Wisconsin has Health Insurance Navigators located within communities throughout the state who help people understand their options, compare plans, connect with programs that provide financial help, and sign up. Farmers can get help understanding how being self-employed impacts their eligibility in programs and how to find affordable coverage.
In Wisconsin, only 17 percent of 2,769 people surveyed last December support a hunting season on sandhill cranes. That’s according to a study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and funded by the International Crane Foundation. The organization has said crop damage by cranes should be solved by other means, saying a hunt wouldn’t have any significant benefit for farmers.
A 2023 UW-Madison survey of Wisconsin dairy farmers found that nearly 40% of farms have at least one foreign employee; other studies have estimated that immigrants account for up to 90% of the labor force in the dairy industry.
New research has found that communities with more women-owned or -operated farms have higher rates of business creation, lower poverty rates and a longer average life expectancy.
University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Steven Deller is a co-author of the research first published in January. Deller and colleagues argue that the reduction in rural poverty is particularly important.
Jerry Clark, crops educator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension, said harvest is at least two weeks ahead of schedule in the western Wisconsin counties of Chippewa, Dunn and Eau Claire where he works.
“Since corn silage started to be harvested in the early part of September right through today, it’s been excellent conditions for getting the crop off,” Clark said on Wednesday.
This has been an unusual growing season. Garden Talk regulars Lisa Johnson and Brian Hudelson are in to talk about what they’ve seen regarding plant disease, insects and the effects of a wet spring and dry fall. And then we talk to an expert about how to grow ferns – both inside and out – and learn a little of the history of this ancient plant.
Beginning farmers will be eligible for financial planning and technical assistance under new U.S. Department of Agriculture projects delivered through the University of Wisconsin System, the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, and the Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship.
While beef-on-dairy production continues to grow in the U.S., it was a novel concept in 2018 when it came to the attention of Ryan Sterry, regional dairy educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension.
“A few colleagues and myself were noticing more chatter about this, more farms were experimenting with it,” Sterry recalls.
The economic relationship between Wisconsin family farms and the rural communities that surround them is changing.
UW-Madison agricultural and applied economics professor Steve Deller said that smaller farms are struggling to generate enough income to support themselves, so families are more often turning to off-farm employment to help pay the bills.
Trade associations for corn, soybean, potato and vegetable growers in Wisconsin were either unavailable or didn’t respond to requests for comment. Russ Groves, chair of the Department of Entomology at UW-Madison, said detections of pesticides are unfortunately a logical outcome in areas where agriculture is more intense on the landscape.
“Those are the tools that we have relied upon so that we don’t have real significant economic losses for a producer or an industry,” Groves said.
The line extends out to the street for what UW-Madison students with the Collegiate Farm Bureau and the Badger Dairy Club are cooking up.
One of the Dairyland’s key industries has a shortage of people — and UW-Madison is stepping in to help.
Crane hunting also brings political views and public sentiment into play, Spreitzer said. A 2023 study by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center found fewer than one in five Wisconsinites supports a sandhill crane hunting season in the state. The work was funded by the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo and the UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
UW Extension Educator Kevin Schoessow is back to talk about the Spooner Agriculture Research Station. And the food they have donated to local organizations. We also talk about the work being done at the Savannah Institute to integrate trees and shrubs with crops and livestock on farms.
Chuck Nicholson, ag economist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the strong survey response could signal a change for the industry, even if the state is likely to continue seeing farms exit the dairy industry.
“Bulbs are going to need a 12- to 16-week chilling period. When you put them in the ground that temperature should go down slowly, so they have the first 3 to 5 weeks developing their roots at 45 to 50 degrees, and then the next 3 weeks at 38 to 42 degrees,” said Lisa Johnson, horticulture educator for University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension.
“Fall is the best time to look at perennial weed control,” said Jerry Clark, a northwestern Wisconsin crops and soils educator who serves Chippewa, Dunn and Eau Claire counties through the Division of Extension at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For more than a decade, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension has been offering the opportunity for people to become Master Naturalists by attending expert-led training sessions and volunteering their time to conservation efforts. Altogether, Master Naturalists volunteer over 25,000 hours of service each year to over 700 organizations across the state.
Wenzlaff said the Wisconsin Farm Bureau is working with experts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to plan a series of informational meetings in the coming months so farmers better understand their options ahead of a likely vote in December.
‘There’s so much uncertainty in those predictions that I would hesitate to really read too much into any small variation from year to year, outside of demonstrable changes and practices out on the landscape,” said Steven Hall, a professor in the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The emissions inventories published by EPA are subject to substantial uncertainty.”
Ron Kean, poultry specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said many farms will choose to cull an infected flock after a recall to ensure the bacteria does not continue spreading.
“Demand for dairy products overall, both United States domestic and export demand, continues to grow,” said Charles Nicholson, an agriculture and economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Alliant Energy and the University of Wisconsin-Madison also partnered on an argivoltaics research site near Stoughton, which will feature a small-scale solar site that will produce enough clean energy to power over 450 homes.
Homeowners and communities can also take steps to slow the spread. Ash trees should be checked out for emerald ash borer symptoms, and insecticides can be applied according to guidelines provided by a certified arborist or the University of Wisconsin extension. Trees can also be removed, and replaced with non-susceptible species.
Tyler Lark, research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the report’s co-authors, said some lands have been restored to natural ecosystems. Others, those perhaps currently populated by invasive species, could be the answer to big questions the country is facing about where to house increasing renewable-energy development.
“We ideally want to avoid our best and most productive ag lands but we also don’t want to encroach on pristine or native ecosystems,” Lark explained. “Formerly cropped lands might hit that sweet spot in the middle.”
(Emily) Bick, an entomologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researches ways to better detect the agricultural pests that drive serious economic losses worldwide. She says improving these methods could result in using pesticides more strategically — less often, at just the right time.
Written by Leonard Polzin, dairy markets and policy outreach specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Wendy Caldwell is the executive director of the Monarch Joint Venture nonprofit, which partners with the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum to run the volunteer counts. She said volunteers reported fewer monarchs this season than in past years.
According to the University of Wisconsin Division of Extension, cranberry marshes cover 21,000 acres in 20 of Wisconsin’s central and northern counties where more than 250 cranberry farms produce nearly 61 percent of the nation’s supply.
Wisconsin researchers are among a select few to document manure spill trends.
In 15 years, reported incidents statewide jumped from about 40 to roughly 200 annually, but Department of Natural Resources and University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension staff don’t believe their frequency actually increased.
County fairs around the state have already gone through the additional testing requirements for avian flu this summer. The Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory has received nearly 400 samples every week since June, according to director Keith Poulsen.
Poulsen said they could accommodate more tests, but there hasn’t been the demand.
The fire was reported at 6:23 p.m. at the West Madison Agricultural Research Station at 8502 Mineral Point Road. That facility is used by UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
No one was injured Friday evening in a fire that destroyed a shed and a barn at UW-Madison’s West Madison Agricultural Research Station on Madison’s West side.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension provides an abundance of resources to guide a producer’s decisions according to the 4 R’s of nutrient management: right source, right time, right rate, right place. But nutrient management is complex and site specific. To help producers and consultants get a better grasp of the nitrogen needs on individual farms, the Nitrogen Optimization Pilot Program (NOPP) was born.
Hatch said the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has a network of people who want to see small producers succeed.
“There are so many resources in Wisconsin, you just need to start introducing yourself and asking questions,” he said.
Dennis Hancock is center director at the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center, which will administer the new facility in partnership with the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. He said part of the decline in Wisconsin dairy farms can be attributed to workforce shortage and a possible solution is replacing some of the workforce with technology.
“One of the ways to save smaller farms, in my opinion and those that have actually made the conversion would agree, is through the use of robotics,” Hancock recently said on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “Robotics are quite expensive, but they do save a lot of labor.”
“We had the warmest February on record and our soil moisture was down to 16% in some areas. And now we’ve gone from one of the most severe deficits to one of the most severe surpluses (of moisture) in just a couple of months,” said Kevin Jarek, University of Wisconsin Division of Extension Crops and Soils educator for Outagamie County. “In my 25 years with Extension, this is unbelievable.”
Shelby Ellison is an assistant professor of plant and ecosystem sciences at UW–Madison.
“A cannabis plant in the field is making CBDA and THCA,” Ellison said. “Only through a chemical process that normally happens when heated do you convert THCA into delta-9.”
Includes interview with Natasha Paris, Regional crops educator, UW-Madison Extension.
I recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in Life Sciences Communication. With the opportunity to serve as Alice in Dairyland, I am so excited to travel across Wisconsin for a memorable and rewarding year, connecting communities with agriculture and learning more about this diverse industry across our state.
PJ Liesch, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, began seeing reports of Japanese beetle activity the last week of June, which is typical. Numbers will increase during their prime feeding months of July and August when they damage (but usually don’t kill) roses, grape vines, basil, raspberries, crabapples, birches and ornamentals, among others, by skeletonizing the leaves.
With a population explosion going on in the flowerbeds, what is a gardener to do? UW-Madison entomologist PJ Liesch says gardeners have several options in combating the hungry horde.
“If the population of aphids is not harming the plants or competing with the monarchs, you can just tolerate them. However, if it’s getting out of hand, blast them off with a jet of water (which causes the aphid’s mouthpiece to break off and eventually starve), or you can squish them and wipe them off the plant,” he said.
Written by John Shutske, a professor of biological systems and engineering and also an Extension specialist at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Still, the overall increase of food prices in the United States in 2024 is expected to be about 2%, down from an average of 3% annually, Andrew Stevens, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Reuters.
“Yes, food prices are increasing, but they’re not increasing as much as they have in recent years, and they’re even a little below the long-run average,” Stevens said.
A team of scientists from the UW-led Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center mapped millions of acres of abandoned farmland across the U.S. over several decades in a study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Knowing where this abandoned land is could help people evaluate it for different uses, including climate solutions, the team theorized.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, in collaboration with the UW-Madison Animal and Dairy Science Department, is set to host a series of four in-person workshops focused on Beef X Dairy crossbred cattle from July 29 to August 1, 2024.
Among the recipients are Luiz Ferraretto, UW-Madison Dairy Nutrition Extension Specialist, Department of Animal and Dairy Science, and PJ Leisch, Extension Entomologist, Director, Insect Diagnostic Lab.
UW-Madison entomologist PJ Liesch is back. We talk with him about what’s hampering the spread of spongy moths in Wisconsin. We also talk about how climate change is aiding the spread of joro spiders to northern regions. Then, two WDNR invasive species specialists share success stories from across the state.
University of Wisconsin-Madison social work professor Tova Walsh is glad more people are paying attention to postpartum depression in moms. She said that’s a big improvement.
In the UW-Madison basement-level lab, the answer was largely predestined. One scoop was regular ice cream, not unlike what visitors could buy upstairs at the Babcock Dairy store. The other was a concoction of UW-Madison Ph.D. researcher Cameron Wicks, in which an addition of polyphenols — compounds naturally occurring in plants such as blueberries and green tea leaves — helps ice cream keep its shape by counteracting melting ice crystals.
“You would have to go back to the big drought year of 1988 to find a drier May, and before that, all the way back to the thick of the Dust Bowl in 1934,” said Steve Vavrus, a climatologist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Researchers, including Brian Langolf of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, say digesters cut greenhouse gas emissions by capturing methane from manure in open lagoons. Around 36 percent of methane emissions from human activities are tied to livestock or agricultural practices, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Valentin Picasso is a University of Wisconsin-Madison plant and agro ecosystem sciences professor who has been researching kernza and other perennial grains in an effort “to increase sustainability of farming systems and resilience to climate change.”
June is Dairy Month in Wisconsin! Learn how your favorite Wisconsin dairy products – from cheese curds to ice cream – are made with these episodes from PBS Wisconsin.
Simon Gilroy, a University of Wisconsin-Madison botany professor, is among a handful of scientists uncovering how plants respond to the world. But Gilroy hesitates to use the word “intelligence” when talking about them.
“One of the things that we do as humans is we anthropomorphize all the time. Inanimate objects, we attribute them human characteristics. And it’s just built into our DNA of how we interact with the world … so that must be how everything else operates,” Gilroy told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” recently. “That can sometimes totally get in the way.”
Jason Fletcher, professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said during the early 20th century, producers of tree crops like apples commonly used the chemicals when preparing for an emergence.
“Because cicadas are known, when they’re coming and where they’re going to be in general terms, certainly in the past, farmers tried to protect their crops by dousing everything with pesticide,” he said.
There’s a farm in the little town of Arlington, 20 miles north of Madison, that looks and smells like any other Wisconsin dairy operation. Its 550 cows are milked twice daily, once before dawn and again in the afternoon, like they are at thousands of dairy farms across the state.
But at this farm — the University of Wisconsin’s Agricultural Research Station — when a cow eats, gets milked and burps, a data point is created. That data collection is helping researchers at UW-Madison adapt Wisconsin’s herd to the challenges of climate change.
Less than 1 percent of the state is considered to be experiencing drought, according to the latest map from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
It’s made for a quick end to a long period of drought, state climatologist Steve Vavrus said.
“Drought has virtually disappeared from Wisconsin finally, after 12 solid months,” he said.
John Shutske, professor and agricultural safety & health specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said from the beginning, Wisconsin’s age minimum has been much younger than other farm states who have similar requirements. National best practices for farm safety recommend youth be at least 14 years old before being allowed to operate equipment.
