State-of-the-art renovations to UW-Madison’s Babcock Hall are expected to revolutionize the Wisconsin cheese industry and bring the university’s iconic dairy production back to campus after a three-and-a-half year hiatus.
A 130-year-old program created to connect Wisconsin farmers with university research is getting a second chance at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.
UW-Madison announced last year that the Farm and Industry Short Course would move from a 16-week, on-campus certificate program to a non-credit format that would use online learning. Officials said the change was due to a significant decline in enrollment, with less than 100 students each year over the last decade. With only 20 students projected to enroll in the program for 2022, officials said it no longer had enough students to run the self-funded program.
Dane County resident Dominic Ledesma is one hobbyist who jumped on the early warm weather. Ledesma, who is chief diversity officer for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension, started tapping trees at his home and his family’s cabin in Jackson County last year after learning about the craft from his colleagues. He said sap was flowing in when he first tapped his trees in February, but collection slowed down in Jackson County as the weather turned cold again.
“The season really didn’t take off,” he said. “In talking with other colleagues in Extension, I certainly noticed some very significant differences between the southern part of the state and Jackson County.”
“It’s no longer your grandmother’s pickled beets,” said Adam D’Angelo, a UW-Madison graduate student and plant biologist. “You go to the grocery store, and you find beet juice, beet chips, beet this and beet that.” D’Angelo and UW-Madison horticulture professor Irwin Goldman recently appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Larry Meiller Show” to discuss their work redesigning beets for modern tastes. Goldman said people often complain “about the fact that they taste like dirt.”
“You look at it, and you think of the huddled masses of our ancestors and their old-style foods,” Goldman said. “But there’s something about its earthiness, about its color and its beauty that I find has grown on me over the years I’ve worked on it.”
The first runner-up, with a score of 98.61, was Vintage Cupola American Original Cheese, a hard raw milk cheese made by Door Artisan Cheese Company in Egg Harbor for Red Barn Family Farms in Appleton … The Cupola cheese was developed with the Center for Dairy Research at UW-Madison.
Quoted: At the 2023 Wisconsin Agricultural Outlook Forum this week, Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said part of the decline is likely from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s move to stop past-due debt collections and farm foreclosures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Noted: Chicken flocks are still down 5% to 6%, said Lou Arrington, an emeritus professor of poultry sciences at University of Wisconsin-Extension who works with the Wisconsin Poultry & Egg Association. That may not seem a lot, but it has an outsized impact because demand for eggs is “inelastic” — it doesn’t vary much as prices rise or fall, he said. Bakeries and other food producers’ need for eggs hasn’t changed, and consumers have sucked it up and continue to pay prices that may make them gasp, Arrington said.
“I don’t think the individual producer has a lot to say about it,” he said of the nationwide forces that have driven up prices.
The group (Farm Well Wisconsin), founded in 2020, is funded through a five-year grant associated with the Wisconsin Partnership Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. Through trainings, community members work on building empathetic listening skills, connecting people with resources and discussing issues related to farm culture.
Quoted: Andrew Stevens, assistant professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said this percentage has been fairly consistent over time and includes forestland, pasture and cropland.
“The analyses that have been done with the data that are currently available really show that foreign ownership of agricultural land in the United States is a pretty miniscule issue, if it’s an issue at all,” he said. “There are no systematic differences across communities with more or less foreign ownership. Land prices don’t seem to systematically differ.”
There might be a new way to think of one particular species of invasive snail being found in Wisconsin’s water: as a part of a gourmet meal.
At least that’s the approach Minneapolis chef Yia Vang and Titus Sielheimer, a fisheries outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant, made this summer, when they filmed themselves harvesting and cooking up Chinese mystery snails in northern Wisconsin.
Noted: Soaring prices for cattle, land, and everything else, have made it difficult for someone to get started in dairy farming.
And soon there will be one fewer educational resource available as University of Wisconsin-Madison shuts down its School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers, which has graduated around 600 budding farmers since the 1990s.
The non-degree program has offered instruction in what’s called “grazing,” a type of dairy farming where cows graze on pastures for most of their food rather than consuming a diet of grain and spending most of their time indoors. In addition to classroom instruction, the program has offered on-farm internships, business planning assistance and mentoring.
Even after a year of record high inflation, economic forecasts show 2022 was a good year to be farming.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service estimated that national net farm income will reach $160.5 billion for the year. That’s 13.8 percent higher than in 2021 and roughly 50 percent higher than the 20-year average, according to ag economist Paul Mitchell.
Mitchell, who leads the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said part of the prosperity comes from COVID-19 aid from the federal government, which helped kick-start demand after an initial downturn at the start of the pandemic.
“We’ve had unprecedented levels of commodity support for agriculture for a couple years and then really good prices,” he said.
Quoted: “Farm fatality numbers remain alarmingly high, and because a farm is like any other dangerous industrial workplace, the types of hazards are many,” said John Shutske, Ph.D., professor and agricultural safety specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Many continue to be concerned with the high number of deaths on public roadways. Clearly, as farms get bigger and farmers need to spend more time on the road moving from farm to farm/field to field, we are going to see more and more risk on roadways.”
Quoted: “It may be hard to set another record in 2023, but there is a possibility of increased exports,” Robert Cropp, professor emeritus at University of Wisconsin-Madison Cooperative Extension professor said in a recent column.
Each dollar of net farm income results in an additional 60 cents of economic activity as farmers spend money in their local communities, according to University of Wisconsin research.
An unconventional yet burgeoning project looming on the horizon of the grow-your-own movement is the development of cultivated, or cultured meat. It is real animal meat and seafood that is produced by cultivating animal cells, according to the Good Food Institute (GFI). Backers say it reduces the land and water pollution caused by large-scale meat agriculture.
Masatoshi Suzuki is a researcher and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In recent years, Suzuki’s lab has worked in collaboration with GFI to create a prototype of a beef patty grown from the stem cells of a cow.
It looks as if the University of Wisconsin-Madison is getting ready to close down the School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers, which has graduated almost 600 budding farmers after training them in grazing practices as well as business planning for their new operations.
The school was founded and directed by Dick Cates, a Spring Green beef farmer who also served on the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection’s citizen policy board and various state sustainability panels.
Noted: Bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) are an extremely common plant grown all over the U.S. They show off unique flowers that are heart-shaped and white, pink, or red depending on the cultivar, notes the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This easy-to-grow plant thrives on its own with little human intervention. It will grow happily in shady gardens beneath large trees as long as the soil is well-draining.
Noted: There are over 6,000 dairy farms in the state, he said. According to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study, dairy generates nearly half of Wisconsin’s agricultural revenue each year. Over 150,000 people work in the industry, making up 4.2 percent of the state’s total workforce.
Quoted: Jack Williams, a climate scientist and chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Geography, explained that prairie plants, with their deep roots and soil horizons, can store carbon and mitigate climate.
“There’s a lot of below-ground carbon sequestration in grasslands,” Williams said. “So a healthy grassland can also be a good climate mitigation strategy.”
Ellen Damschen, a UW-Madison professor in the department of biology, echoed that view, stressing that it’s important because small, local seed populations are at greater risk of getting wiped out.
“If seeds move, they’re moving their genes. You want to allow population sizes to get bigger, and you want to allow movement between sites,” she said.
Wisconsin is known as the dairy state. So it’s no surprise that the University of Wisconsin-Madison created America’s first dairy school. The state ranks first for cheese production and fourth in world production behind the rest of the country, Germany, and France.
Quoted: The effectiveness of methods like goats, mowing and herbicides to control invasive species like buckthorn and bush honeysuckle is something that University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are studying. It’s part of a multi-year project that’s underway at two plots in Sun Prairie and Prairie du Sac.
Researchers are examining how each of those management techniques work when used alone or together, according to Mark Renz, professor and extension specialist in UW-Madison’s agronomy department. He noted a study by researchers at Purdue University in Indiana previously found goat grazing could reduce invasive species over the span of five years.
“So it works, it just takes time,” Renz said. “And the challenge as a land manager like the Brule Forest is trying to figure out is it worth it to do that approach with goats or is an integrated approach better or what works best for their situation?”
Quoted: “A lot of the companies in the United States that practice in the renewables area have shifted a lot of their efforts to large-scale solar design,” said James Tinjum, who researches environmental sustainability and renewable energy at the University of Madison-Wisconsin. “The economics has, in the last decade, made it possible.”
Noted: Now retired, Skjolaas says she fell into her career as Senior Outreach Specialist with the UW Center for Agricultural Safety and Health quite accidentally. Prior to coming back to the Madison area in 1990, she worked as a 4-H Youth Agent first in Pierce County and then St. Croix County.
Quoted: As someone who’s a registered dietitian who also works in the dairy field, it’s ironic that Andrea Miller deals with lactose intolerance herself. She’s a registered dietitian and outreach program manager for the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“For most people, cultured products as a whole will digest and absorb well because of what they contain (natural enzymes) and the fact that lactose has been eaten up in the process of culturing,” she says.
Quoted: Healthy plants and trees block harmful runoff from flowing into lakes — an increasingly important task as climate change intensifies rains, said Donald Waller, a retired professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“People don’t understand the intimate connection between forest and water. But forest and forest quality affects not only the quality of the water, but also the amount of water and how it is released from soils,” Waller said.
Quoted: “We’re looking at 18 different varieties from around the world and which ones can maybe produce the best grain or the best for future use if industrial hemp becomes more of a mainstream crop,” UW-Madison Extension Chippewa County Agricultural agent, Jerry Clark, said.
UW-Madison Extension Buffalo County Agricultural Educator, Carl Duley, says the fiber and grain produced from industrial hemp has many different uses.
“Right now they are approved for human food, not for animal feed at this point, but they are used a lot in health food stores like granola,” Duley said. “There’s a lot of flour made after the oil is squeezed out.”
Climate change is an issue that scientists across the globe have been trying to combat since the late 1800s.
Warming temperatures and increased rainfall over the past few decades have brought uncertainty to Wisconsin’s agricultural sector. One of the major causes of this erratic weather is the greenhouse gasses that continue to warm the planet.
But a small group of scientists at the University of Wisconsin are working on a solution.
With water issues a concern for much of the country, Wisconsin is also taking a look at how to protect the state’s water quality.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension has created four new roles within the Agriculture Water Quality Program to promote outreach and environmentally-friendly farming practices. The program is led by co-program managers John Exo and Amber Radatz.
Guests include assistant scientist Tyler Lark and Yanhua Xie, a postdoctoral research associate, both at UW-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE).
Quoted: Steve Deller, ag economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said agriculture experienced the same supply chain issues that almost every industry faced in 2021.
“A lot of the stuff that farmers need to operate were in very low supply. So essentially it’s more expensive for farmers to operate,” Deller said. “It’s like any business. You know, I need to buy a new piece of equipment, but I can’t find it and prices go up.”
Interview with Steve Deller, Professor, Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Legislation could come soon challenging USDA regulations, said University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor emeritus Peter Carstensen. As for the meat and poultry rules, “right now, that’s where all the action is,” he said.
Quoted: Jennifer Van Os researches animal welfare on dairy farms for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She said cow-calf separation is standard for dairy farms across the U.S. and the world. She said the practice started as a way to prevent newborn calves from contracting diseases from other cows in a herd.
“Newborn dairy cows are vulnerable to disease because their immune system is still developing,” Van Os said. “Their immune system develops in a way that’s a little bit different from that of humans. So it came from good intentions, and it was done for the sake of the animal.”
Noted: Entomologist PJ Liesch is director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, aka @WiBugGuy on Twitter. He’s been studying the not-so-little buggers for nearly 15 years and graciously agreed to share his insights, offer some tips and bust a few myths.
Jo Handelsman, a UW-Madison biologist and director for the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, warns in her new book “A World Without Soil” that global soil erosion is an invisible crisis. We have the author on to discuss the harms of worldwide soil erosion and what can be done to stop it.
Noted: When assisting farmers, the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation partners with the AgrAbility program, a collaboration that includes University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension, to assess needs and provide adaptive technologies.
At the second Dairy Exchange of the year sponsored by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, cheesemakers and allied industry people gathered to hear a dairy market update from Mark Stephenson.
As it turns out, it will be the last market update Stephenson will present as he will be retiring from his post as director of Dairy Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin. Fortunately he was able to impart some good news to dairy farmers.
Fish is a popular food in Wisconsin whether it’s part of a Friday night fish fry or a staple for Wisconsin tribes. However, a new study finds around only half of people surveyed in the Great Lakes region know about fish advisories that set limits on how much is safe to eat.
The study was published in June in the journal Science of the Total Environment. Researchers from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and University of Wisconsin-Madison found around 5 million people ate more fish than recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agency recommends no more than two meals or 12 ounces of fish per week.
Only about half the people living in the Great Lakes region are aware of fish consumption advisories that warn people to limit their meals of fish, according to a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, also found that an estimated 5 million people across the region exceeded the general recommended fish intake of two meals, or 12 ounces per week, as suggested by the Environmental Protection Agency for all fish, including those purchased in stores.
Quoted: Melissa Kono is a community development educator in Clark and Trempealeau counties for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension.
She said farmers use plastic sheeting to protect hay and silage from the elements in order to feed their livestock all winter. Some forms of these plastics include top covers for silage bunkers — think white tarp covering mounds of silage with tires holding the tarp down — long bags that hold long, skinny rows of silage and wrap for individual hay bales.
“Their other option for silage would be a silo and those are very costly to construct,” Kono said. “Having a silage pile makes it easier to access, especially if farmers don’t have a lot of space, or makes it more accessible to feeding animals, which helps cut down on time and cost. I just think because farmers are stretched so very thin these days, having plastics to use has probably made it more economical.”
Plants already pull significant weight in removing carbon dioxide from the air, but a new study out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows there’s potential for plants to capture more.
The study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, also shows the potential to increase the amount of aromatic compounds — or the building blocks for certain biofuels and medicines — produced by plants.
Quoted: Ron Kean is a poultry specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension. He said the influenza virus has historically died down in summer months, so bird enthusiasts are cautiously optimistic about the rest of the summer.
“We’re hopeful that we’re through this at least for now,” he said. “Especially a lot of the small producers, exhibition breeders, things like that, I think are quite excited to be able to go back to having shows.”
Quoted: “Extended drought can lead to the total collapse of the photosynthetic machinery and it can take long time for the plants to rebuild their roots and internal mechanisms,” Vijai Pandian, a horticulture educator at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Division of Extension, told Newsweek.
“This can cause long term impacts … and the drought effect symptoms often continue for [the] next few years,” he said.
A federal program will give Wisconsin and 10 other states a $20 million boost to help farmers, cheese makers and other dairy processors develop new products and new markets to help stabilize the embattled dairy industry.
The funds, announced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) Monday at a Jefferson County cheese producer, will expand the Dairy Business Innovation Initiatives program in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
USDA is giving the money to the Dairy Business Innovation Alliance, a joint project of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association and the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The groups will provide grants and support programs so that farms, dairy processors and related businesses can “modernize, reach new markets and create economic growth,” said Baldwin.
Quoted: Bob Cropp, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said high demand for milk is what drove prices up in 2014. But he said this year’s record prices are due to farmers cutting back on production.
“Milk production for several months, starting actually the last quarter of last year, has been running below a year ago,” Cropp said. “Cow numbers have declined and production per cow has been below normal, so we have resulted in a tightness of the supply-demand situation.”
Quoted: John Hendrickson, farm viability specialist for UW-Madison’s Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, helped develop the tool for the Grassland 2.0 project. Started in 2020 using a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the collaboration between researchers from UW-Madison and other universities, farmers and agriculture industry leaders is working to encourage farmers to adopt the use of grasslands.
“We want farms to be financially viable and sustainable for the long term,” he said. “But of course the Grasslands 2.0 project also has this larger look at the entire landscape and climate change and soil erosion and what can we do to have a more sustainable agricultural system on the landscape.”
Quoted: Featured in the episode is University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of agronomy Valentin Picasso. Picasso’s research team works with Kernza to help farmers develop best practices for crop growing.
“Being able to work with a large team of people to develop a crop that can bring reconciliation between food production and the environment really makes me excited and gives me hope for humanity,” said Picasso.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded UW-Madison Extension a $200,000 grant that will be used to study six different farmers’ markets in north central Wisconsin.
Breakfast was served with a side of fun at the UW Stock Pavilion Sunday.
Although April has been cold and wet, University of Wisconsin-Madison agronomists say farmers shouldn’t start stressing out just yet.
“Despite the fact that we are about two weeks behind where we were a year ago, we are still on track for maximum yields for corn and soybeans,” says Shawn Conley, UW Soybean and Small Grains Extension Specialist.
According to Joe Lauer, UW-Madison Agronomy Professor, “last year we were earlier than normal – in fact, it was one of the earliest planting seasons on record.”
Cheri Klussendorf graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Farm and Industry Short Course in 2002.
The 16-week on-campus certificate program is where she met her husband, Ryan, and where she decided to take a chance on dairy farming.
Noted: The virus’s spread has accelerated northward with the spring migration of many North American bird species, explained Ron Kean, a poultry specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
One of the more important steps backyard gardeners can take to help disappearing native bees is to grow native plants that provide continuous blooms throughout the season, according to Susan Carpenter, plant curator at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum.
Quoted: Native plant curator Susan Carpenter with the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison said they detected the rusty patched at the Arboretum about 10 years ago. “That started us on this voyage of discovery,” she said. When the rusty patched was declared endangered, she said, “people just went crazy on that.”
Project will promote hands-on research on clean energy.
If you’ve been paying more for eggs recently, you have the bird flu to thank, according to egg producers.
UW-Madison scientists say they are fighting back.
Across the nation, tens of thousands of birds have had to be put down in recent weeks as the bird flu ravages flocks, and farmers say while it’s already making eggs expensive, it won’t stop there.
UW-Madison scientists say this is an issue that comes and goes, which is why they’re looking to bring a vaccine for the birds to market.
“Knock on wood, we’ve been doing okay in Wisconsin. We’ve had two outbreaks here in Wisconsin,” said UW-Madison Poultry Specialist Ron Kean.
Quoted: Wisconsin producers primarily grow winter wheat, which is planted in the fall and harvested in the summer, making it unlikely farmers will plant more this spring in response to potential shortages or to capitalize on higher prices, Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.
But farmers in the state will likely spend more time managing the wheat fields they do have planted this spring, he said.
“More fertilizer, maybe more concerned about fungicide applications if you’re looking at a problem with disease. That’s what we might see, is farmers more willing to spend money on managing the planted crop for winter wheat,” he said.
Noted: Instead of limiting milk production, the plan focuses on reducing the negative impacts of uncontrolled expansion and sending stronger market signals to farms about whether they should produce more milk. The group worked with researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create models for what a mandatory management program could look like and how it would affect farmers’ and consumers’ prices.
There is no doubt that farming can be extremely rewarding, yet also stressful and demanding. Various risk factors including weather, economic uncertainty, as well as, ever-evolving supply and demand changes, can take a toll on farmer’s mental health.
In order to address some of these issues, the University of Wisconsin–Madison Division of Extension will be offering virtual and in-person educational programs to help the Wisconsin agricultural community identify and respond to a variety of behavioral health challenges.
