“In a perfect world that university staff dream about, you would treat every field separately according to its soil test,” says Dick Wolkwoski, Extension soil scientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
FoodChain provides online marketplace, handles delivery.
Quoted: Dean “had bigger, industrywide issues with the consumption of milk products. But the loss of the Walmart business was just another thing they didn’t need,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said farmers have received a small portion of food dollars for years. He said the trend is driven by consumers’ desire to buy the cheapest food products available.
“Farmers had prepared themselves for three-year cycles, but not five,” said Mark Stephenson, director of Dairy Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
One morning in mid-September, Jed Colquhoun, an expert in fruit and vegetable production systems, hopped on the phone to discuss the state of cranberries and climate change in the state of Wisconsin, our country’s most bountiful producer of that tart indigenous berry.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Brian Gould, emeritus professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told CNN Business. He said Suiza’s growth “wasn’t organic,” adding, “it was really just from the outside in.”
Noted: Hiring immigrants caught on among Wisconsin dairy farms in the late 1990s and early 2000s, according to University of Wisconsin research.
Dr. Randy Shaver, University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension Dairy Specialist, advises producers to get their feed tested and to work closely with a nutritionist to decide how to supplement.
Noted: Johnson originally set her sights a little further than the farm. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in agricultural journalism and took a sales job with two radio stations in Janesville.
Noted: Heather Swan is a UW-Madison faculty member and author of “Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field.”
Quoted: “I think that certainly was a blow for them, but it was only one of many they’ve had,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: While there might be shake-ups in the back-end of getting cow’s milk to the average American’s fridge, Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told VICE that it’s unlikely to have a huge impact on the broader industry or on consumers.
Joe Lauer, agronomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he started advising farmers to start buying propane over the summer after wet weather caused major planting delays across the state.
Quoted: Joe Lauer, agronomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he started advising farmers to start buying propane over the summer after wet weather caused major planting delays across the state.
“Whenever that occurs, we typically have some fairly wet corn,” Lauer said. “We just haven’t gotten a break this year in terms of the weather. It’s been really cold and wet through most of the season.”
Wolyn grew up in New Jersey and studied plant science at Rutgers University and then earned his masters and PhD in plant breeding and plant genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1988, he came to the University of Guelph, taking over the already decade-old Asparagus Breeding Program from the previous professor who died.
Quoted: The production increase comes after several months of declines from 2018 levels. Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he was surprised by the change.
“(There were) fewer cows than we’ve had in all of our earlier months of the year, so a continued decline there, but milk production per cow had a strong growth,” Stephenson said. “That usually doesn’t happen unless we have pretty good quality feed and a real strong incentive to produce milk.”
Quoted: Liz Binversie, agricultural educator for University of Wisconsin-Extension in Brown County, said she has heard farmers describe silage as like pickling vegetables.
“You’re kind of pickling the feed, right? You’re preserving it long term. And what’s doing that is the microbial population,” Binversie said.
“Most of the fish farmers that we spoke with were already selling out of all their fish. So if they had more capacity, they could sell more fish,” said Bret Shaw, associate professor of life science communication from UW-Madison and an author of the study. “Some were even ordering in fish from other states and smoking it or processing it.”
Quoted: Steph Tai, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that farmer protection, not consumer confusion, is at the heart of the proposed legislation.
“If a consumer knows that we can use nut-based products in the same way that we’ve been using dairy-based products, then the concern from the dairy industry is that people will be substituting,” Tai said. “The same thing with plant based burgers. If people know that they could use it as an easy substitute and it tastes kind of the same, then they might just replace that, which will lead to undercutting the profits of livestock producers.”
A tomato plant played a huge part in launching the career of Tim Boerner, who will receive Oct. 17 the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Honorary Recognition Award. Boerner was 9 years old when his grandfather gave him a tomato plant. That gift cultivated his lifelong interest in crops and agriculture in general. That interest also has helped innumerable Wisconsin farmers.
Quoted: Mark Stephenson is the director of dairy policy analysis with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’re about $1.30, $1.40 higher per hundredweight on milk than we were this time last year,” Stephenson says. “So we’ve had a definite improvement.”
With money now released by the Legislature, three University of Wisconsin System schools are launching the Dairy Innovation Hub to help tackle issues facing the state’s best-known industry.With money now released by the Legislature, three University of Wisconsin System schools are launching the Dairy Innovation Hub to help tackle issues facing the state’s best-known industry.
Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Wisconsin had fewer cases of late planting than South Dakota and Minnesota. He said the state’s dairy industry provides some security for farmers growing corn
Deans from the University of Wisconsin System’s three leading agriculture programs were in Grantsburg on Tuesday promoting new funding from state lawmakers aimed at helping the Wisconsin’s struggling dairy industry
Last month, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Dairy Research and the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association were selected to host one of three initiative sites. The group received $454,392 to provide grants and workshops to producers and processors in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota and Illinois.
Noted: From the moment she interviewed for the then soon-to-opened University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, this veterinarian embraced her new community and its grand cow show at World Dairy Expo. Throughout the process, McGuirk helped transform dairy cattle health care.
Quoted: “It’s a shake-out. This is not just a bump on a trend line. This is a pretty big change,” said Mark Stephenson, Director of Dairy Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
During a visit to a Westby creamery on Monday, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., says she’s hopeful the Senate will approve an $18 million increase for the Dairy Business Innovation Initiative.
“We’ve not been able to get the corn/sileage off nor the other crops in order to make those applications. A lot of farmers have been waiting for weather conditions to improve so they can get that manure out there,” said Kevin Erb, conservation professional training coordinator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension.
Other items: Members of the committee also voted unanimously to release $1 million this year and nearly $8 million next year provided in the state budget for a UW System Dairy Innovation Hub housed at UW-Madison, UW-Platteville and UW-River Falls. Committee members also voted to release $22.5 million annually in performance-based funding to the UW System.
It’s no secret it’s another tight year for row crop farmers in the Corn Belt and Upper Midwest. Analysts say the uncertainty hasn’t changed.
“That’s the status of the farm economy,” said Paul Mitchell, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s waiting for results for this uncertainty while we go in to harvest.”
Noted: If Wisconsin were to legalize cannabis for medical uses, there would be a net $1.1 billion positive effect, bringing in additional fees and health benefits while potentially reducing opioid overdoses, addiction and traffic fatalities over five years, according to a cost-benefit analysis by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs. If the state were to decriminalize cannabis, it would save an additional $30 million in decreased criminal justice costs.
When Pyran’s chemical engineering team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison embarked on their new project aimed at tackling the enormous problem of replacing oil to make paints and plastics, they had a feeling they would generate some interesting research, but the discovery they made surprised even them.
Quoted: “Is it backfiring?” Mark Hagedorn, a dairy expert at the University of Wisconsin-Extension, asked about farmers’ decision to back Trump. “I think we can argue that six ways to Sunday.”
UW-Madison is receiving more than $450,000 in federal funding for an initiative aiding farmers and businesses in Wisconsin to innovate and modernize the dairy industry.
Sen. Patrick Leahy says the state of Vermont has won a grant to create one of three regional dairy business innovation centers across the country. The recipients, which includes centers at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Tennessee, were announced Wednesday.
What started as a small tasting in a church basement five years ago has grown to a full-fledged foodie event bringing together hundreds of people to meet UW-Madison professors, plant breeders, farmers and some of Madison’s top chefs.
Quoted: “Usually we’re (harvesting silage) pretty heavily by about the middle of September,” said Joe Lauer, agronomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s going to be delayed a week or two due to not only some of the cool weather we had in the spring but also due to the fact that there’s a lot of corn that was just planted late.”
White is an associate professor of environmental justice within the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of the new book “Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement” (UNC Press/2018).
Noted: Under one bill, $224,000 would pay for two new employees within the University of Wisconsin Center for Dairy Profitability in Madison to help farmers with financial decisions related to the transfer of their operations to a new generation or new owners.
The “Our Farms, Our Future” package would create two farm-succession planning positions at the University of Wisconsin Extension, implement a student loan assistance program for beginning farmers, and provide grants to small, diverse farms.
The measures unveiled Tuesday, which are part of the “Our Farms, Our Future” legislative package, are sponsored by Democrats but have bipartisan support, increasing their chances of being considered by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
That has made it difficult for farmers to decide when to apply fungicide to crops because it’s based on specific growth stages of the plants, said plant pathologist Damon Smith from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But an app is helping farmers make better decisions about when to do so.
Quoted: “When I grew up, my mom poured a glass of milk at every meal and you were expected to drink it,” said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at UW-Madison. “My mother would say, ‘Drink your milk because it is good for you,’ and scientists said ‘It’s good for you’ and you believed them.”
In a corn field near Black River Falls, plant pathologist Damon Smith from the University of Wisconsin-Madison points to a section on the edge of the field where the corn stalks get shorter and paler in color.
ARLINGTON — Farmers and corn seed salespeople received an inside look Wednesday at research into corn diseases taking place at the University of Wisconsin’s Arlington Research Station.
Wisconsin’s agricultural economy has been growing even with a steep decline in the number of dairy farms, a new report from University of Wisconsin-Madison shows.
Paul Mitchell, director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the numbers make up a significant amount of the state’s typical corn and soybean production.
Quoted: “The cows did not go away. They were bought up by other farms,” said Steven Deller, a UW-Madison agricultural economist and author of the report.
Quoted: According to Bill Tracy, an agronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, none of the canned or frozen corn at the grocery store is GMO. (Because labeling standards established by the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law aren’t compulsory until January 2022, stores don’t have to indicate which corn on the cob is GMO.) As of 2018, only about 10 percent of the sweet-corn acreage planted in the United States and Canada was genetically modified.
The way soil is managed can have a big impact on carbon in the atmosphere, according to Thea Whitman, assistant professor of soil science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Morgan Robertson, a University of Wisconsin-Madison geography professor who studies market-based environmental policy, is less certain. In the past, lawmakers and industry groups across the country have been too optimistic about farmer participation in water quality trading programs, he said.
“To the extent that that’s an attractive strategy at the state level — the 30,000-foot level — for somebody planning a statewide political response, it’s not necessarily an attractive strategy for Joe and Jane Farmer in Kewaunee County who have other kitchen-table concerns,” he said.
Noted: According to Jessica Cederquist, the administrator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s dairy herd, dairy farmers plan well in advance for extreme weather conditions.
Faculty in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s departments of dairy science and animal sciences are preparing a proposal to merge, a move that aims to reorganize and revitalize the university’s historic and internationally known research divisions.
Fischbach co-leads the Upper Midwest Hazelnut Development Initiative, which was formed by the University of Wisconsin and University of Minnesota in 2007.
His seed came from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s titan arum plant, but the plants grow naturally only in the limestone hills of Sumatra. They bloom after seven to 10 years and then once every four years over an expected 40-year lifespan.
That capability is only one among an expanding suite of remote sensing functions made possible by satellite imagery, as well as advances in computing technologies, that researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and elsewhere are using to better understand the planet’s croplands.
Quoted: “Usually we say (corn is) ’knee high by the Fourth of July’ but most of the time, corn is chest high or more by the Fourth of July in many areas of Wisconsin. That’s just not the case this year,” said Joe Lauer, agronomist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at University of Wisconsin-Madison, agreed with Bianchi’s assessment.
