Aspiring fresh market vegetable growers can learn fundamentals of the business from veteran growers and other experts at the 2009 Wisconsin School for Beginning Market Growers, Jan. 16-18 on the UW-Madison campus. [...more]

Friends of the Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers will be pedaling for pledges when they roll out Friday, June 13 in the 5th Annual Ride to Farm. A group of determined cyclists will make a three-day trip from a farm near Nichols in Outagamie County to a farm at Elkhorn in Walworth County. [...more]

F.H. King Students of Sustainable Agriculture is a student organization working to promote sustainable agriculture at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Founded in 1979, F.H. King was named after a UW professor and author of the 1911 book Farmers of Forty Centuries. Professor King was one of the first people to consider the sustainability of [...more]

Participatory research brings professional researchers together with citizen stakeholders to define problems or questions, collect information, and use it to promote change. This publication addresses on-farm participatory research in sustainable agricultural systems, and draws on experiences using this approach for participatory plant breeding research at the UW-Madison. It provides questions to help farmers and researchers [...more]

This worksheet, which is geared toward older elementary school children and their teachers, presents basic information about grazing dairy cows. It presents grazing as a feeding alternative that mimics natural systems, protects erodible land, and saves money for farmers. It answers questions children might have about grazing, such as, “What do pastured cows do in [...more]

The UW-Madison’’s School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers has received its biggest contribution ever—a gift of $50,000 pledged by FCS Financial Services, a farmer-owned financial services cooperative based in Wausau. The gift will support increased programming and initiatives, such as distance education classrooms, internships and mentoring, for this one-of-a-kind program for beginning and transitioning farmers. Program [...more]

CIAS is proud to announce an invaluable resource for high school teachers. Toward a Sustainable Agriculture is a free curriculum that addresses the social, environmental and economic impacts of agriculture. The curriculum provides a critical analysis of agricultural and food systems and helps students understand new concepts through hands-on examples. What is it? The curruculum includes six [...more]

“I must say it was the hardest I’ve ever worked for free, but somehow I really didn’t mind. I knew that the knowledge I gained was priceless.” Those are the words of Mike Tomandl who recently completed a dairy farm internship in New Zealand. He and fellow intern Joe Heimerl went to New Zealand in July [...more]

Learn about grass-based dairying from the comfort of your home with the Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy Farmers CD set! You can view the Grass-Based Dairy Seminar sessions taught by grass farmers, UW and Extension faculty, and other professionals right on your home computer. This seminar is designed to familiarize you with the principles and practices [...more]

Wisconsin has suffered dramatic losses in numbers of dairy farms. While the decrease in part includes large numbers of retiring dairy farmers, the lack of young people entering dairy farming is an even more significant factor in the decline. To reverse that trend a creative approach is needed to make dairy farming more attractive. The Wisconsin [...more]