Beginning dairy farmers as well as seasoned producers have a new resource available from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) and partner organizations including CIAS. Dairy Your Way is a free, 100-page book that profiles a variety of dairy housing and production systems suitable for the Upper Midwest. Producers, university researchers, extension educators and industry experts [...] [...more]

Greetings. Thank you, Chancellor [John D.] Wiley. That was a lovely introduction that you said about me, but when I started out, my path was not so clear. I know that all of you have great dreams. I am here today to tell you what I have learned about getting to make those dreams real, [...] [...more]

Odessa Piper, former chef-proprietor of Madison’s L’Etoile Restaurant, is one of five activists who will receive honorary degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Friday, May 12. Piper has distinguished herself as a tireless champion of sustainability in American agriculture and cooking. Using food to address fundamental questions of what our responsibilities are to each other [...] [...more]

When it comes to household income, farming background, age, and technology use, dairy farmers who use managed grazing aren”t all that different from farmers who operate more traditional dairy enterprises. A new report from the UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) and Program on Agricultural Technology Studies (PATS) compares production systems, technology, labor, performance, and [...] [...more]

Are you considering a new value-added business for your farm? Budgeting tools from the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison can help you make informed decisions about a variety of livestock and specialty food enterprises. CIAS has created a set of budgets to help farmers plan for new or existing poultry, dairy [...] [...more]

Wisconsin continues to be a national leader in organic food production, despite the fact that certified organic farms, acreage and production represent only a small fraction of agriculture in the state. This report provides a snapshot of the current status of organic agriculture in Wisconsin, and summarizes some of the opportunities and challenges in the [...] [...more]

How profitable are Wisconsin dairy graziers? Are they more satisfied with their lifestyles than other dairy farmers? Do reed canarygrass and kura clover make a good pasture combination? What are the ecological effects of managed grazing? These questions and more will be addressed at the Wisconsin Grazing Conference during a special session on Friday afternoon, [...] [...more]

Farmers who are considering starting or modifying poultry operations have a new resource available. Poultry Your Way is a free, 124-page book that profiles a variety of poultry systems suitable for the Upper Midwest. Producers and poultry experts from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan contributed to the book, and each chapter profiles a different kind of [...] [...more]

Graziers Rick Adamski and Valerie Dantoin of Seymour received an Honorary Recognition award from the UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences on October 27. Honorary Recognition, the highest honor bestowed by the College, recognizes people who have made outstanding contributions toward the development of agriculture, protection of natural resources, and improvement of rural living. Rick [...] [...more]

The bounty of our spring and summer gardens is still a few months away, yet hundreds of Madison school children and their families will enjoy Wisconsin fruit and vegetables in the middle of winter during three upcoming winter harvest dinners. As part of the Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch farm-to-school initiative, students and their families from Chavez, Shorewood [...] [...more]