WICST Educational Outreach Program 1996 - Walworth County

Lee Cunningham [1]

Sustainable Agriculture emphasis has become a major portion of the UW-Extension Ag program efforts in Walworth County. UW-Extension helps identify sustainable agriculture practices that protect the environment, increase potential farmer profitability, and emphasize the social acceptability of sustainable ag systems.

Agriculture can be an important land use planning tool that prevents over-development of a community for other purposes which could be detrimental to the environment.

Extension Response

Wide ranges of outreach efforts are conducted annually to reach farmers, policy makers, public officials, students and the general public.

WICST Outcomes

Partially as a result of the WICST Project, twenty-five (25) farmers chose to include a small grain in their farming system. They worked with a local elevator who began to develop a market for the grain produced. The elevator agronomist has estimated 400 farmers have voiced an interest in participating in the program in 1997. Small grains have been utilized in one of the six systems being evaluated in the WICST project. Five farmers have begun to utilize a legume in their farming systems as a cover crop and a natural nitrogen source for the following corn crop, thus reducing the need for supplemental commercial nitrogen as well as providing a crop that builds the soil and reduces weed growth.

One hundred fifty-seven (157) elementary students from 7 classrooms completed the four-week long sustainable agriculture education unit.

Results from exit surveys of 67 farmers visiting the WICST site show that 46 of them plan to use profitability, productivity and environmental impact as criteria for selecting new or different production practices on their farms.

The Walworth County Board continues to support sustainable agriculture through the educational activities carried out at the Lakeland Ag Complex, which cites its mission statement to be to "Promote Clean Water, Healthy Soils and Profitable Agriculture."

Three representatives of the local Land Conservation Committee have utilized the WICST information as they have worked within the Sugar/Honey Creek Watershed.

Fifty-seven (57) individuals from 12 states attended the WICST site as part of a 3-day Sustainable Agriculture Extension Training Workshop coordinated by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

One hundred forty-seven (147) people attending the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture Annual Conference received 4 direct mail pieces regarding the sustainable agriculture education program in Walworth County. One hundred thirty-nine (139) participants at the conference toured the sustainable agriculture WICST site during their National Conference held in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture, Dan Glickman, recognized the WICST project as an important tool of sustainable agriculture in his speech to the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture.

Senator Herb Kohl identified the WICST as a Nationally recognized program and supported congressional funding to continue the work being done there in the Congressional record.

Five hundred thousand dollars was appropriated by Congress to support research through the ARS/IFS program. The WICST project was to be supported through these funds.

Thirty-seven (37) Japanese students toured the sustainable agriculture WICST site.

Seventy-five (75) farmers and industry professionals participated in a precision farming field day and increased their knowledge of how global positioning, computerized yield monitoring, soil grid mapping and other field data will be used in the future as tools that can help farmers become more sustainable through improved utilization of chemicals and fertilizers as well as systems management.

Lee Cunningham, Walworth County Agricultural Extension Agent, spoke at a meeting of the International Joint Commission on the Environment regarding sustainable agriculture. Additionally, he also spoke at a meeting of Undersecretaries of Agriculture in the USDA in Washington D.C. regarding sustainable agriculture and the valuable role Extension plays in this area.

Lee Cunningham and John Hall, Director of the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, have been active members of the University of Wisconsin Extension Sustainable Agriculture Task Force charged with the promotion of sustainable agriculture practices through Ag Extension programming efforts.

[1] Lakeland Agricultural Complex Superintendent and UW-Extension Agribuisness Agent, Walworth Co. (414) 741-3175; lee.cunningham@ces.uwex.edu.

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