Frontpage Features

The Ukrainian company Agro-Soyuz raises 160,000 feeder pigs to market weight in 225 hoop barns. When company owners Volodymyr Khorishko and his son Dmytro took over a former farm collective in 2004, they sought assistance from Iowa State University’s “Hoop Group” to set up the low-cost hooped buildings. The father-son duo returned to the United States for advice on their next phase: hoops for gestating sows and baby pigs. The Leopold Center supported the Hoop Group by providing an annual stipend for meetings and funds to conduct research between 1997 and 2002. The Center continues to be supportive of alternative livestock systems; a new project will explore the use of insulated tents (or yurts) for sows and pigs.

More about the Hoop Group        More about the Iowa-Ukraine connection

Farmer Victoria Archer and her daughter Madison (both seated) listen to advice offered by author, speaker and direct-market guru Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Salatin spoke about integrating multiple generations into the family farm and finding viable ways to farm full-time at an April 17 workshop hosted by Practical Farmers of Iowa at Tom and Mary Cory’s farm near Elkhart. Salatin said direct-market farmers need to know costs and time involved with various tasks and set “benchmarks of efficiency” so they can “think like business people not missionaries.” The Archers moved to Iowa from Phoenix and have a 20-acre pastured livestock operation near St. Charles. Video of Salatin’s visit will be available on the PFI website.

While a majority of Iowa farmers begin planting crops this week, this field of winter canola already is growing and green. This photo shows research plots in Boone County on March 28, where ISU professor Mary Wiedenhoeft and graduate student Stefans Gailans are using alternative crops and rotations with corn and soybean production.

The canola was planted last September and will be harvested in June. In early March 2012, the plots were interseeded with red clover, which provides soil cover and green manure. A year from now, the red clover will be killed and corn will be planted on the plot. The winter canola has yielded similar to better oil production than soybean using this method. Learn more about this Leopold Center project here. The project was featured in the Spring 2012 issue [PDF] of Clean Water Starts with Us newsletter, published by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

This Saucer magnolia (Magnolia X soulangiana) was in full array last week at Iowa State, nearly a month early. Spring plant growth is triggered by the difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures, and as well as warm sunny days. Aldo Leopold kept detailed records (called phenology) of when plants bloomed and migratory birds arrived at his Shack. ISU offers an honors class in phenology, From Snowmelt to Finals [ISU], but we have been unable to find phenology records for ISU. If you know of any, please share, we'd love to hear from you!  More about Leopold's phenology project [Aldo Leopold Foundation]  Guide to campus trees [ISU]   Photo by Barbara McBreen, ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.