Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Work begins on 19 new grant projects

Back to Leopold Letter Spring 2010

 

The Leopold Center has awarded grants for 19 new projects covering a wide range of activities. All projects will help farmers take advantage of new opportunities related to local foods and renewable energy, and encourage a transition to alternative systems that protect the environment while using fewer outside inputs.

These projects will receive $468,686 for their first year of work, and were selected in a competitive process that began last summer. Grants for nine of the new projects are for one year, seven projects will run two years, and three grants are for three years.

The Center also has renewed 25 grants for multi-year projects already in progress, bringing the total amount of current competitive grant-funded research at the Leopold Center to about $1,050,000. Because decreases in the Center’s budget were less than anticipated, several additional projects are being considered for funding.

New work in marketing
The Center’s Marketing and Food Systems Initiative will fund 10 new projects. Topics range from transportation needs within Iowa’s “foodsheds” and food safety training for growers, to improving veterinary care for organic livestock producers and creation of a new working group to focus on food access and health issues. Another project will look at the feasibility of forming a specialty food cooperative for northwest Iowa farmers. In northeast Iowa, a grant will fund evaluation of the impact of regional food system efforts over the past 10 years on farmers in Black Hawk and surrounding counties.

“This new set of projects tackles key challenges that prevent Iowa farmers from taking advantage of new market opportunities,” said Rich Pirog, associate director and initiative leader.

Pirog said that inefficient production processes often pose challenges for growers interested in scaling up their operations. A two-year grant will look at some of those issues related to transplant production systems, already used by large-scale vegetable growers in the upper Midwest. Pirog said the goal of the project is to develop an on-line tool to help growers make appropriate investments in systems that will grow and adapt as market opportunities develop.

New work in ecology
Six new grants will begin work in the Center’s Ecological Systems Initiative. Topics range from extended crop and biomass rotations to the interaction between buffers and field tile drainage.

Three projects will focus on grazing systems, including a two-year experiment on “mob grazing” by Iowa State animal science professor Jim Russell. At the Whiterock Conservancy in central Iowa, forage quality data will be collected on restored natural grasslands as part of a project to optimize grazing as a restoration management tool. The third grazing project, which includes a carbon “snapshot” of grazing lands, relates to previously supported research by Iowa State’s Patch-Burn Grazing Team that works in southern Iowa.

“We hope to be able to immediately apply what we learn to actual farms,” said initiative leader Jeri Neal. “Our goal is to identify management and tools that are more productive and profitable yet provide the diversity and resilience needed to take better care of our soil and water resources.”

Other topics
The Policy Initiative will sponsor one new project, a study of feed-in tariffs, a policy mechanism that could boost renewable energy production on Iowa farms. The study will consider the impacts of such tariffs used in other parts of the country, and the effects they could have on Iowa farmers and the utility companies that s erve them.

Two new grants include elements from all three Leopold Center initiatives. A planning grant will be used to develop a strategy for increasing availability of farmland to beginning farmers and immigrant farmers, and possibly form a new Beginning Farmer Working Group. Researchers from Iowa State and the University of Iowa will work together to explore the interplay among climate shift and management practices as they apply to healthy soils and the development of sound agricultural policies.

 

Back to Leopold Letter Spring 2010