Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Delivering results at summer field days

Back to Leopold Letter Fall 2011

The Leopold Center’s legislated mission is to conduct research on alternative systems and share those findings with farmers and the public. Certainly the most enjoyable way to do that is at summer field days!

Here’s a peek at recent field days featuring Leopold Center research. Many thanks go to our partners including researchers, farm managers, extension specialists, Practical Farmers of Iowa and Iowa Learning Farms. Based on not-yet-complete reports, 2011 could be a banner year. More than 1,100 people attended PFI’s 30 field days; Iowa Learning Farms was averaging 45 people at each of its activities.

Information below refers to photos at right.

1. Low-external-input

Farmers Steve Barry from Shelby County and Ron Brunk from Grundy County inspect soybeans in a conventional two-year rotation damaged by Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS) at a field day in early September at the ISU Marsden Farm west of Ames. In the background are healthier plants in a three- and four-year rotation with oats and alfalfa. The project looks at systems with fewer external inputs than conventional cropping.

2. Landscape biomass

ISU forestry professor Rick Hall shows off the root system of an aspen tree, which helps hold eroding soil in place. The Landscape Biomass Research Team held a field day at the Uthe Farm in Boone County. The project examines five different cropping systems - various rotations of corn, triticale, switchgrass, sorghum, and aspen trees - at five different landscape positions, with the goal of developing a diverse portfolio of sustainable bioenergy feedstocks.

3. Beneficial insects

These refuges are attracting beneficial insects at the ISU Field Extension Education Laboratory west of Ames, which hosted a one-day workshop for farmers and gardeners in early August.

4. High tunnel

During a field day in July, ISU field specialist Shawn Shouse describes a rainwater catchment system that he developed for this high tunnel at the Armstrong Research and Demonstration Farm near Lewis. The grant led to a related project in Boone County, also featured at a field day.

5. Neely-Kinyon organic

More than 60 people toured organic plots at the ISU Neely-Kinyon Research and Demonstration Farm in late September. The Leopold Center is supporting a research project there, now in its 14th year, showing equivalent or greater yields for organic corn and soybean compared to conventional, with identical crop varieties.

6. Drinking water quality

Participants stand next to one of the City of Sioux Center’s shallow wells to learn how water measurements are taken. This project compares different cropping systems that reduce nitrate leaching into groundwater supplies (also highlighted in new Leopold Center video at www.leopold.iastate.edu/news/on-the-ground/farm-practices-reduce-nitrate...). 

 

Back to Leopold Letter Fall 2011