Leopold Center, PFI mark first season of field day partnership
By Rich Pirog, Education coordinator
and Jeri Neal, Research coordinator
The Leopold Center and Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) have collaborated on many projects over the past ten years. In March of 1997, PFI opened discussion with a proposal about the potential for a more formalized relationship to the Leopold Advisory Board. Both organizations identified advantages to a closer working relationship, and discussions resulted in a February 1998 agreement that launched the two organizations on a multi-year partnership. The primary goal of the partnership is to use on-farm research and outreach as a vehicle to develop more integrated and effective sustainable agriculture practices for Iowa.
"Iowa has an advantage over many other states because of the Leopold Center/PFI partnership, especially with the additional support both groups get from ISU Extension," says Paul Mugge, a PFI farm cooperator from northwest Iowa and member of both the PFI and Leopold Center advisory boards. "Working with researchers from ISU and elsewhere has been a win-win situation. There are a number of farmers who have the knowledge and experience to do on-farm trials, so the farmer/researcher partnership is a natural," Mugge adds.
The opportunity to partner with farmers and educators is also attractive to researchers. "Too often university research is driven just by theory and the latest technological advances; it doesn't always address on-farm challenges," says Tom Richard, an Iowa State University agricultural and biosystems engineer. "What PFI and the Leopold Center help do is prioritize the critical issues we need to solve to move toward a more sustainable agriculture."
PFI farmer cooperators are working with Center-funded researchers and educators to conduct on-farm studies on a variety of subjects including intensive grazing management, transition to organic production of soybeans, integrated pest management, swine production in hoop houses, composting of manure/bedding packs, community supported agriculture and nutrient management. Through the Leopold/PFI partnership, PFI farmer cooperators are keeping records of labor, pig weights, days to market and feed consumption in their swine hoop house operations. ISU graduate and farmer Angela Tedesco, who operates the Turtle Farm Community Supported Agriculture project in Des Moines, is doing an economic analysis on onion production that examines labor efficiency.
Outreach efforts-making the observations and activities available to farmers and the public at-large-are an important part of the partnership agreement. In support of the outreach goal, PFI held more than 35 PFI field days throughout the state during the summer of 1998.
"The Leopold Center is helping PFI to take sustainable agriculture on-farm research to new audiences," says Rick Exner, PFI/ISU Extension farming systems coordinator. Through Center support, PFI has been able to cooperate with the Iowa Farm Bureau to develop on-farm trials and offer field days on four farms that were not previously part of the PFI network. Follow-up meetings with Farm Bureau members are planned in those counties.
PFI is building on these new groups of cooperators to reach even more Iowa farmers and consumers with sustainable agriculture research. Center director Dennis Keeney notes that this is exactly the kind of increased interaction among Iowans that the partnership hopes to foster. "We are headed toward the same goal," he comments, "a more sustainable future for Iowa's land and its people."
Return to the Fall 1998 Leopold Letter Index