North Central SARE Project Products

The third edition of the "Accepting Bridge Cards at Michigan Farmers Markets" resource manual will help farmers markets decide if they should accept food assistance benefits. If they decide to become an authorized SNAP retailer, it will help implement this food assistance program.

When the farming system deviates from a conventional corn-soybean rotation, the usual division of costs and returns in a 50-50 crop share lease may no longer fairly reflect the inputs of each party. This sheet demonstrates how crop share agreements can be adapted for sustainable and organic agriculture.

A printed guide to insect conservation on fruit farms.

Communities in the North Central region continue to change, with representatives of different cultures regularly being added to an already diverse population. We know that cultural and economic barriers exist that present challenges for some in the region, new and established alike, from working with the NCR-SARE to achieve our common sustainability goals. NCR-SARE feels it is important to reach all people about sustainable agriculture as we strive to make our communities more sustainable.  As part of the 2012 Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Webinar Series, Nebraska SARE hosted a webinar on December 18, 2012, called "Beyond Diversity: Understanding White Privilege and the Challenge for Sustainable Agriculture."

This toolkit provides a decision making tool (the matrix) to guide communities toward developing their own standard of sustainability and criteria for meeting that standard.

This colorful, richly illustrated booklet offers an introduction to beneficial natural enemies and their use in pest management.

This short documentary follows the story of the Batalden-Smith family, a three generation Minnesota family who grow and locally press organic Camelina Oil.

The Community and Local Food Resources website provides resources to support rural communities just beginning to build their community food systems as well as those whose local food systems are already strong. Resources are intended for farmers and producers, community organizations, and Extension Educators but may interest anyone in community and local foods.

This research report from Practical Farmers of Iowa presents data about a cover of hairy vetch, tillage radish and rapeseed established in strips by both aerial seeding into standing soybeans and drilling after soybean harvest.

Using sustainable agriculture practices on your rented land can help protect soil and water quality, increase income over the long term, and satisfy personal values for the landowner and/or the tenant.

In this research report from Practical Farmers of Iowa, a variety of winter small grains were tested as cover crops in the fall of 2010 to determine if these grains could be effective cover crops and also produce a quality grain crop, even though planted at a later than optimal date for typical grain planting. Most of the winter cover crop varieties tested effectively established, overwintered, and yielded grain the following summer.

In Creating Change in the Food System, the authors present a case study of an integrated effort to build long-term local and regional food commerce in Iowa using a community of practice approach.

In 2005, Jim Sluyter received an NCR-SARE Farmer Rancher grant to help farmers, especially new and prospective ones, learn about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and sustainable agriculture through a 'mini-school' for prospective CSA farmers. As part of that project, Sluyter created a CSA "startup" manual in both English and Spanish. 

This publication was created to provide information that will help producers explore the many choices available for today’s dairy farms. This book is not intended to be a how-to dairy guide or manual. While there is no one-size-fits-all answer for dairy farmers seeking success as milk producers, there are many options that can be profitable and satisfying.

"Direct Marketing of Specialty Food Products" is designed to provide business owners with strategies and tools to help sell directly to consumers. The program includes video interviews of food entrepreneurs who are using social media tools to market and sell their product online.

NCR-SARE Research and Education grantee, Patricia Johnson, published, "Effects of supplemental Mo on animal performance, liver Cu concentrations, ruminal hydrogen sulfide concentrations, and the appearance of S and Mo toxicity in steers receiving fiber-based diets" in the Journal of Animal Science. Her research team wanted to identify a feed additive that would negate the toxic effects of high-sulfate water thereby allowing cattle to safely graze rangelands with high-sulfate water sources.

Practical Farmers of Iowa compared two cropping systems for three years in northwest Iowa to examine differences in the energy expended and the biofuel produced. Analysis of fossil fuel flow reveals that a more diverse cropping system was significantly more energy efficient than continuous corn.

This informative book contains history and present day stories about how food is regarded as the medicine and economic staple of the Anishinaabeg people.

Provides an outline of how management recommendations are developed and how a ground-based active sensor can be used. It contains 24 case studies (exercises) ranging from using historical techniques to overcome production barrier to calculating soil organic carbon maintenance requirements.  A CD containing data sets is included with the book.

Includes curriculum materials, extension bulletins, resource lists, and a greenhouse energy model that were developed with the intention that educators can use the materials in full or part to deliver programming on energy management and conservation for greenhouse production.

Growers can often reduce energy cost by 30 to 50% by using energy efficient growing practices, tightening the greenhouse enclosure to reduce infiltration losses, replacing inefficient heating systems, and installing curtain systems.

This 3-part webinar series covers energy measures for greenhouses, thermal curtain systems for greenhouses, and the use of biomass energy for heating greenhouses.

To support the producer decision-making process for on-farm and value-added elderberry enterprise opportunities, the University of Missouri has developed a production and marketing guide, a financial decision support tool, videos on elderberry wine production, and more.

This report and video summarizes a comprehensive investigation of the chemical and physical properties of pasture-based milk when made into cheese, butter or other products, and describes strategies for producing, marketing and positioning pasture-based dairy products to earn premium value from them.

See how prairies can benefit farms and find the steps necessary to establish and manage prairies. Look at various uses for prairies: livestock grazing, hay production, biomass feedstocks, and carbon sequestering.

Weed biology and ecology can help every farmer become a better weed manager. This guide is the result of a series of winter meetings attended by Michigan farmers, MSU Extension agents and research scientists. It brings together field-tested experience from successful growers and Extension agents and insights distilled from more than 50 years of weed science research.

This Comparative Decision Support (CDS) toolkit provides realistic expectations across multiple livestock enterprises by using an individual's input and returning individualized results. Additional content included in the video demonstration explains the steps involved in using the CDS toolkit.

A graduate student from North Dakota State University created these five extension fact sheets after monitoring and reporting on the riparian ecosystem associated with the Middle Sheyenne River, a perennial stream in eastern North Dakota.

Options in grass may be the most profitable for CRP land when the long term cost of erosion is considered. Get the details on six income options: CRP, two rotational grazing options, two crop options (rotational corn/soybean), and alfalfa/orchard grass hay.

Charles Francis, editor, compiles a current look at what we know about organic farming practices and systems, primarily from the U.S. and Canadian perspectives.

Transitioning to organic farming? Already switched, but needing to update your farm plan? Get step-by-step help in this workbook from Ohio State's Organic Food and Farming Education and Research (OFFER) Program.

Raising poultry on pasture instead of in a barn or other permanent structure is an increasingly popular enterprise for hobby and small farmers across the country. This bulletin features the Day-Range system, which consists of a mobile pen that is kept inside a fenced area. The birds are free to roam within the fenced-area during the day and are put in the mobile pen at night if predators are a problem. The mobile pen is moved daily to prevent accumulation of manure and the fence is moved as necessary to provide access to fresh pasture.

This video from Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society explains how to plan, layout, and plant a home corn breeding nursery.

Poultry Your Way is for anyone interested in commercially raising, processing, and marketing poultry. It is designed to help you consider alternatives, and to help you make decisions about which alternative(s) will be most compatible with your family and business goals.

This Iowa State University video/fact sheet describes how to build a system to catch, store and reuse the rainwater for irrigation in a high tunnel.

In West Branch, Iowa, Scattergood Farm converted pasture from perennial alfalfa and clover to vegetable crop ground from summer 2010 to spring 2011. This research report from Practical Farmers of Iowa summarizes the effects of two cover crops or no cover crop on numbers of weeds and compaction measured by soil density in a vegetable crop following a transition from a pasture. Farm manager, Mark Quee, felt the cover crops assisted his conversion from pasture ground to vegetable plots. He felt the cover crops helped build soil and reduced weed pressure significantly in preparation for vegetable plants.

In the State of Missouri, poultry raisers can process no more than 1,000 chickens on the farm and sell to customers at their farm, without government inspection. In an effort to promote better safety practices in poultry processing on Missouri farms, Backes Poultry offers hands-on workshops, trains processors and their employees, and provides tours of the Backes Poultry processing operation. This booklet, developed by Kevin Backes as part of an NCR-SARE Farmer Rancher Grant project, contains descriptions and (somewhat graphic) photos of Backes' poultry processing practices on the Backes' Poultry farm in Missouri.

This 2-page highlight offers six ideas from women farmers for hosting farm tours.

The results of this soil quality assessment suggest that ecologically based management successfully restored
biological activity of silt loam soils previously under intensive conventional agriculture. The system practiced at the study sites illustrates how resources internal to the farm (i.e., composts) can be used to manage soil productivity. 

This publication provides a guide for selecting best management practices that consider both production and environmental-sustainability goals for corn production in South Dakota.

Spirit Car is a memoir that blends fiction and carefully researched history. This book retraces Diane Wilson's family’s Dakota heritage across five generations.

This multi-page fact sheet describes basic parasite biology for gastrointestinal worms acquired by sheep and goats on pastures, and provides several strategies for managing internal parasitism. 

This fact sheet provides information about specific attributes of different cover crops grown after each cash crop.

Farmer Rancher grant recipient, Kelly Klober, provides valuable insight into rare, heritage and heirloom breed selection, chick raising, breeding and marketing to help producers start their own fully sustainable heritage chicken flock and raise eggs and meat for family or small farm business.

This fact sheet discusses how soil porosity, water infiltration, soil aeration, and soil structure increase under natural vegetation and no-till systems with continuous living cover.

This fact sheet provides information about soil microbes, nutrient recycling, and microbial soil organic matter decomposition.

This fact sheet explains how growing cover crops can help farmers adapt faster to a continuous no-till system.

This fact sheet highlights the physical, chemical, biological, and economic benefits of using cover crops in a sustainable cropping system.

Brett Blaauw's SARE research investigated the response of beneficial insects and their ecosystem services to the size of wildflower plots. This video is a quick introductory guide to help people establish wildflower plantings on their own for the conservation of beneficial insects.

Wisconsin researchers were awarded a SARE grant to investigate the properties of grassfed milk when made into cheese, butter, or other products. This 13 minute video summarizes the research they’ve done and the development of the grass-based (or pasture-grazed) dairy industry to date.

Zachary Hayden received an NCR-SARE Graduate Student Grant to evaluate the relative effects of rye, hairy vetch, and rye-vetch mixture cover crops on the biomass and density of winter annual weed communities. This SARE research supports that winter cover crops composed of rye or vetch (or both) can significantly suppress winter annual weeds. 

Cover Crops are an important addition to any farming system to improve soil quality and decrease soil erosion or nutrient loss. Cover crops are normally planted without the intention of a direct harvest. Rather, they are planted for the multiple benefits they provide to the farmer and the environment. In Iowa, cover crops are usually planted into standing corn or soybean crops or are planted after grain harvest. Farmers are concerned that a winter rye cover crop could negatively impact their cash crop yields. 

In this research report from Practical Farmers of Iowa, fall cover crop impacts on corn and soybean yields are summarized.

Women landowners say that they want their family farms to remain healthy and productive for future generations. But many feel they don't have all the information they need to protect their land. This booklet introduces cover crops as an option, one of the simplest techniques to try with the most visible benefits. 

Women farmland owners are a vital segment of the conservation partnership across the country. According to Women Caring for the Land, if Midwestern conservation partners can more effectively serve this segment of landowners before the land transitions again over the next decade, the positive impact on our land, water and air will be tremendous.

This curriculum manual is intended to give users an overview of the rationale and methodology for targeting outreach to non-operator women landowners, particularly those 65 and older who now control a significant percentage of US farmland. It also provides a number of conservation demonstration activities, which range from very simple to more complex, both in concept and execution, including cover crops.

Woodchip bioreactors, installed at the edge of agricultural fields, can remove 15 to 60 percent of the nitrate in tile-drained water annually. This innovative approach for protecting the water quality in Midwest streams and rivers is described in a new fact sheet available from Iowa State University.