SARE Outreach

Youth Renewing the Countryside

Smart, young people are returning to the roots of American Agriculture-- roots steeped in a tradition and culture of diversity, quality and respect for the Earth. Full of brilliant color photographs, Youth Renewing the Countryside shares remarkable stories of young people in each state changing the world through rural renewal. Produced by Renewing the Countryside in […]

Best Practices for the Sustainable Urban Farm

For decades, urban farms and community gardens have helped meet the demand for fresh, local produce. Urban farms are diverse and adaptable, ranging from small farms on repurposed vacant lots to multilevel vertical farms and rooftop gardens. Often, they combine ecological farming practices with some form of infrastructure. Urban growers make clever use of their […]

What is Sustainable Agriculture?

This award-winning report provides a sampler of best practices in sustainable agriculture—from marketing and community vitality to cover crops and grazing—as well as eight profiles of producers, educators and researchers who have successfully implemented them.

Leaders in Sustainable Agriculture Featured on America's Heartland

SARE partnered with PBS KVIE to produce an episode of RFD-TV's America's Heartland that features four farmers describing their commitment to sustainability, how they plan to meet farming challenges of today and tomorrow, and how SARE has impacted their farming and ranching practices.  The full 24-minute video is available, as is each segment featuring the […]

Farming with Soil Life

This handbook, created by The Xerces Society, dives into soil biology. It provides a connection between healthy soils and healthy invertebrates found in temperate agricultural soils. Farming with Soil Life starts with a review of soil basics, including the functions, classifications and properties (physical, biological and chemical) of soil. It provides detailed methods on how […]

Resilient Farmers, Ranchers and Communities: Social Sustainability in Agriculture

When Nfamara Badjie, Dawn Hoyte and other family members started Ever-Growing Family Farm in Upstate New York in 2014, they had an improbable vision: that they could grow rice well enough to allow at least one of them to eventually leave their off-farm job and work full time on the farm. Rice is a nearly […]

Manage Weeds on Your Farm Video Series

In this series, experienced farmers from around the country talk about how they have found success controlling weeds by following ecological principles, and without resorting to the use of herbicides. To do so, they rely on a range of cultural and mechanical practices, including diverse crop rotations, well-timed cultivation and targeting weeds when they're at […]

Transitioning to Organic Production

Transitioning to Organic Production lays out many promising conversion strategies, covering typical organic farming production practices, innovative marketing ideas and federal standards for certified organic crop production.

Scaling Up Your Vegetable Farm for Wholesale Markets

For direct market farmers, expanding your operation to capture local and regional wholesale markets can represent an opportunity. But such a shift brings with it many changes to how you run your farm because the expectations that wholesale buyers have is much different than your direct market customers. Scaling Up Your Vegetable Farm for Wholesale […]

Cultivos de Cobertura para Rotaciones de Cultivos Sustentables

Cultivos de Cobertura para Rotaciones de Cultivos Sustentables is an abbreviated, Spanish language translation of SARE's Cover Crops for Sustainable Crop Rotations topic brief.

Reaching Women in Agriculture: A Guide to Virtual Engagement

This guide brings together information, tips and tools to deliver effective and engaging online (and hybrid) education for farm and ranch women on topics related to farm viability, resilience and conservation.  While COVID-19-related restrictions issued in 2020 that curbed in-person gatherings were the impetus for developing this resource, online offerings can help address barriers—travel time […]

2021–2022 Report from the Field

Report from the Field features 12 stories from around the country of recent SARE grantees who are finding new ways to improve the sustainability of U.S. agriculture. The report also summarizes our total investment in research and education projects since 1988.

Manage Weeds On Your Farm

Manage Weeds on Your Farm is a definitive guide to understanding agricultural weeds and how to manage them efficiently, effectively and ecologically—for organic and conventional farmers alike.

Sustainable Agriculture Through Sustainable Learning

This guide describes the science behind five best practices in adult learning and how to apply them to typical educational programs for farmers, including field days, workshops, online courses and one-on-one interactions.

Building Soils for Better Crops

The fourth edition of Building Soils for Better Crops—enhanced and expanded—explains how to use ecological principles to build soil health and boost fertility, yields and overall sustainability.

A Sustainable Approach to Controlling Honey Bee Diseases and Varroa Mites

This fact sheet describes efforts to breed honey bees, Apis mellifera, resistant to diseases and parasitic mites to reduce the amount of antibiotics and pesticides used in bee colonies and to ensure that our breeding methods and stock are accessible to beekeepers everywhere.

Selecting Cattle to Improve Grazing Distribution Patterns, Rangeland Health and Water Quality

This project is the first and only study that we are aware of that has evaluated whether grazing distribution has the potential to be improved through intensive breed selection. Most of the management approaches currently used to increase grazing uniformity, such as water developments and fencing, can resolve livestock grazing distribution problems on both private and public lands. However, these practices usually require large capital expenditures.

Smart Water Use on Your Farm or Ranch

As producers throughout the nation grow increasingly concerned about water scarcity, farmers, ranchers and agricultural educators are beginning to explore new, conservation-oriented approaches to water use.

A Whole Farm Approach to Managing Pests

This 16-page bulletin helps producers—and the educators who work with them—use ecological principles across the entire farm to control pests.

Conservation Tillage Systems in the Southeast

This production manual provides comprehensive guidance on conservation tillage systems for farms in the southeastern United States. It covers the core components of conservation tillage systems and includes both regional considerations and producer experiences.