Recent Highlights from the North Central Region

  • Two people looking at sunflower plants in a field

    Beginning farmers and ranchers are some of agriculture’s greatest innovators and experimenters, and North Central SARE has made it a priority to foster them. In October 2019, our Professional Development Program held a train-the-trainer workshop, “Enhancing the Success and Sustainability of Beginning Farmers and Ranchers,” to give regional educators the tools they need to work with beginning farmers in their states.

  • We’re working to promote fuller participation with SARE in the North Central region by building stronger relationships with a diversity of producers, researchers and educators. On a SARE-sponsored sustainable agriculture bus tour during the 2019 Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences Conference, we had the opportunity to showcase some of the unique sustainable growing practices and practitioners in and around Kansas City.
  • Systems-level research and education projects are complex and usually take more time to complete than our typical funding cycle can cover. New in 2020, our Research and Education grant program will have an option to apply for a long-term (more than three years) grant, giving us a new way to support collaborative, multidisciplinary projects.

Stories from the Field

A sampler of recent projects from the North Central region.

Urban Farmers Adopt More Efficient Soil Management Practices

North Dakota Farmers Pursue Soil Stewardship Through Cover Crops

Field Peas: A New Crop to Replace Fallow and Diversify the Farm