Season Extension

New SARE Bulletin: Best Practices for the Sustainable Urban Farm

For decades, urban farms and community gardens have helped meet demand for fresh and local produce. Urban farming creatively utilizes limited space, conserves land and transforms vacant lots or buildings into productive greenspaces. Farming in cities can be a rewarding way for communities to grow healthy food while receiving a wide range of other interrelated environmental, […]

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 […]

Farmer-Focused Innovations Funded by SARE

“Institutionalized food is the forgotten part of the food revolution,” says Ann Swanson, talking about the lack of fresh produce available from local institutions in her community of Champaign–Urbana, IL. Inspired, Swanson used a SARE Farmer/Rancher grant to create new opportunities for local farmers, launch a series of educational classes and expand institutional capacity to […]

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.

Sustainable Production and Use of On-Farm Energy

Using solar or wind energy or producing biofuels from crop feedstocks and anaerobic digestion helps farmers achieve energy independence while improving profitability and reducing fossil fuel emissions.

High Tunnel Growing: Is it Right for Me?

A report to assist farms incorporating high tunnels for market competitiveness, with research from West Virginia's Mid-Ohio River Valley.

Integrating Traditional Foods with Aquaponics in the Desert Southwest

The Challenge Cochise County, Arizona, where Aaron Cardona’s Arevalos Farm is located, is classified by the USDA as a food desert with high poverty rates, as well as high rates of diabetes and obesity. To help confront these problems, Cardona decided to look into aquaponics, which had not been experimented with in the desert regions […]

Integrated Pest Management in Alabama

  Organic vegetable growers in the Deep South face a constant battle with pests. In Alabama, new information is leading to better crop protection and more profitability, thanks to the work of Ayanava Majumdar, Alabama Extension entomologist and Southern SARE state coordinator. As a SARE state coordinator, Majumdar is tasked with bringing sustainable agriculture information […]

High Tunnels and Other Season Extension Techniques

From low covers to high tunnels, from hoop houses to greenhouses—producers are finding ever more innovative ways to extend the growing season, and their income stream.

Sustainable Pest Management in Greenhouses and High Tunnels

From 2007 to 2009, Cornell researchers in New York used a SARE grant to study the efficacy of biological insect control in minimally heated greenhouses and high tunnels or hoop houses. This fact sheet reports the results and provides detailed advice on how growers can use natural enemies to manage insect pests in minimally heated greenhouses and unheated high tunnels.