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UW research eyes sustainability of three crop, beef production approachesWyoming A $500,000, four-year research project by the University of Wyoming will investigate the economic and environmental sustainability of three production approaches in cash crop and beef calf production. The research, starting next spring, will examine conventional, reduced input and organic approaches on small- and medium-sized crop-range-livestock operations. Funding is through the U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Research Initiative Agricultural Prosperity for Small and Medium-Sized Farms program. The project will include research plots at the James C. Hageman Sustainable Agriculture Research and Extension Center near Lingle and eventually on several farms. "Producers seeking alterative practices to decrease costs or increase value need region-specific information for the cold, dry, irrigated cropping and livestock production systems of the western U.S.," said project director Jay Norton, an assistant professor in the Department of Renewable Resources in UW's College of Agriculture. The project will include 19 principle investigators in several departments in the college, three collaborators, area growers and two graduate students. A full-time project coordinator will be hired and stationed at SAREC. The person will be under the direction of Norton and Jim Krall, research director at SAREC. "This truly is an impressive team of scientists that offers the University of Wyoming the opportunity to become a major player in the area of sustainable agricultural systems," said Stephen D. Miller, director of the Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station and associate dean in the College of Agriculture. The ambitious project will link small plot research into specific plant and soil processes, large plot systems research and on-farm studies. Research that compares whole systems on farms and at research stations is needed because principles developed in isolation from other farm operations too often fail when applied to complex whole-farm systems, said Norton. Cow-calf pairs will graze rangelands in the summer and be fed grain and forage from plots during fall and winter. Measured over the four-year period will be: weed, pathogen, arthropod and nematode populations; soil biological, physical, and chemical properties; water use efficiency and soil moisture dynamics; crop and forage growth, yield and quality; livestock performance; and economic viability. "The extensive, on-farm studies will link plot- and field-scale research to real-world, farm-scale operations," said Norton. "Five farms operating under each production system will be selected for on-farm monitoring of stable indicators of soil productivity, economics and marketing potential for products from the three approaches." Norton said agricultural systems conferences, extension bulletins, training workshops and other programs aimed at a variety of learning styles will be developed to disseminate results. Research will be presented to Wyoming educators at annual meetings of the Wyoming Science Teachers Association and incorporated into the agroecology curriculum and other UW agriculture courses. "We hope it's the initiation of a long-term project that will put SAREC in an international network of long-term agricultural research sites as one of the only sites that includes a livestock component, and the only one for northern plains/intermountain crop-range-livestock systems," Norton said. 12/15/08 Date: 12/10/08
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