Soybean growers across southern Wisconsin are confronting an unexpected and costly surprise at harvest. Some of their beans are wrinkled, moldy and mottled with dark blotches on the typically creamy yellow seeds.

On Oct. 1, Wisconsin’s new non-point pollution rules took effect. Polluted runoff is a leading cause of surface and groundwater quality problems in the state. The rules, aimed in part at controlling phosphorus and soil erosion from farm fields, will affect thousands of Wisconsin farmers.

The stories appear all too often. E. coli-contaminated beef causes sickness across a multistate region. Cryptosporidium in water sickens thousands in Milwaukee.

Each year approximately 1,000 farmers with disabilities receive direct assistance from AgrAbility – a national program funded by the USDA and supported by staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison – for help to continue farming. On a national level, agriculture has one of the highest disabling injury rates of any occupation. And in Wisconsin alone, more than 4,000 farm injuries occur each year, many of which result in permanent disability.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison team scored 2,570 points to win the 82nd National Collegiate Dairy Cattle Judging Contest, Oct. 1 at World Dairy Expo in Madison. The Badger team bested second-place Cornell University by 19 points; 27 national and international university teams competed.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison team scored 2,570 points to finish high team overall for the third year in a row at the Southern Intercollegiate Dairy Cattle Judging Contest, Sept. 28 at the Mid-South Fair in Memphis, Tenn.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Short Course Dairy Cattle Judging team placed first in the practical contest and first in reasons in the traditional post-secondary dairy cattle judging contest at this year’s World Dairy Expo.

W.D. Hoard’s bronze likeness has welcomed visitors to the UW-Madison’s agricultural campus since 1922. After eight decades of watching over Henry Mall, Hoard’s statue has gotten a professional makeover.

We may never know how chronic wasting disease got into Wisconsin’s wild deer herd, but we’re going to get a better idea of how the disease could move across the state’s farm and forest landscapes.

Since the discovery of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in Wisconsin deer this past spring, many individuals have expressed concern over the safety of venison. This fact sheet is designed to give you some background information on CWD, and to answer questions related to venison safety and handling this fall.