Marion Kalb, national Farm-to-School program director with the Community Food Security Coalition, will speak in Madison about linking farmers with schools.

A new disease threatens Wisconsin’s position as the nation’s leading snap bean producer and has University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers scrambling for answers.

Driving machinery over fields can significantly reduce yields of alfalfa, one of the state’s most important crops, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher. A preliminary study at the Arlington Agricultural Research Station found that wheel traffic cut alfalfa yields by up to 70 percent for a single cutting, and the average was 30 percent, according to Dan Undersander, an extension forage specialist with the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, working with an Illinois city and a Milwaukee County Zoo curator, hope to surgically scale down an urban deer herd that has outgrown its welcome. Sterilizing does should eventually, and non-lethally, pare deer numbers in the Highland Park herd, according to Nancy Mathews, a wildlife ecologist at the UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

Edward Baker of Cross Plains, Robert Cassens of Madison, the late David Drummond of Eau Claire, and Howard Curler of Neenah and Robert Woods, currently of Albuquerque, N.M. will be inducted into the Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame May 2 at the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Livestock and Meat Council in Madison.

Most everyone in agriculture knows that their livelihoods will be greatly affected by the ongoing Farm Bill negotiations, and by the nature of the agriculture agreement that will be hammered out in the Millennial (or “Doha”) Round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization.

Many U.S. farmers now plant crops that contain genes from another species. But from a global perspective such transgenic, or genetically modified, crops remain relatively uncommon around the world, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study.

Help the University of Wisconsin-Madison support local farmers while you enjoy a delicious dinner on campus!

Farmers who don’t want to combat potato early dying disease with pesticides may soon have another way to protect their crops, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher. However, she cautions that it will be difficult to find alternative practices that are as effective as fumigation.

When potato growers treat the soil in their fields for early dying disease, the pesticide they use doesn’t doesn’t always perform consistently. Now, a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist has found that the soil temperature, soil moisture and depth of the application don’t explain those inconsistent results. Instead, the solution to pesticide efficiency may be to find a way to seal the top layer of soil, preventing the chemicals from escaping into the atmosphere, according to Doug Rouse, a plant pathologist with the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.