Lydia Zepeda, an associate professor of consumer science, has been chosen as director of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy Farmers’ Grass-based Dairy Seminar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers its students much more than a unique learning environment. It offers them opportunities to meet with Wisconsin’s working farmers at professional conferences.

Bob Williams of Pardeeville, who recently retired from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, received the 2001 Service to Agriculture Award from the Farm and Industry Short Course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

If you’re supplementing phosphorus in a typical Wisconsin dairy diet, you’re probably feeding too much of the mineral. Cutting back on supplementation won’t hurt production or herd health, and you’ll be doing a favor for water quality, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and the USDA Dairy Forage Research Center.

Despite the lowest milk prices in two decades, state farmers probably won’t see a repeat of the financial crisis of the mid-1980s – at least not this year, according to Bruce Jones, an economist at the UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Milk prices account for more than half the cash receipts of Wisconsin farmers, and the low prices are putting more and more farms under financial stress. Unless milk prices improve, the state’s farm economy could face big problems in coming years, he says.

American consumers spent $9 billion on cut flowers in 1998, according to USDA statistics. But they might buy even more if they knew the flowers would last longer once they were cut.

High school juniors and seniors, their parents, and other prospective students are invited to visit the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and see if the Farm and Industry Short Course will meet their needs.

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Profitability plays a major role in Wisconsin farmers’ decisions to plant or quit planting genetically modified crops, a University of Wisconsin-Madison study has shown.