3rd Annual Fox Watershed Farmer Roundtable

Over 130 people attended the 3^rd annual Fox Watershed Farmer Roundtable on January 26, 2018, nearly doubling attendance since the first Farmer Roundtable in 2016! The majority of attendees included farmers and crop consultants from the Lower Fox watershed. The event, held at Liberty Hall in Kimberly, WI, featured a farmer panel, keynote speakers, and small group discussions about conservation practices. This year’s panel included local producers:

Dan Brick, Brickstead Dairy
John Jacobs, Green Valley Dairy
Dan Diederich, Diederich Farms
Derek VanDeHey, New Horizons Dairy

All the producers shared successes and lessons learned while implementing conservation practices on their farm. Some of the most common practices talked about by the panel were cover crops, no-till and low disturbance manure applications. New this year, the event included keynote speakers, Jim Harbach and Gerard Troisi, a producer and crop advisor from Pennsylvania. Jim and Gerard shared their decades of experience farming using no-till and cover crops to build soil health and improve water quality. During the small group discussions, producers had the opportunity to have conversations with other producers and agriculture professionals about a variety of conservations topics (Rye: Problems & Solutions, Multispecies Covers after Wheat, Covers & Manure, No-till Economics, Grazing Heifers, and more). The event concluded with a happy hour and poster session, highlighting on-farm demonstrations of conservation practices in northeast Wisconsin.

Link to posters: https://www.uwgb.edu/UWGBCMS/media/EMBI/files/Posters-for-Farmer-Roundtable.pdf

A huge thank you to everyone attended and partnered to make the 3^rd annual Farmer Roundtable a HUGE success! We look forward to seeing everyone back in 2019!

The Alliance for the Great Lakes hosted the Fox Watershed Farmer Roundtable in partnership with: