North Central

Down on the Farm: Supporting Farmers in Stressful Times

Down on the Farm: Supporting Farmers in Stressful Times is a free workshop kit that teaches folks how to recognize and respond to a farmer that might need help.

Pasture Productivity Pail

The Pasture Productivity Pail is a set of tools that can be used to use to make informed decisions on pasture management and improvement.

Iowa Meat Processors’ Resource Guidebook

A guide to building, upgrading or expanding a small meat processing facility in Iowa.

Cottage Food: Launch a Bakery from Your Farm Kitchen

A farmer-led team in Wisconsin created resources to help farmers diversify their income by selling baked goods.

Youth Sustainable Agriculture Coloring Sheet

This coloring sheet helps youth learn how sustainable producers can contribute to a healthy environment, make a good living, and grow a strong and healthy community of caring people.

Youth and Sustainable Agriculture

A collection of SARE resources, programs, curricula, and learning modules  that can be used for educational programming and planning.

Goat Milk Soap Making Manual

This 38-page manual was created to be used in Goat Milk Soap Making workshops and as a tool for producers interested in making goat milk soap. It was developed by Krista Duval of Creekside Farms in 2017, as part of a SARE-supported project to amplify specialty dairy opportunities for local producers and food entrepreneurs in Appalachia Ohio.

Soil Health and Nutrient Management for Minority Farmers: a Train-the-Trainer Workshop

With support from SARE, a team of researchers, educators, and producers in Minnesota developed a soil health and cover cropping handbook as a train-the-trainer resource for educators, mentors, and community leaders working with immigrant and minority growers.

Sustainable Agriculture Resources and Programs for K-12 Youth

This 38-page guide to sustainable agriculture-oriented educational opportunities for schoolchildren features more than 75 programs and curricula nationwide.

NCR-SARE Program Brochure

A brochure containing general information about NCR-SARE

Cover Crop Termination

Farmers use cover crops to slow erosion, improve soil health, enhance water availability, smother weeds, help control pests and diseases, and increase biodiversity on their farms. Although cover crops can be partially grazed or used as forage, they are usually terminated before planting production crops. While row crop producers tend to prefer using herbicides to terminate, most vegetable/horticulture crop producers employ tillage as their primary means of termination. Some organic no-till producers use roller-crimpers to kill the cover crop and leave the mulch on the soil surface to conserve water. NCR-SARE has supported various research projects that have explored the advantages and limits of various cover crop termination strategies.

Sustainable Agriculture Learning Modules for High School Agriculture

Established with the aid of a NCR-SARE Professional Development grant, these Sustainable Agriculture Learning Modules from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were created to offer insight into what sustainability within agriculture actually looks like.

Toward a Sustainable Agriculture: A Curriculum for High School Classes

This free high-school curriculum addresses the social, environmental and economic impacts of agriculture. The curriculum provides a critical analysis of agricultural and food systems, and helps students understand new concepts through hands-on examples. The curriculum includes six modules, designed to be incorporated into existing classes.

Partnership Grant Fact Sheet

The Partnership Grant program is intended to foster cooperation between agriculture professionals and small groups of farmers and ranchers to catalyze on-farm research, demonstration, and education activities related to sustainable agriculture.

Aquaculture and Aquaponics

Aquaculture is the cultivation of fish, aquatic animals, and plants. Aquaponics is a bio-integrated system that links recirculating aquaculture with hydroponic vegetable, flower, and/or herb production. In aquaponics, nutrient-rich effluent from fish tanks is used to fertigate hydroponic production beds. SARE has supported advances by producers, researchers, and educators that are helping to advance aquaculture and aquaponics into working models of sustainable production.

Soil Health

Healthy soil is essential for maintaining efficient growth, fertility, and water quality in crop production. SARE has supported advances by producers, researchers, and educators as they examine the on-farm benefits of using cover crops, crop rotation, manure amendments, composting, and more.

Urban Agriculture

The integration of agriculture into urban settings is not a new concept, but it is gaining support among all over the country. Throughout the North Central region, residents and organizations in urban settings are stepping up to integrate sustainable food systems into their immediate environment while teaching youth and communities the value of sustainable growing methods. NCR-SARE has shown support for innovative projects that work to combine the benefits of urban living with the concepts of sustainable agriculture.

Grazing and Pasture Management

Grazing management is critical to any pasture-based livestock farming system. Practices such as rotational grazing, intensive rotational grazing, and management intensive grazing can be critical to successful and sustainable grazing systems. NCR-SARE has supported research and educational opportunities around the topic of grazing and pasture management in order to help producers reduce costs and increase profits.