Tuesday, November 6, 2007 - 3:00 PM
128-3

Improving Organic Farming Systems across Nebraska Agroecoregions.

Charles A. Shapiro1, David Baltensperger1, Chuck Francis1, Robert Wright1, James Brandle1, Stevan Knezevic1, Ron Johnson1, Elizabeth Sarno1, John Quinn1, and Stephanie Newman2. (1) University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Concord, NE 68728-2828, (2) Organic Crop Improvement Association, Lincoln, NE 68507-3160

An integrated organic systems project to certify research land across Nebraska on experiment stations was federally funded in 2005. A team of seven University of Nebraska faculty, five organic businesses and organizations and ten farmers planned the project with the goal of creating the infrastructure and interest to increase organic farming research, teaching and extension at the University of Nebraska. Organic farming by citizens, combined with research, extension and teaching efforts by faculty had been on-going since the mid 1970s. With the exception of the years 1991 – 2000 when there was a Center for Sustainable Systems, most efforts were not organized nor fully integrated with other university programs. Interested faculty had individual research projects and collaborated with several non-governmental organizations, and teams received special grants, but there was no on-going and organized effort to respond to the needs of organic producers in the state. Nebraska is one of the few Land Grant Institutions that still has a system of statewide experimental stations staffed with faculty in several of the agricultural disciplines. Because of the diversity of the state's climate and soil resources, one geographic point for conducting agricultural research is not adequate for neither conventional nor organic farming. In planning the research, we conducted informal surveys with members of the Nebraska Sustainable Agricultural Society and worked with organic farmers in all parts of the state to develop a management structure that would not only allow individual research and extension autonomy to each site, but statewide coordination and oversight. The grant was funded on the second submission. It was improved based on taking the suggestions given during the first review. One major critique was that the original grant did not articulate how the PIs were going to work together and how the information collected would be integrated into useable information.

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