Virtual Field Day Access Instructions:
To participate in the live virtual field day at 1:00 pm CT on March 13, click this URL: https://iastate.zoom.us/j/91411984892.
Iowa Learning Farms, in partnership with the Iowa Nutrient Research Center and Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, is hosting a free virtual field day on Thursday, March 13 at 1 p.m. CT. Join us for a live discussion with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Beef Specialists Chris Clark, Erika Lundy-Woolfolk, and Patrick Wall.
Since 2012, Iowa has lost 125,000 acres of permanent pasture, and beef cattle producers are maintaining or increasing production on fewer and fewer acres of permanent pasture. Cover crops and summer annuals can help provide an additional forage source to Iowa beef producers, while protecting water quality and preserving valuable topsoil and nutrients. This demonstration project conducted at three of the ISU Research Farms explored common cover crop and summer annual forage crops to evaluate their forage quality and yield potential to help support producers looking to improve the utilization and rest opportunities for their pastures.
“A benefit of utilizing summer annuals is that here in Iowa, we tend to rely on perennial cool season pastures that often experience a summer slump where the pastures don't grow very well during the heat of the summer,” shared Clark. “I think there's an opportunity to fill in that gap of forage production with those summer annuals and make the calendar a little more manageable to hopefully get more forage and more cattle on the land.”
“One of the big things that I feel is exciting from this project is the response to nitrogen,” noted Lundy-Woolfolk. “A lot of our producers here look at the annual forages as an option to help capture and keep some of those nutrients in the soil. We also know that those plants need some nitrogen to have the best productivity possible, so in this study some plots received no nitrogen while others received 50 pounds of nitrogen to determine the economic feasibility of the systems.”
Participants are encouraged to ask questions of the presenters. People from all backgrounds and areas of interest are encouraged to join.
Virtual Field Day Access Instructions:
To participate in the live virtual field day at 1:00 pm CT on March 13, click this URL: https://iastate.zoom.us/j/91411984892 or visit https://www.iowalearningfarms.org/events-1.
Or, join from a dial-in phone line:
Dial: 646-876-9923 or 646-931-3860
Meeting ID: 914 1198 4892
The field day will be recorded and archived on the ILF website so that it can be watched at any time. The archive will be available at https://www.iowalearningfarms.org/virtual-field-day-archive.
Participants may be eligible for a Certified Crop Adviser board-approved continuing education unit, if approved. Information about how to apply to receive the CEU will be provided at the end of the event.