Institute to Participate in 5-year Perennial Forage Project

Several Michael Fields staff will be engaging actively in a newly funded 5-year project funded by USDA to explore Diverse Perennial Forage production. "Perennial forages offer ecosystem benefits for pollinators, and they can hold water and reduce flooding, in the face of extreme storm events, while helping farmers reduce production costs," says MFAI's Policy Director, Margaret Krome. MFAI's policy staff will be actively studying barriers to inclusion of perennial forages in farmers' production systems as well as understanding societal benefits from them, such as the avoided costs of repairs to roads, bridges, culverts and other infrastructure torn out by excess water in current cropping systems. MFAI's Agroecologist Nicole Tautges will collaborate with Southeastern Wisconsin farmers to deploy perennial forage research trials on their farms and will create new educational materials and workshops to introduce K-12 students to perennial forage systems. Food Systems Program Manager Donale Richards will lead work with Black and brown farmers in Wisconsin on roles that perennial forages do and can play in their farming systems.