Learning Hubs

Place-based conversations and deliberations that aim to envision alternative systems and pathways of achieving them through deliberative Collaborative Landscape Design process, and development of Agroecological Transformation Process.

Decision support tools

Web-based and spreadsheet models for use as ‘boundary spanners’ in processes of Collaborative Landscape Design.

Grassland 2.0 Academy

Partnership with federal Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) to develop training academy for grass-based farmers, policymakers, community leaders, and innovators.

The detailed timeline (1950- 2024) highlights the contextual elements at different scales that have been significant in the trajectory of the agrifood system in Ridge and Valley territory. Several crises have been decisive, notably the economic crisis affecting strongly the dairy farms linked to the intensification of cash crop production systems (with the corn-soybean coupling). While this region is highly representative of the intensive farming system of the corn-belt, it is also a pioneer in organic production, which has given rise to the well-known organic valley brand. The timeline also shows the weight of various national, agricultural and environmental public policies with their local variations (Wisconsin state, counties) and the importance of political shifts interrupting key programs. Finally, a number of local initiatives have been identified as carried by various players (researchers, extensionists, NGOs, farmer networks, foundations, etc.) as responses to the limits reached by this intensive agricultural system and characterized by a return to grass-fed farming. This transition is still minor but is becoming increasingly visible from 1990’s as it meets both economic (sustainability and profitability of livestock farming) and environmental challenges (the back to grassland as a lever for the conservation of the lands). These latter define a third period from 2000’s where policies are more engaged on these topics than before even if environmental goals with water pollutions and flooding events have long been observed.  

This old mountainous region has a long history of soil conservation. Coon Valley is considered the birthplace of Roosevelt-era federal programs to address soil erosion. It also is home to farmer and consumer cooperative efforts, attributed to Scandinavian settlers in the late 1800s. Yet, until the 90s, agriculture in this region developed mainly according to the perspective of intensification and modernization that swept the nation. This modernization and intensification led, on the one hand, to the emergence of the Corn Belt, grouping together several Midwestern states suited to corn production, and, on the other, dairy farm intensification, shifting from grazing to a confinement system. Wisconsin is known as America’s Dairyland, based on its extensive production and tradition of dairy farming and cheese-making dating back to the late 19th century. Locally, this has resulted in the long-term establishment of an intensive agriculture that combines field crop production systems, particularly maize–soybeans and maize–alfalfa rotations over large areas, with dairy and cheese production. Instead of relying on grass as the primary feed source, farmers shifted to Total Mixed Rations, commonly based on maize, soybeans and alfalfa hay, as well as supplemental vitamins and minerals. This input-intensive crop production depends on federal support detailed in agricultural policies (Farm Bill, etc.) and financial incentives (taxes, loans, loan guarantees, etc.).

In parallel, and more quietly the production of organic products began in the 70s. The Ridge and Valley region saw an influx of “back to the landers” during the 1970s, and these beginning farmers focused on vegetable and fruit farming. The Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool (CROPP) organized in 1988 under their own organic standards to supply the region with produce. Quickly, they expanded to dairy products and rather than investing in processing infrastructure, the cooperative developed the Organic Valley brand and partnered with existing processors and distributors to reach the market. [1]

The first farm crisis took place in the early 1980s, when small farms folded after a decade of economic inflation and federal agricultural policies characterized by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz’s statement that farmers needed to “get big or get out”. Rural communities reliant on farming contracted and disappeared during the 1980s, despite state efforts to diversify their economies around tourism, small manufacturing, or diversified markets, particularly international customers for Wisconsin dairy products, including inputs like semen, milking systems, and hay. California became the dominant dairy state in 1993, through intensification and expansion of farms in California, and fuelled a vicious cycle of over production. Between 1970 and 2006, dairy farm numbers fell sharply, from 648,000 operations in 1970 to 75,000 in 2006, or 88 percent. Total dairy cows fell from 12 million in 1970 to 9.1 million in 2006, so the average herd size rose from just 19 cows per farm in 1970 to 120 cows in 2006.[2] This led to a major crisis in dairy farming and the bankruptcy of a large number of farms. This crisis has prompted the introduction of public policies to support livestock farming, which until now had been neglected by public authorities. The idea of a transition in livestock farming systems, based more on pasture grazing emerged in this volatile period. Some farmers sought a way to get off the expansion treadmill and reduce input costs as a different means to improve net earnings. Intensive rotational grazing emerged as an approach, using simple technology such as moveable fencing, to put cows back on pasture and shift feeding and manure management practices. Farmers travelled to New Zealand and Australia to learn about grazing practices there, and formed the Wisconsin Rural Development Center (WRDC, 1983-1990s?) and in 1986 assisted with creating the Southern Wisconsin Farmers Research Network, Inc.. WRDC and the farmer network created a program at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) to support demonstrations of sustainable agriculture across the state, centering farmer networks and peer learning.

By 1991, the Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Program (1987-1995) supported eight farmer networks, some focused on grazing and the rest with some grazing content. The Kickapoo Organic Resource Network for Dairy organic was the network that served the Ridge and Valley region, and linked grazing education and research to organic production.

Meanwhile, at the national level, part of the Bush Administration’s response to geopolitical instability was pushing the idea that the U.S. should be able to meet its gasoline needs independent of foreign oil cartels resulting in 2007’s Energy Independence and Security Act. This law required a fraction of all gasoline sold in the U.S. to be blended with biofuels, which stimulated agricultural acreage in maize for corn-grain ethanol. This law not only led to the inversion of easements previously dedicated to grassland protection, it significantly undermined environmental outcomes related to greenhouse gas emissions, water quality, flood mitigation, and biodiversity [8].

The promotion of land-use change and development of grass-based systems based has found a new lever in Ridge and Valley with the Producer-Led Watershed Protection Grant Program (PLWPG) from the WI-DATCP. This program was designed to promote farmers coming together to explore use of practices believed to improve resource concerns such as soil loss, water quality degradation, flood mitigation, and biodiversity decline. The program now modestly supports ~37 programs in Wisconsin. In the Ridge and Valley region, several have emerged in the Viroqua area, namely, the Tainter Creek, Rush Creek, Bad Axe, Coon Creek, and West Fork Kickapoo groups. Each has their own projects and goals, but all have come together in a loose association known as the Hill Country Alliance.

Others conservation programs at the federal level include the USDA NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), but use of funding in these programs is notoriously slow and difficult to encourage among many farmers who must proactively seek support for cost-sharing to address resource concerns on their farm. An innovative approach in the Ridge and Valley region was driven by a grant from the US EPA to the Pasture Project and the NGO Valley Stewardship Network (VSN) to essentially use the Tainter Creek watershed as a model for how to more proactively engage with farmers to make use of cost-share funds. In this case, the EPA dollars were used to incentivize significant adoption of managed grazing in the Tainter Creek watershed, which was directly linked to improved phosphorus loss data in watershed-wide monitoring carried out by VSN with some help from UW-Madison researchers.

Building on the momentum of the Tainter Creek project described above, the Grassland 2.0 project in 2019 was initiated by researchers from UW-Madison and who are members of ATTER network. This project is supported by the Sustainable Agriculture Systems Coordinated Agricultural Program from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture is a collaborative project involving producers, researchers, policy makers and supply chain players working together to create a pathway toward a regenerative food and farming system that delivers stable profits for farmers, rural community vitality and protection of the ecosystem on which we all depend. The project seeks to develop technical and financial tools, expand grass-fed markets, cultivate positive institutional policy changes, and empower producers.  Ridge and Walley is of the five learning hubs set up by the project for co-building approach for envisioning the future and make it a reality. In Grassland 2.0 Learning Hubs, communities engage in a process of Collaborative Landscape Design to a) connect people around shared goals, b) envision novel socioecological landscapes, c) plan individual farm enterprises, d) design and map supply chains/markets, and e) institutionalize change. This CLD process is a modification of the general approach espoused by Duru et al. (2015).