At the American Solar Grazing Association annual meeting, you will learn about 2022 highlights, programming for 2023, and upcoming ASGA projects, as well as meet ASGA’s membership team and much more! ASGA members will also vote on candidates for the Board of Directors. Only ASGA members are eligible to vote for board members, but non-members are welcome to attend.

The meeting is free and online, but RSVP is required.

For more information or to RSVP, visit the event webpage, or email ASGA.

Planning Your Pollinator Habitat (MJV webinar)

Stay connected with the latest monarch conservation topics by attending Monarch Joint Venture’s free monthly webinars. This series is a unique opportunity to hear from experts across various interdisciplinary fields related to monarchs, other pollinators, their habitats, and the threats and pressures that make conservation urgent. Bring your questions and get ready to discover how you can get involved to protect monarchs.

All webinars are one hour long and occur at 1:00 PM Central Time. Please note that scheduled webinars are subject to change.

This free webinar is first-come, first-served, with a capacity of 500 attendees. Register early to ensure a place.

For more information or to register, visit the registration page, or contact Stacy Carlson by email or phone (651-222-7631).

All past webinars are available to view; visit MJV’s webinar archive.  This series is co-hosted by the Monarch Joint Venture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center.

Tune in to RFD-TV on March 29 at 5:30pm EDT for the premiere of a new “America’s Heartland” episode showcasing farmers and ranchers from across the country who are leaders in sustainable innovations.

SARE partnered with PBS KVIE to produce this episode, which features farmers describing their commitment to sustainability, how they plan to meet farming challenges of today and tomorrow, and how SARE has impacted their farming practices.

Watch as Bryce Wrigley of Delta Junction, Alaska, discusses the importance of soil health and how cover crops have improved his overall operation. He addresses the need for building food security in Alaska as well as how his farm is working to address this issue at the local level. Lastly, see how Wrigley works to share his newfound knowledge with other farmers.

In North Dakota, brother and sister Drew and Erin Guagler run a 4,000-acre ranch. The Guaglers have received several SARE grants over the years to test out new farming methods on their land. They’ll talk about their grant projects that focused on bale grazing as a way to improve soil health. By prioritizing the health of the land, they know they’ll be able to pass it down to future generations.

Pennsylvania farmer Hannah Brubaker-Smith’s story is unique because she not only received a SARE grant but also served as a leader on the SARE committee that decides how the grant programs will address agricultural needs throughout the Northeast. She and her wife Debra have been farming in Cuba Mills, Penn., on land that has been in the family for 40 years. They’ll share how diversification and new marketing opportunities have benefited their farm.

Lastly, the episode features a collaboration between farmers and researchers: an important component of many SARE grants that allows innovative ideas to be tested in real-world farming conditions. In west Texas, Dr. Reagan Noland is working with rancher Chad Raines to see if running sheep in organic cotton can be an effective method of weed management that allows a farmer to reduce their use of tillage.

Watch the episode on RFD-TV, March 29, at 5:30pm EDT. RFD-TV is carried nationwide on DISH and DIRECTV (satellite), and many cable systems: https://www.rfdtv.com/find-us-on-tv.

What is that weed?  Are you a new farmer transitioning to organic production? This webinar will highlight available free tools to assist farmers and agriculture professionals with the identification of weeds and herbicide injuries in field crops. This webinar will also cover the use of the Take Action Herbicide Mode of Action chart for farmers in transition.

For more information or to register, visit the event webpage, or contact the Rodale Institute by email or phone (610-683-1400).

USDA’s National Agroforestry Center is launching a free 10-part monthly webinar series to highlight how different USDA programs can be used to advance agroforestry adoption.

Each individual webinar will include two speakers and one USDA agency representative, as well as one program participant who has used that USDA program to enhance their agroforestry work.

Learn how USDA programs can be utilized to promote and support agroforestry establishment, management, research, and other efforts in your area.

For more information or to register, visit the program webpage.

Routine scouting of crops is one of the most effective pest management strategies organic farmers can use to stay ahead of costly pest and disease issues. In this presentation, we’ll review best practices around scouting and monitoring, discuss how scouting observations can be used to inform pest management, and highlight tools and resources available to farmers.

For more information or to register, visit the event webpage, or contact the Rodale Institute by email or phone (610-683-1400).

Monarch Research Review (MJV webinar)

Stay connected with the latest monarch conservation topics by attending Monarch Joint Venture’s free monthly webinars. This series is a unique opportunity to hear from experts across various interdisciplinary fields related to monarchs, other pollinators, their habitats, and the threats and pressures that make conservation urgent. Bring your questions and get ready to discover how you can get involved to protect monarchs.

All webinars are one hour long and occur at 1:00 PM Central Time. Please note that scheduled webinars are subject to change.

This free webinar is first-come, first-served, with a capacity of 500 attendees. Register early to ensure a place.

For more information or to register, visit the registration page, or contact Stacy Carlson by email or phone (651-222-7631).

All past webinars are available to view; visit MJV’s webinar archive.  This series is co-hosted by the Monarch Joint Venture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center.

This webinar will be a project update of a multidisciplinary project funded by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR). This project seeks to link soil and human health by investigating the relationship between agricultural practices, soil microbiology, and crop nutrient quality in grain crops, specifically wheat and corn. This study is measuring plant available nitrogen and soil microbial structure along with concentrations of protein, amino acids, B vitamins, and the nutraceutical amino acid ergothioneine in grain crops produced in long-term systems trials, on working farms, and in controlled field and laboratory studies.

Active research on ergothioneine is finding that this amino acid has antioxidant properties and increasingly apparent human health benefits. It is only biosynthesized by fungi and fungi-like bacteria, is present in many foods, and plants obtain it through an unknown mechanism where it is transferred up the food chain to animals and humans. Thus, there should be a clear link between soil microbiomes, ergothioneine biosynthesis in the soil, its concentration in plants, and human health.

For more information or to register, visit the event webpage, or contact the Rodale Institute by email or phone (610-683-1400).

Become a community scientist with this Monarch Larva Monitoring Project training! The MLMP team from the Monarch Joint Venture and the UW-Madison Arboretum co-lead these virtual one-day trainings on how to collect data that contributes to our knowledge about the monarch population. Participants learn about monarch biology, monitoring procedures, and data entry protocols, and are able to ask monarch biologists their questions about monarchs and monitoring.

This session will be relevant for both newcomers and individuals who are already participating in the MLMP or another monarch citizen science project. The four-hour training will be conducted in two parts with a one-hour break between them. This year, MLMP is offering three trainings focused on specific regions: western states on February 4th, southern states on February 25th, and northern states on April 29th.

For more information or to register, visit the training webpage, or contact Katie-Lyn Bunney by email or phone (651-222-7631).