The Grassland 2.0 project has come a long way in the last four years since Professor Randy Jackson traveled to the Kickapoo Valley Reserve in September of 2020 to explain the newly launched project to local citizens.

The project had just been funded through a five-year, $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture. It is based at UW-Madison. Funding has now been secured to extend the project into a sixth year, and they expect to hear about another USDA grant in November.

Since that time, they have convened four learning hubs, worked to develop practical tools for farmer’s to use in planning a transition to grass-based farming systems, worked with stakeholders to evaluate and tackle supply chain bottlenecks, and developed a Grassland 2.0 Academy to train technical service providers to aid farmers in making the transition.

“Our mission of ‘Inspire-Create-Grow’ had driven our work to help grow agriculture in the image of the productive prairie landscapes that once dominated the Upper Midwest,” Jackson told the group assembled. “Through our learning hubs, the fire is taking hold and we currently have more demand than we have bandwidth for.”

Grassland 2.0 is a collaborative group of more than 30 scientists, educators, farmers, agencies, policymakers, processors, retailers, and consumers working to develop pathways for increased farmer profitability, yield stability and nutrient and water efficiency, while improving water quality, soil health, biodiversity, and climate resilience through grassland-based agriculture.

“Why isn’t grassland the dominant agricultural production system in the Upper Midwest? That’s the question our project is designed to tackle,” Jackson said. “The barriers we’ve identified include the dominant agricultural business model of maximum production or ‘productivism,’ the social stigma associated with trying something different than your neighbors, unfair supply chains, the need for technical support, and the means to support farmers in making the transition.”

Rich pictures

John Stauser talked about the learning hubs, and the process of ‘collaborative landscape design’ and ‘rich picture development’ undertaken in the last four years.

“Lots of the work done at universities is reductionist, with the goal of trying to zero in on one part of a problem, and find solutions for just one piece of the puzzle,” Stauser told the group. “What we need to do is help researchers see that the problems are part of a larger whole, and to accept the ‘messiness’ of it, and incorporate the plurality of perspectives into their approach.”

He said that this process involves delving deeper to understand how people see the world they live in, and what they want for the future.

Decision tools

Lexie Schenk, Eric Booth and Claudio Gratton spoke about the process to develop tools in collaboration with farmers that support them in evaluating their operations, their land, and the impacts their land use decisions have on their communities and the environment.

“It has been a long and intense process to develop our ‘Compass Tools’ – Grazescape and the dairy and beef grazing tools,” Booth said. “It was a little bit like building the plane while flying, but we are now at the point where the tools are out of the beta phase, and ready to go.”

The ‘Compass Tools’ for beef and dairy grazing are free Excel-based planning tools for anyone considering raising livestock on pasture. They help predict and understand cash flow and long-term financial outcomes associated with transitioning to a grass-based system.

The ‘GrazeScape’ tool is a free, web-based tool that can be used to evaluate the results of a potential change in management practices on one’s own land. It can be used to compare outcomes such as yield, erosion, nutrient loss, and costs between current practices and proposed practices. This customizable “what if” tool is designed to make timely and accurate predictions using information specific to the farmer’s land and the way it is managed.

The tools can be found at www.grassland.org/tools.

Supply chains

Sarah Lloyd works as a Food Systems Scientist for the UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems and a Supply Chain Specialist for the University of Minnesota Forever Green Initiative, working on the Grassland 2.0 Project.

“Our initiatives have focused on developing ‘matchmaking’ for producers and landowners looking to implement managed rotation grazing systems, and working with an animal nutritionist,” Lloyd explained. “In addition, we focused on building capacity between grass-fed meat producers and processors.”

Incentivizing change

Alex Steussy-Williams has been instrumental in work to launch the Grassland 2.0 Academy, and the effort to train more technical service providers to help producers interested in transitioning to grass-based production systems.

The project is a partnership between Grassland 2.0, and UW-Madison Extension, Grassworks, USDA-NRCS and UW-Madison.

“We need to build a community of shared practice and a community of care,” Steussy-Williams told the group. “Our goal is to ensure more people are certified to write grazing plans, and this led to the launch of the Academy.”

Steussy-Williams said that statewide, there is a huge demand for this. At one of the group’s events, USDA-NRCS State Grazier Adam Able, commented “this is great – we need more of this!” Now, beyond the basic academy held during the growing season, Steussy-Williams reports that they are expanding to a ‘four seasons’ approach, launching an advanced class.

“Our focus is on encouraging a co-learning environment, reaching staff from different agencies and developing a common purpose,” Steussy-Williams explained.

Grad student research

In addition to the core functions of the Grassland 2.0 team, the group is also engaged with graduate students, who are doingresearch related to their efforts. Three students shared a topline summary of their research and conclusions reached.

Ashley Becker reported on her research, looking at the relationships between agricultural practices and storage of carbon in the soil.

Katie Tredinick reported on her work within the School of Veterinary Medicine to identify obstacles and solutions to enlist the veterinary community in helping producers to transition to grazing.

Perhaps most exciting, Clare Dietz shared the results of her research about the role of soil carbon sequestration in climate change mitigation.

“The questions I set out to answer with my research were does increasing diversity increase soil carbon storage, and can we use grasslands for grazing and biofuels without impacting soil carbon storage,” Dietz told the group. “My research results indicates that we cannot offset all the impacts of use of fossil fuels with perennial grasslands alone.”

Dietz’s research shows that grasslands with one plant species neither gain nor lose soil carbon in the first six inches of the soil. With six or with 25 species, gains in soil carbon storage are seen.

For carbon storage deeper in the soil profile, in the first two feet, whether with one, six or 25 species, grasslands neither gain nor lose soil carbon.

Reached after the meeting, Jackson explained that as part of the Wisconsin Integrated Cropping Systems Trial (WICST) at the Arlington Ag Research Station, they are conducting side-by-side comparisons of six different cropping systems as well as threeprairie grassland treatments: switchgrass, low-diversity prairie (six species sown), and high-diversity prairie (18 species sown). In addition, each of these three prairie grassland treatments are split into one of four treatments: burned every two years, burned every two years and grazed every year, and harvested in October for bioenergy, with and without N added.

He said the results are preliminary and still being analyzed, but are indicating that low-diversity prairie plots are the only system consistently accumulating soil carbon, with some indication that these increases are happening across most or all soil depths. Increases seem to be occurring irrespective of management, although the bioenergy harvested plots are borderline, and still being analyzed.

“We anticipate finalizing analyses and working up results for submission to a peer-reviewed journal in late fall 2023,” Jackson said.

Learning Hubs

Currently there are four existing learning hubs in the Driftless (Grant, Iowa and Lafayette counties), Ridge & Valley (Vernon, Crawford, Richland and Monroe counties), Cloverbelt (Central Sands), and Pine River (North Central Minnesota). In addition, if additional funding can be obtained, the goal is to expand to 10 learning hubs, including Ho-Chunk, Red Cedar River, Green Lake County, and Northwest, Northeast and Southeast Wisconsin groups.

Each active group reported to meeting participants about their activities and achievements in the last year.

Paul Daigle reported on the work of the Cloverleaf Learning Hub. He said he had been excited to have helped build the first Grazing Academy over the last winter. The initiative, launched this spring, offered pasture walks in underserved areas, presented at the State Land+Water Conference, and conducted pasture walks for UW-Stevens Point students to help build bridges between that campus and UW-Madison to build a certification or minor in managed grazing.

“At first we thought that reaching out to CAFOs about heifer replacement grazing was the way to go, but it’s really a matter of capacity with those large operations,” Daigle explained. “Our focus has transitioned to working with small and mid-sized farms as they grow.”

Brad Robson, Hornby Hollow grassfed beef and grain farmer, reported on the activities of the Ridge & Valley Learning Hub. He said the group, while smaller than some of the other Hubs, has focused on building great relationships with local watershed councils.

“We recently incorporated the Hill Country Watershed Alliance as a non-profit umbrella group for the four watershed councils functioning in our area,” Robson explained. “The goal is for this group to allow greater efficiency in education and outreach between the four groups.”

Robson recently joined the Monroe County Land Conservation Department as their conservation agronomist. He said that Grassland 2.0 would be making a presentation to the county’s Climate Change Task Force in coming weeks.

“We have pursued flooding emergency mitigation through our project to place streambank monitoring stations on flood prone streams in the county,” Robson told the group. “Now, our focus is shifting upstream to pursue flood mitigation through conservation land use.”

Robson said that they believe that the best focus of their efforts is with younger farmers, as well as the larger community, local businesses, and the agri-tourism industry.

John Stauser provided a brief report for the Driftless and Pine Ridge learning hubs, who were unable to send a representative to the meeting. The Driftless Learning Hub has been grappling with the reality of urban migration and its impact on land prices. They are also addressing the fact that technical service support is not equal in all the counties in their group, connecting processors with grassfed meat producers, and focusing on land management practices that sequester carbon and reduce greenhouse gases.

Stauser said that the Pine River Learning Hub, like the evolving Red Cedar Learning Hub, is ‘cowboy country,’ with the main audience being ranchers versus farmers. Their main issues revolve around the relationship between ranching operations and lake water quality, with an intense social divide between wealthy lake property owners and local ranchers.

Two members of evolving learning hubs also spoke at the event. Those were Forest Funmaker from the Ho-Chunk Learning Hub, and Buzz Sorge from the Red Cedar Learning Hub.

Funmaker, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, reported that the tribe is looking for ways to involve more tribal members in food production on their 1,600 acres around Wisconsin and their 1,500 acres at the former Badger Ammunition Plant.

“Many Native Americans don’t have access to their own land versus tribal land,” Funmaker explained to the group. “We are already doing some things like food boxes for tribal elders, with half the food produced by native people, but we want to do more.”

Funmaker said that a learning hub and academy could be helpful, and that they also plan to work with Climate Fast Forward on initiatives on tribal lands. He said that access to food and markets are key issues for the tribe.

“Our goals are for every member of the tribe to learn our language, and for our people to come to the land and make use of it in a good way,” Funmaker said.

Buzz Sorge reported on the new Red Cedar Learning Hub that is developing in northwest Wiscosnin. He said that he has watched consolidation in agriculture destroy their way of life, with fewer local businesses and declining school enrollments.

“What I have found is that if the entire community takes ownership of the process to improve water quality, then the effort is a success,” Sorge told the group. “The Red Cedar River is not just impaired – it’s toxic.”

Our group is dealing with the dynamics of people that are ‘from here’ and those that ‘aren’t from here.’ He said that COVID had interfered with their group development, but they are working to get things back on track to continue to link food production and environmental and water quality.

The learning hub has begun to work with staff and students from UW-Stout in the last year to help to overcome bottlenecks in the process. Sorge said their goal in the work is to build a community of young people that can farm or become technical service providers.

The group also heard from representatives of partner organizations such as Grassworks and Clean Wisconsin.

Ripples exercise

After lunch, the group shifted to a small-group activity dedicated to answering the question, “What kind of ‘ripples’ have resulted from Grasslands 2.0 and our work with Collaborative Landscape Design?”

The exercise involved each person sharing their three most significant ‘change stories,’ and then using post-it notes to group the ripples around themes, and drawing arrows to show ways in which those ‘ripples’ are interconnected.

Randy Jackson shared after the meeting that in the process they had collected more than 40 stories of Grassland 2.0's impact from meeting participants, and generated six maps of ripples - from activities, to different layers of impact in the community including changes to what people are doing, who benefits from those changes, and changes to systems, institutions, and organizations. 

“We will continue to collect more stories of impact in the coming months,” Jackson said. “Anyone who has shown up to a Grassland 2.0 event, or participated in some way, is invited to share their story at https://bit.ly/grasslandstory.

Jackson explained that their goal is to share a booklet of Grassland 2.0 stories publicly in late 2024.

“We’re trying to create something that is bigger than any one of us, and it’s about the future and future generations,” Jackson said in closing. “We’ve spent the last few years hammering out our theory of change into a coherent framework, and we think we have created something that will extend beyond the life of the project.”