{"id":9738,"date":"2023-06-21T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T14:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin-new\/?post_type=campus_story&p=9738"},"modified":"2023-06-21T09:00:45","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T14:00:45","slug":"ag-water-nexus-field-trip-explores-water-challenges-solutions-in-southwest-wisconsin","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/ag-water-nexus-field-trip-explores-water-challenges-solutions-in-southwest-wisconsin\/","title":{"rendered":"Ag-Water Nexus field trip explores water challenges, solutions in Southwest Wisconsin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Students learn about the groundwater sampling network at Pioneer Farm and receive a demonstration on how to sample water from wells.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The University of Wisconsin-Platteville recently hosted students from across the state for the second Wisconsin Agriculture-Water Nexus Network field trip, funded by the\u00a0Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin<\/a>, where students explored critical issues related to the connections between agriculture and water management.<\/p>\n

The three-day field trip course was developed last year by faculty from UW-Platteville, UW-Madison, UW-Green Bay and UW-Stevens Point. The host of the field trip rotates to leverage the regional geographic variations of each participating school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main goal of the trip is to expose students to different regions of the state and how the farmers and researchers are addressing water quality issues there,\u201d said Dr. Joseph Sanford, assistant professor in the School of Agriculture and organizer of the recent trip. \u201cSouthwest Wisconsin presents some pretty unique issues. The landscape of agriculture production is much different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the challenges, unique to Southwest Wisconsin, Sanford explained include the topography of the Driftless region, which leads to more runoff in the fields. The soil in the region is siltier, making it more highly erodible than the sandy soil of Central Wisconsin. The popularity of trout fishing in the region poses additional challenges because of the close proximity of streams to agricultural land.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of the trip was spent talking about efforts that researchers and producers are putting into trying to reduce impact, mainly focused on surface water,\u201d said Sanford. \u201cThe main goal was to get students in the field seeing these issues. As professors, we hear from people at the\u00a0DNR<\/a>,\u00a0UW-Extension<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0NRCS<\/a>, that water quality is a huge issue \u2013 related to agriculture \u2013\u00a0and when our students come out of programs focused on water quality or environmental science, they know the issues, but they don\u2019t always know the production side. They have to be able to step on a farm and talk to the producer, and that\u2019s a different game. So, we want to expose them to water quality issues but also expose them to different types of agriculture and different types of producers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three-day field trip included visits to small and large farming operations, including the\u00a0Cates Family Farm<\/a>\u00a0in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and the\u00a0Wilson Organic Farm<\/a>\u00a0in Cuba City, Wisconsin, where they learned about their regenerative grazing practices and other ways they are committed to conservation on their land. Students learned about cover crops, tillage practices and other land-water management methods through meetings with the NRCS, the\u00a0Lafayette Ag Stewardship Alliance<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Yahara Pride Farms<\/a>\u00a0and visits to UW-Platteville\u2019s\u00a0Pioneer Farm<\/a>, the\u00a0Lancaster Agriculture Research Station<\/a>\u00a0and the USDA Dairy Forage Site, among others.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore this trip, I had no experience with agriculture production but a little experience with water quality issues,\u201d said Emma Ball, a senior from Elburn, Illinois, majoring in environmental engineering. \u201cI wanted to participate in this experience, because water quality problems in varying settings and land uses interested me. I wanted to see how serious water quality impacts were taken in the agriculture realm and in southwestern Wisconsin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ball was one of 16 students who participated; six students from UW-Platteville were joined by students from UW-River Falls, UW-Stevens Point and UW-Green Bay. Students represented a range of programs, from soil and crop science, reclamation, environment and conservation, and environmental engineering.<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Smolinski, a soil and crop science major, joined the trip in order to gain more context around concepts he learned in class.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked with Dr. Sanford in an internship before and have had many classes based on water quality or agricultural production, so I have plenty of background information on those topics,\u201d said Smolinski, a junior from New London, Wisconsin. \u201cWhat made me desire going on the trip was to put that book knowledge into real-life observations of operations and do on-site tours. Revisiting what you know through various approaches significantly helps learning and recollection, and this trip did exactly that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanford said plans are underway to continue offering the field trip at least once a year, in different regions of the state, and the long-term goal is to encourage students to participate again and expand their knowledge beyond Southwest Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents in Platteville aren\u2019t necessarily going to stay in Platteville, just like students in Green Bay aren\u2019t necessarily going to stay there,\u201d he said. \u201cBeing exposed to these different areas is really going to broaden students\u2019 opinions, in the long-term, about how systems are managed. The overall goal of the group is to try to expose students to the different ways farmers manage their farms and the different ways that farmers \u2013\u00a0along with researchers, extension agents and whoever else is on the ground \u2013 are helping to address these water quality issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that coordination and collaboration among everyone working to solve these issues that Maggie Foster, a junior reclamation, environment and conservation major, said was her biggest takeaway from the trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the field, we see farmers working with agronomists, working with lab scientists, working with conservationists, etc.,\u201d said Foster. \u201cThe list goes on. Soils and plants run on very complex systems, so it makes sense that there would be extensive systems in place to manage them, so that was very fun to witness firsthand.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wisconsin Agriculture-Water Nexus Network \u2013 established with funding from the\u00a0Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 is a network of water researchers from University of Wisconsin institutions across the state, tasked with developing educational courses on agriculture-water management. For more information about WAW2N, visit\u00a0freshwater.wisconsin.edu\/ag-water-network\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Written by Alison Parkins<\/p>\n

Link to original story: https:\/\/www.uwplatt.edu\/news\/ag-water-nexus-field-trip-explores-water-challenges-solutions-southwest-wisconsin<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The University of Wisconsin-Platteville recently hosted students from across the state for the second Wisconsin Agriculture-Water Nexus Network field trip, funded by the\u00a0Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin, where students explored critical issues related to the connections between agriculture and water management. The three-day field trip course was developed last year by faculty from UW-Platteville, UW-Madison, UW-Green […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":9739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[93],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-9738","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-platteville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/9738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=9738"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=9738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}