One of the ways we are working to grow agroforestry in the Midwest is by making it easier for farmers to access technical and financial assistance for trees on their farm. Demand for establishing agroforestry continues to be high, but technical and financial assistance can be hard for farmers to find. That’s why we work with partners such as the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to expand technical assistance and cost-share applications for agroforestry practices at the USDA. In this video, we talk to staff from NRCS Wisconsin who are working with us to make more assistance for silvopasture, alley cropping, and other agroforestry practices available to local farmers.
Read the Transcript
Edited slightly for clarity.
Brooke Lerum: The NRCS is the National Resources Conservation Service, we’re part of the USDA.
Tristyn Forget: We help with different programs for providing technical assistance to agricultural producers.
Chris Miller: We do offer cost share availability to those producers to help them address resource concerns that fit in with their goals and objectives.
Tristyn Forget: Today we are learning about agroforestry and silvopasture.
Brooke Lerum: We’re here at the Savanna Institute North Farm, to learn a little bit more about agroforestry.
Chris Miller: And see how they actually are installed and function on the landscape.
Tristyn Forget: Those are kind of new, developing fields – especially in NRCS, we haven’t done a lot of that in the past – so I’m here today specifically to learn about silvopasture, which is kind of combining trees with pasture in a way that’s managed effectively for both the trees and the animals. It’s something I don’t know much about, so I’m pretty excited to learn about that.
Brooke Lerum: I really like the idea of alley cropping and making every little bit of people’s land productive. Those are areas that people tend to leave out in more conventional systems; you might actually be able to grow something there that you can consume or sell or can or take to the farmer’s market.
Tristyn Forget: One thing that I’m really excited about is the silvopasture; I’m really interested in rotational grazing systems. It’s something I’ve been learning a lot about recently and really trying to help producers in our area move from a more conventional type of beef or dairy farming into a more rotational grazing system that’s easier on the land and better for the animals.
Chris Miller: For NRCS, one of the most frequent questions that we get is: What services do we provide to the client? Generally, where we start with that is a general farm walk-over, and then we start to understand that client’s goals and objectives and where our agency can fit in with general conservation assistance through that process of potentially financial assistance.
Brooke Lerum: Every county has an office, so you should be able to just look up your service center online. As soon as you find out that address, you can just walk in the door and ask to speak with someone within NRCS.
Producers can learn more or apply for a program by contacting your local NRCS Service Center: offices.sc.egov.usda.gov/locator/app.
USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender. To learn more, visit www.nrcs.usda.gov.