NCR-SARE grant recipient Rachel Levi is the coordinator of Camp EarthDance, a farm-to-table summer camp for middle school students. Campers are able to gain experience in a full season of hands-on training and skill-based education in sustainable agriculture. Camp EarthDance offers a fun-filled and educational environment in which young people can visit a local farm, watch how carrots grow, and learn how and why to prepare and eat a healthy, local foods-based lunch. Campers also “celebrate the culture in agriculture” by engaging in art, writing, and fitness activities that let them further...

The story below features SARE-supported work conducted by William Sexten and a group of researchers and Extension specialists at the University of Missouri. Their findings suggest that delayed grazing can help both cows and pastures, and they recommend delaying turning herds onto pasture until at least a 5-inch growth shows.

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Story by: Justin Sexten and Robert Kallenbach

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Turning cow herds out to graze pastures at the first sign of green grass harms forage growth later in the season. But there’s another big reason to wait, says a University of Missouri beef...

This news story features SARE grantees, Maryam Hjersted, Steve Moring, and Charles NovoGradac, who received an NCR-SARE Farmer Rancher grant in 2009 to establish permaculture training centers and provide farm training sites for the practice of permaculture principles. The SARE grant gave the group the resources to create an effective permaculture educational program and promotional venue through their website. It supported the development of resources for the establishment of training sites for permaculture in the Kansas and Missouri area.

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Source: Lawrence...

Jennifer Grabner is co-founder of the Southern Boone (County) Learning Garden which is a ½ acre garden located on the Southern Boone R-1 School District campus. In 2007, Grabner received an NCR-SARE Farmer Rancher Grant to grow and market a winter CSA in at her family farm in Central Missouri, and she spoke about the Southern Boone Learning Garden at the 2012 Missouri Farmers Forum. The Southern Boone Learning Garden  received a $475,000 five-year grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health to expand its operations and form the Southern Boone Healthy Community Partnership. ...

This Columbia Daily Tribune article features NCR-SARE's Chapter 3 Regional Coordinator and Director of Professional Development Programs, Rob Myers, who recently spoke about pseudograins like amaranth, buckwheat, millet and quinoa at during a seminar at the University of Missouri.

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Source: Columbia Daily Tribune, Jan Wiese-Fales

Move over wheat, there are some new grains in town. Members of this group of plant seeds, more specifically pseudograins, include amaranth, buckwheat, millet and quinoa (pronounced keen-wah). They are cautiously inching their...

Source: Adair County MU Extension Center, by Bruce Lane

Montgomery County farmer Harry Cope will talk about how he “moves the feedlot from the barn to the field” at the Missouri Livestock Symposium, Dec. 7-8 at Kirksville Middle School. University of Missouri Extension sponsors the free event.

Cope received an USDA NCR-SARE Farmer Rancher grant to research skip-row planting techniques with cover crops for sustainable growing. He has been experimenting with interplanting soybeans with corn to provide feed for his cattle and sheep operation on his Missouri Century Farm in Truxton. The crop...

The First International Symposium on Elderberry (Sambucus) will be held in Columbia, Missouri, USA, June 9–14, 2013. 

Held in conjunction with University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry Professor, Michael Gold's, NCR-SARE Research and Education grant, it will be the world’s first gathering of international scientists from multiple disciplines studying all aspects of the elderberry plant and fruit, and its use as a food and dietary supplement. Horticulturists, botanists, biochemists, food scientists, economists, and others will gather in Missouri during peak...

Celebrate the 20th anniversary the largest annual small farm trade show in the United States with dozens of SARE grant recipients plus staff from the SARE program at the National Small Farm Trade Show & Conference(tm). This year, the Conference takes place on Thursday, November 1st through Saturday, November 3rd, 2012, in Columbia, Missouri, at the Central Missouri Event Center (former Boone County Fairgrounds).

Do you want to farm or ranch while protecting the environment, making a profit, and benefiting your community? More than 25 Farmers Forum talks featuring grants recipients from...

As part of the MO SARE State Program,  Debi Kelly will be hosting a webinar on cover crops on October 24, 9am-noon. Presenters will include Charles Ellis, a Natural Resource Engineer with the Lincoln County University of Missouri Extension Center, and Rich Hoormann, an Agronomy Specialist with Montgomery County University of Missouri Extension Center. 

Rich Hoorman will cover:

• Laddonia Plots: Corn plant growth & development response to cover crops with yield information
• Results of 2012 spring root dig with backhoe by species
• Results of soil penetrometer readings...

The Associated Press wrote a July story on the UMCA-sponsored elderberry workshop held this summer in Hartsburg, which was sponsored by the University of Missouri’s Center for Agroforestry through an ongoing grant from NCR-SARE. The following article was widely circulated around the U.S. Check out the Elderberry Financial Decision Support Tool, which was developed as part of this project.

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Source: Journal Gazette

Missouri farmer Terry Durham is among those willing to bet the next hot food crop will be a berry now more commonly found in roadside ditches...