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Winter Webinars
Winter Webinars
Winter webinars are 60-minute, online presentations that are FREE for everyone. We encourage attendees to come with questions for the chat box.
Webinars are held on Tuesdays, from noon to 1 p.m. Central Time from January to April.
Winter webinars have concluded for 2025. Keep scrolling to view the recordings.
2025 Winter Webinar Recordings
Using CRP To Foster Biodiversity on a 160-Acre Iowa Farm
Join Bill Anderson, a farmer in northwest Iowa, and Clarissa Bruns of Pheasants Forever as they share their experiences with the Conservation Reserve Program. You’ll learn about a CRP option called Gaining Ground for Wildlife, which is part of the CRP State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement initiative. Bill has enrolled 100 acres in the program, which aims to support threatened and endangered grassland bird species. Bill and Clarissa also discuss eligibility requirements, planning, planting and maintaining CRP acres, and you’ll learn how this program can be tailored for your specific farm needs.
Farmers and Food Hubs: A How-To Guide for Getting Started
Food hubs can help local food farmers expand their markets. But for farmers new to working with food hubs, figuring out the process and finding answers to questions can be barriers to getting started. In this webinar, Nicole Jonas of Red Granite Farm talks with a food hub manager and a farmer who sells to food hubs. Watch to learn how to get started with food hubs, how food hub operations work and what successful famer-food hub relationships look like.
How Do Small Grains Grow and Develop? Harnessing This Knowledge To Improve Management
Thinking about adding small grains to your rotations? Have you recently started growing small grains but would like to know more? Get oriented with the agronomic essentials. Learn about small grains physiology, growth and development, and learn how to identify growth stages that are key for management interventions.
How To Sell 300 CSAs in 48 Hours: Cultivating Online Engagement and Converting It to Sales
In late fall 2024, farmer Steve Strasheim watched in awe as all 300 CSA pre-sales from Corinna Bench’s Shared Legacy Farms, of Elmore, Ohio, sold out in about two days. In this webinar, Steve will talk with Corinna about her promotion formula, how the process works and why she thinks it did so well.
Exploring Creative Residue Management and Soil Amendments in a Four-Crop Rotation
Over the past 10 years, Norm Lamothe and the team at Woodleigh Farms have made many changes to improve soil health, including adding wheat and oats to the farm’s corn-soy rotation and adding cover crops and using no-till on most of their acres. These changes have pushed Norm and his team to find creative ways of managing residue, including by grazing sheep and composting the residue. Watch this webinar to hear what the Woodleigh team has found about the impacts of extended rotation, cover crops and organic amendments on soil health.
Dying To Start Dyeing? Raising, Processing and Marketing Wool
In this webinar, Emily Tzeng discusses the value chain for wool, the benefits and potential difficulties of producing natural-dye crops, and ways to market these items. Tune in to learn how small-scale farms can add value to their wool by processing the fibers into roving, yarn and finished goods and by dyeing those products.
Building Partnerships for Conservation: A Farmer-Tenant Collaboration in Northeast Iowa
Join Mary Damm, owner of Prairie Quest Farm near McGregor, Iowa, as she discusses her successful partnership with her current tenant farmer, who practices rotational grazing with beef cattle. Since purchasing the farm in 2015, Mary has worked with neighboring farmers to graze cool-season pastures with cattle in a manner that creates habitat for nesting grassland birds, whose populations are in steep decline.
Building and Maintaining Fair Lease Agreements
Are you a beginning farmer thinking about entering into a lease agreement? Are you currently in a lease agreement that feels hard to navigate? Join Rachel Armstrong, founder and executive director of Farm Commons, as she introduces materials and resources addressing lease power dynamics. She’ll share effective strategies you can use to build strong leasing relationships and offer tips for preventing your lease relationships from going awry.
The Advantages of Cover Crops
Kristin and Pat Duncanson, owners and managers of Highland Family Farms, have a goal of making sure future generations have productive soil to farm. They are working to add cover crops and advance no-till and low-till practices. When they first considered planting covers, they weren’t sure if it was going to work for them. In this webinar, Kristin shares their challenges and successes with adding cover crops to their rotation.
Watch more webinars (formerly farminars)
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the organizations, business and agencies who provide funding for PFI’s 2025 winter webinar season:
- This project is supported in part by the Conservation Innovation Grants through the Natural Resources Conservation Service no. NR223A750013G028 through a subaward with Pheasants Forever.
- This project is made possible through a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, with support from NRCS and ADM.
- This project is made possible through a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, with support from NRCS, Cargill, Inc, and Nestle USA.
- This project is made possible through a grant from The Builders Initiative.
- This work is supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program Sustainable Agricultural Systems (SAS) grant no. F9000315202081 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
- This project is supported in part by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Division of Soil Conservation and Water Quality.
- This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under agreement number NR236114XXXXG003. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In addition, any reference to specific brands or types of products or services does not constitute or imply an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for those products or services.
