Farmer-Led Research
Research reports are written by Practical Farmers staff to ensure consistency and quality, and are available to view or download for free.
The Latest Research from PFI
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Solon members Jeff and Susan Zacharakis-Jutz and their children maintain sheep and dairy goat herds that they raise using a minimum of synthetic chemicals. They find internal parasites to be one of the more difficult challenges to manage …
What is the most profitable way to supplement the rations of milking cows that are being rotationally grazed? There is little consensus among those who graze. Our trial this year was devised to shed some light on this …
Readers of the PFI newsletter may remember that in 1998 the organization received a grant from the USDA SARE program to evaluate “fertility paradigms.” Paradigms are ways of looking at the world, constructions that we put on reality …
Gary and Nancy Guthrie, Nevada, raise vegetables for their own CSA (community supported agriculture), Growing Harmony Farm. As the son of a corn entomologist, Gary keeps a particular eye on challenges from the insect world. In their organic …
Jeff Klinge and Deb Tidwell, Farmersburg, have documented the economics of cropping as they transitioned to organic production. Jeff’s reports have appeared in these PFI annual publications, but in the past the “conventional” comparison came from his own …
The PFI on-farm research program has seen a resurgence of nitrogen trials with the addition of cooperators associated with the Iowa Farm Bureau. Not that we got nitrogen all figured out with the first 70 replicated trials! Yes, …
Dennis and Eve Abbas, Hampton, carried out a trial that may not look like a fertility experiment. They compared two planting populations of corn, looking for effects on nitrogen sufficiency. This was the second year of the trial. …
It has been nearly a decade since the rise in interest in strip intercropping, led in part by PFI. A reason many producers discontinued intercropping was the system’s failure to consistently deliver the yield benefits inherent in that …
The Dordt College Agricultural Stewardship Center continued in 1999 its comparison of three kinds of corn hybrid: a well-known commercial hybrid, its Bt-gene cousin, and an inexpensive hybrid from a local seed company (Table 7, click to view). …
1999 Findings We have compared data from, our farm, One Step at a Time Gardens (OSTG), with the same from Spring Hill Farm (SHF) and Common Harvest (CH). The data for the SHF and CH was provided at …
It always pays to repeat the trial! In 1998 it looked so clear. Angela and John Tedesco, Johnston, looked at the effect of mulching the onions that go to feed members of Angela’s Turtle Farm CSA. The experiment …
The grazing movement is at the end of its first stage of development. The “introduction” stage has brought fencing, watering systems, and grass-based animal systems. An infrastructure has been developed to supply farmers with fencing and watering supplies. …
