Sustainably Speaking: Fox Wolf Watershed Alliance hosts 10th annual farming roundtable
HOLLAND, Wis. (WFRV) – Fox Wolf Watershed Alliance, an Appleton-based nonprofit dedicated to improving and protecting local waterways, hosted its annual two-day Farming Roundtable event. This year was a special one, as it marked ten years of hosting this event.
The first of two sessions was hosted at Van Abel's on Hollandtown on Tuesday where around 100 farmers and agronomists were in attendance, followed by Wednesday's session at Brighton Acre's in Oshkosh.
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'The farmer roundtables are events we hold to bring farmers together. It's an opportunity for farmers who are interested in trying out conservation practices on their farms or those who are already doing it to have conversations together, to learn new things,' explained Fox Wolf Watershed Alliance Lower Fox Watershed Director Katie Woodrow.
Throughout those ten years, Woodrow told Local 5 that this roundtable has been the lead event for conservation farming in northeast Wisconsin for the past five years.
Fox Wolf brings in speakers at these events to share the latest research in the field, but also allows plenty of time for one-on-one discussion between farmers to share what is working well on their farms.
Topics that were highly discussed at these roundtables are cover crops, no tilling soil and reducing runoff headed to the local waterways. By keeping the nutrients on the land, this helps give us better water quality.
'We also ask farmers to take action for water quality as well,' says Woodrow. 'The primary way we do that is we ask for investment from farms in building their soil by having cover crops, which means they are planting something on their fields outside of the time that their primary commodities grow. Then no-till is a way for farms to not till up their fields.'
Whether it may be the Fox River, Bay of Green Bay, Winnebago Pool Lakes or any local waterbody, Woodrow says the system is all connected and when runoff reaches our local waterways, it can harm our water quality.
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'That runoff can contain phosphorus which is a great element that makes things grow on farm fields but that is also a great element to make algae grow in our waters. So we want that to stay on fields and not run off into our waters,' explains Woodrow.
Various sponsors and partners make this event possible and Fox Wolf thanks them for helping in the planning of this yearly event.
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