Farming With Grass

Farming with Grass:
Achieving Sustainable Mixed Agricultural Landscapes

October 20-22, 2008
Sheraton Oklahoma City
 

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Farming with Grass Conference Summary

The three-day Farming with Grass conference wrapped up on Wednesday in Oklahoma City. There were 115 registrants – including 41 poster presenters, 16 participants giving lead or perspective presentations, wonderful opening remarks from Dr. Gale Buchanan, Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Dr. Fred Kirschenmann, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University (pictured), and a summary session from Dr. Jean Steiner (a past president of SWCS and current Director of the ARS Grazinglands Research Lab in El Reno, OK).  There were participants from 30 states with international participation from Canada. An attendance list is available online. More than 300 people (including conference registrants) attended the 60^th Anniversary Celebration of the Grazinglands Research Laboratory at Fort Reno. The article from the El Reno Tribune with a nice description of the event and a brief history of the Lab is also online. A more comprehensive historical perspective of the Lab and the work done by researchers onsite over the years is available here.

If you weren’t able to participate, look for a proceedings of the lead and perspective papers to be published as an e-book by SWCS in early 2009. Meanwhile, many of the poster presenters are submitting electronic versions of their posters to be published on the web and we hope to have those up soon at www.swcs.org/fwg

Our thanks to Jean Steiner who served as the conference organizer for the event, Alan Franzluebbers who chaired the program committee, to the rest of the members of the program committee and those who assisted with the local arrangements and the 60^th Anniversary Celebration, and to the conference sponsors who helped make the conference a success:
o Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative,
o Noble Foundation,
o National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT),
o Oklahoma Grazing Lands Conservation Association,
o USDA – Agricultural Research Service (ARS) (including the Office of Technology Transfer and the Grazinglands Research Lab, El Reno, OK),
o USDA - Cooperative State Research, Education, and
o Extension Service (CSREES), and USDA - Grazing Lands Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP).

For questions or additional information regarding the conference, please contact Alan Franzluebbers, Program Committee Chair, at Alan.Franzluebbers@ARS.USDA.GOV or Dewayne Johnson, SWCS Professional Development Director, at dewayne.johnson@swcs.org.