History of SHARE
When the multi-year Soil Health Alliance for Research and Engagement (SHARE) launched in late summer of 2022, it built on an existing five-year project and expanded its scope with the same core partners:
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The U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin.
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The non-profit Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, headquartered in East Troy, Wisconsin.
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The Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
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CCROP
SHARE was preceded by the Cover Crops Research and Outreach Project (CCROP), which began in fall of 2017. The goal for CCROP was to develop profitable and practical cover crop options for Midwestern dairy, grain and vegetable production systems, including their use in reduced-till organic systems and as supplemental forages.
CCROP was designed as a multi-partner collaboration. It was led and jointly coordinated by the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center, the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, and the UW-Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems.
Over a five-year period, CCROP explored research and engagement on many topics. It conducted monthly brown-bag lunch meetings organized around “Quick Take Presentations,” with speakers from both within and outside of CCROP’s network. CCROP’s social science and policy collaborators also conducted and analyzed surveys of cover crop use in the Midwest. This included analysis of:
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Barriers to adoption
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Optimal educational and outreach strategies on cover crops and topics needing more farmer outreach
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A survey of Wisconsin farmers who did and did not use cover crops to determine their interest in a potential program that would reduce their crop-insurance premium by $5/acre for fall-planted cover crop acreage. Working with farmers, collaborating UW-Madison economists prepared initial documentation and models on cover crop best management practices (BMPs) and their impact on farm profitability.
Field researchers at the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center, UW-Madison, and the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute conducted various research trials, such as exploring the role of cover crops in reducing tillage in organic grain and forage systems as well as the effects of cover crops on corn-yield responses in organic and conventional dairy, grain, and vegetable production systems. Researchers focused efforts in these areas:
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Cover crops in Kernza establishment
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Summer cover crops for weed suppression, forage production, and cash-crop yield maximization in organic rotations
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Intensifying cover crops and reducing tillage in organic-grain rotations and their impact on soil health, crop yield, and weed suppression
Oat and alfalfa companion cropping. Photo: Gregg Sanford, WICST
Aerially seeded annual ryegrass. Photo: Jim Stute, Case Eagle Park
First cover crop database
CCROP’s biophysical and production researchers leveraged three decades of agroecological data (grains, forages, organic, non-organic, cover crops, livestock) from the Wisconsin Integrated Cropping Systems Trial (WICST) in Arlington, Wisconsin (https://wicst.wisc.edu) to establish the first statewide cover crop database.
To learn more about the state of knowledge on cover cropping around the state, the CCROP team pursued a statewide survey of agricultural educators and Extension personnel. The survey revealed that many, especially in the northern and western parts of the state, were lacking in locally appropriate cover crop information (Krome and Ingram, 2020). These findings in turn launched a citizen science-based model of generating knowledge about on-farm cover cropping around Wisconsin.
Since 2020, the on-farm cover crop data network project has been gathering information on cover crop practices and performance from diverse farm systems around the state. It also gathers feedback on how farmers perceive benefits and barriers to cover cropping. Participating farmers answer a 35-question on-line survey and collect cover crop samples from one of their fields.
Farmers mail samples to labs for biomass production and forage quality analyses, both of which are shared back to each farmer in a personalized report. In 2023, the project created a shareable database and an interactive visualization of the cover crop data (https://evansgeospatial.com/wisc_cc_home).
This citizen science dashboard uses a map display and a graph to showcase on-farm results. The project aims to continue to gather on-farm knowledge from farmers around the state and has grown from an original 15 farmers in 2020 to more than 50 in 2024, representing a range of agronomic data from more than 100 fields in more than 60 counties. The goals of the project also include deepening its relevance in time and space by:
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Integrating with the three decades of data from the WICST project
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Collaborating with similar efforts in the region to road test how best to use such data to support farmers in the upper Midwest engaging with cover crops to build soil health and resilience
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Informing decision support tools and modeling efforts such as SnapPlus, SmartScape, and Agro-IBIS
Outreach
CCROP supported producer-led watershed group field days, webinars, and cover crop demonstrations. Our researcher-indigenous partnerships with the Oneida, Menominee, and HoChunk Nations explored interseeding cover crops and using cover-crop mixes in the production of indigenous white corn and other systems to meet their goals of organic production and building soil health.
CCROP planned a regional conference on cropping systems and water quality as well as two statewide cover crops conferences. When the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed in-person events, CCROP developed virtual programming, including a weekly lunchtime webinar series, “Wisconsin Cover Crop and Conservation Conversations.”
The COVID-19 pandemic was also instrumental in the CCROP team realizing the benefits of a citizen-science model to gather information on cover cropping from diverse operations and locations, and leading to the farmer-research data-collection project, “Building Knowledge about Cover Crops,” linking citizen science to field agronomy at UW-Madison.
CCROP produced written and electronic outreach materials on cover crops and the importance of water quality for distribution to farmers, federal and state agency personnel and crop consultants.
The UW-Madison’s Organic Grain Resource and Information Network (OGRAIN) Project and associated resources complemented CCROP’s work with material of interest to its organic farming audiences through its popular listserv, website, and conference.
Outreach in indigenous partnership programs
Agriculture -educator training to increase awareness about the importance of soil quality
CCROP also supported graduate-level instruction in the Agroecology Masters program at UW-Madison with a course to engage students in systems thinking on agroecological change and to build facilitation and process-design skills to forge collaborations between the university, farmers, and other stakeholders in agricultural-systems change.
In partnership with the Wisconsin Cover Crop Workgroup, CCROP conducted agriculture-educator training programs to increase awareness about the importance of water and soil quality. As the project neared its fifth year, CCROP leaders and active stakeholders reflected on the need to broaden its mandate beyond cover crops to the broader frame of soil health. That included perennial as well as annual cropping systems.
Based on input from project partners, CCROP leaders also sought to engage more social and policy work; emphasize outreach as much as research; and engage and support community groups outside of our three institutions in this work, including some in nearby states.
Cover crop, soil interests merge
Many of the participants in CCROP-funded research and outreach projects remained active in framing out the issues and potential projects of interest in the Soil Health Collaborative (SHC). Additional partners joined as momentum grew for the wider frame and opportunities. Thus, the collaborative’s name was changed to the Soil Health Alliance for Research and Engagement (SHARE).
Gloria Ambrowiak, a research assistant in the Soil and Environmental Sciences Department at UW-Madison, looks at a deep soil core taken using a Giddings probe.