Moving Silvopasture Forward, Locally

This year SFA will be offering a number of field days, workshops and podcasts for anyone interested in learning more about silvopasture. My aim over the next couple of years is for this work to bring together farmers and landowners, foresters, ecologists, and technical resource personnel across the state to identify the issues and barriers limiting adoption of silvopasture. I’m hoping that by working together we can generate and implement viable solutions.

Minnesota is a diverse state, home to a number of different ecosystems, temperature and precipitation patterns, and soils. This adds a lot of complexity that affects system design and management, the relative suitability of silvopasture as a positive economic and ecological practice, and start-up financing and labor requirements. The opportunities for and challenges to adopting silvopasture are highly local and those efforts should be led by local experts and practitioners. SFA’s farmer-to-farmer, chapter-based network lends itself very well to working at this hyper-local level and we hope to organize regional working groups within the Silvopasture Learning Network to help accelerate adoption of silvopasture.

Watch for upcoming announcements about field days and workshops in future issues of Connect (like our June 2nd event at the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge) and consider joining the Silvopasture Learning Network to stay informed.