RegenPGC grad students recognized for excellence

Iowa State University Ph.D. student Gabby Myers (Soil Health & Nutrient Management) distinguished herself by receiving a Presentation Excellence Award at the 2023 ASABE Annual International Meeting. The nominating committee noted, “Your oral presentation on Yield, soil, and water quality implications of conventional, cover-cropped, and perennial groundcover corn production systems in tile-drained Iowa cropland was very impressive and informative. You showed a high level of expertise and creativity in your research and analysis. You also communicated your findings and recommendations clearly and persuasively to the audience.”

Iowa State University Ph.D. student Oluwatuyi (Tuyi) Olowoyeye (Ecosystem Services & Modeling) has been recognized as a 2023 – 2026 Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) Fellow.

THE FFAR Fellowship’s tagline is “Future Leaders for Food & Agriculture,” and we do not doubt that Tuyi is on a leadership trajectory! You can learn more about Tuyi and why the FFAR chose to make him a Fellow at https://lnkd.in/g8Qcz_eN

As a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture CAP grantee, RegenPGC must devote a third of our funding to education, extension, and outreach. Gabby and Tuyi’s achievements indicate that our project is spending public dollars wisely.

RegenPGC in a podcast? You bet!

RegenPGC Project Director Dr. Raj Raman was a guest on a recent episode of the Cereal Grain Café podcast. Hosted by self-described “Food Engineer” Dr. Kurt Rosentrater (Iowa State Univ. Ag & Biosystems Engineering), this Cereal Grain Café episode focused on the question “Is perennial ground cover the future of agriculture?”

Naturally, Dr. Raman had much to say about the potential role of perennial ground covers in making agriculture more resilient to the challenges posed by modern and intensive farming practices in the USA.

Access the entire Cereal Grain Café lineup here.

 

Improving farmer communication

RegenPGC graduate student Philip Ekow Rockson (Iowa State University) has been busy with his RegenPCG mentors D.Raj Raman and Dan Andersen, developing improved ways to communicate cropping system requirements as they pertain to the time and effort needed to deploy perennial ground cover.

Check out his initial work in this poster, “Operations Visualizers (FOVs) that readily communicate and represent requirements of cropping systems,” for the Summer 2023 American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Annual International Meeting in Omaha.

RegenPGC releases spring 2023 quarterly report

At RegenPGC, not only do we get our work done, but we document our progress by quarter. We celebrate what we have accomplished and can always make sure we are on track as we work on developing a robust Perennial Groundcover approach to cover crops. Check out our latest progress report, covering our work from February – April 2023.

Listen to the data, and learn!

screen shot Regenpgc.org website
New, and improved RegenPGC tagline and “Goals and Vision” statement

Good research is all about paying attention to pertinent data. By listening to the savvy producers in our FLAG* group, we decided to change our RegenPGC tagline and our Goals and Vision Statement.

We know too many of you have been subject to those mind-numbing meetings where you must develop the perfect mission statement. Lucky for us, we didn’t have to do that. We had been thinking about and applying for funding for our Perennial Groundcover vision long before we were fortunate to be funded by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. So, when we put our website together, we were sure that we had distilled the language to express just what we needed to say.

We were close, but we did not nail it. When we met with the FLAG group yesterday, the participants pointed out that farmers are more interested in “reliability” in their cropping systems than worrying about the finer points of risk. Sure, risk is part of the everyday life of those making their living on farm ground. But we were told that risk is something to manage and that what farmers need before adopting new strategies and techniques, like adopting a perennial ground cover approach, is an assurance of reliability.

It was an “ah ha” moment for our team members, and before sunset, we changed our language and remembered that good data is everywhere. You just have to look and listen.
*Farmer and Landowner Advisory Group

RegenPGC releases latest quarterly progress report

RegenPGC Yr. 2 Q2 Report Cover

Our latest quarterly progress report (Nov. 1, 2022 – Jan. 31, 2023) is available for download. Catch up on our Team’s latest activities. Questions? Contact Anne Kinzel (akinzel@iastate.edu). Don’t forget to check out our latest news on our new RegenPCG LinkedIn page. Our research team has been incredibly busy preparing for the summer 2023 field trial season. Stay tuned for our new field trial webpage coming out in late April. We anticipate hosting multiple field day events in Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Ohio, where we will share the latest developments on perennial grass establishment and suppression. We learn more about perennial grass cover management daily and look forward to sharing our new knowledge with multiple ag constituents.

Meet our RegenPGC Graduate Students

USDA NIFA Coordinated Agricultural Project grants require a large investment in education and outreach. Sure, we do a lot of good science, but we spend a third of our grant dollars on education and outreach as required by our federal contract. You can learn about our work in these areas in our Education and our Outreach Themes, but today we want to announce the launch of our new Graduate Student Community page. Here you can learn about our nine current graduate students (and yes, there are more to come later this spring!) who hail from all over the country and the world. When you look over their bios and their career aspirations, you will know the future of agriculture is in good hands!

Austin Pearce (Field to Market) joins Stakeholder Advisory Board

Austin Pearce
Austin Pearce – New SAB Member

Austin Pearce, Agronomic Data Scientist at NGO Field to Market, has joined our Stakeholder Advisory Board (SAB). Pearce replaces Gina Nichols on the Board. The Stakeholder Advisory Board is a vital part of the RegenPGC market, and this group of talented individuals provides us with the advice and counsel we need from outside academia to move the project forward. We appreciate their willingness to give their time and expertise to our project. See who else is on our SAB here.

RegenPGC releases new video, first in proposed series

Watch Raj Raman, Regen PGC Project Director, introduce our perennial ground cover research project. With funding from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, we expect to go a long way in moving the needle on a new way of doing cover crops. This video is the first in a series of brief videos that will feature RegenPGC researchers discussing perennial ground cover planting, suppression, and other important agronomic management issues.