Cargill donates $500,000 to U of I’s CAFE project

Mar 01, 2023

Dairy sustainability scientists and innovators will soon have the nation’s largest research hub to test their ideas and develop technologies in the Pacific Northwest.

The Idaho Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (CAFE) will be the backdrop to short-term and longer-term research projects to benefit dairy farmers in Idaho and beyond.

To help support this University of Idaho project, Cargill is donating $500,000 to the university.

Located in the nation’s third-largest dairy-producing state and home to a thriving agriculture sector, CAFE is designed with the size and scale of a commercial dairy, with additional capabilities to grow and study crops used for animal nutrition.

CAFE researchers will examine the sustainability of the dairy farming value chain from feed to milk and beyond to help bring solutions to dairy farmers in the Western region for years to come. In addition, researchers will study additional revenue streams for farmers beyond milk from emerging bio-based products and carbon credit markets.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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