Reduced Tillage Webinar: Tuesday April 8th
Free Webinar: Lessons Learned from a Reduced Tillage Organic Systems Project
There is an increasing demand for organic cash crops for feed across the province, as well as here at home in east central Ontario. If you are thinking about switching, or about doing some experimentation, you may be interested in this free webinar offered by eOrganic. Though it relates to the eastern US area, the presentation may shed some light on weed management and reduced tillage concepts that are useful in this region of Ontario. While it's possible to tune in from the comfort of your own home (provided your computer/tablet/mobile device meet the system requirements), if enough people are interested and advise us by this Thursday at 5PM, we will try our best to find a space with a screen for everyone to watch together.
Take a look over the presentation outline below, and let us know if you'd be interested in a community viewing of the webinar by contacting jay@farmsatwork.ca | (705) 743-7671.
Reduced Tillage Webinar on April 8
Join eOrganic for a webinar entitled "Putting the Pieces Together: Lessons Learned from a Reduced-Tillage Organic Cropping Systems Project", by William Curran, Ron Hoover, and John Wallace of Penn State University. The webinar will take place on April 8 at 2PM Eastern Time, 1PM Central, 12PM Mountain, 11AM Pacific Time. The webinar is free and open to the public, and advance registration is required.
About the Webinar
The Reduced-tillage Organic Systems Experiment (ROSE) was initiated by a team of researchers at Pennsylvania (Penn State University), Maryland (USDA-ARS), Delaware (University of Delaware) and North Carolina (NC-State) in 2010 to identify integrated pest management (IPM) strategies for managing weeds and early season insect pests while transitioning to an organic rotational no-till grain/silage system using a corn-soybean-wheat rotation. This webinar will draw upon the results from three years of research in ROSE and illustrate practical issues involved with reducing tillage in an organic grain/silage system, such as cover crop termination using a roller-crimper, technical aspects of crop establishment in a rolled cover crop, the potential for volunteer cover crops in the rotation, and the importance of initial weed seedbanks for weed management during an organic transition, and the potential for using high residue inter-row cultivation to supplement weed control with cover crop mulches. The objective of the webinar will be to share lessons from the ROSE with farmers, researchers, extension personnel and government agency staff.
About the Presenters
William Curran: Bill is a Professor of Weed Science in the Plant Science Department at Penn State where he has a research-extension focus in agronomic crops. Bill’s statewide extension program focuses on providing agricultural constituents with the latest weed management information and his research focuses on basic weed biology, integrated weed management, weed management in conservation tillage system including managing cover crops, and managing weeds in organic crop production systems.
Ron Hoover: Ron is Coordinator of On-Farm Research at Penn State University where the focus of this program has been to increase rates of adoption of new and underutilized technologies related to field crop production and soil management. In addition to those research and extension activities, he is also an instructor for a Field Crop Management course.
John Wallace: John is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Plant Sciences Department at Penn State where he serves as a project manager for the Reduced-Tillage Organic Cropping Systems Project.
System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.6 or newer
Mobile attendees
Required: iPhone®, iPad®, Android™ phone or Android tablet
Java needs to be installed and working on your computer to join the webinar. If you have concerns, please click here to test your Java prior to joining the webinar. If you are running Mac OS X 10.6 with Safari, please be sure to test your Java. If it isn't working, please try Firefox or Chrome. The webinar program will require you to download software before connecting you to the webinar, so if you don't have administrative rights on your computer, you may not be able to do this, although you can listen in by phone. If you'd like to test your connection to gotowebinar in advance, click here.