Erin Silva, Ph.D. https://cias.wisc.edu/directory/17158/

FoA 280: Organic Farming Myths and Realities With Erin Silva

I wanted to invite Erin Silva back on the show to hear about her continued work with farmers that are going down the path of organic AND regenerative.

On the surface, those two farming approaches are easy to get behind: let’s try to reduce our dependence on synthetic chemistry and let’s try to build soil health over time while still farming intensively and profitably. But in practice, there are tradeoffs. To promote more living roots on the soil through cover crops, as one example, farmers need a way to terminate those cover crops and using herbicides for that is really really helpful.

So I’m intrigued about how farmers are making these systems work and how scientists like Erin our doing the critical research to understand how these practices can work on more acres for more farmers.

So that is what today’s episode is all about, and for context I’ll give you a brief bio on our guest.

Dr. Erin Silva is an Associate Professor and State Extension Specialist in Organic and Sustainable Cropping Systems in the Department of Plant Pathology as well as the Director for the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at UW-Madison.

Her research influences the strong organic sector that contributes to Wisconsin’s agricultural economy, with Wisconsin second only to California as the state with the greatest number of organic farms. In continued support of these farms and the organic sector within the state, nation, and globally, her research and scholarly contributions continue to be directed in the broad area of the biology and agroecology of organic crop management, with emphases on cover crops, soil health, and genotype/ environment interactions. Dr Silva earned her Ph.D. in Horticulture at Washington State University.