Match Made in Heaven: Livestock + Crops

“Match Made In Heaven: Livestock + Crops” is a 3-year, 6-state grant project that creates opportunities for farmers to share their interests, challenges, and needs, and for the crop and livestock organizations that they engage with to hear from their members and meet their needs with their programming and resources.  The project is a collaboration between 50+ groups including crop and livestock associations, universities, public agencies, and soil/water groups.

• The project began by collaboratively creating an infographic to introduce the benefits and challenges of integration.
• The centerpiece of the project is a collaboratively written survey of crop and livestock farmers across the Upper Midwest to identify their interests, successes, and challenges around integration of crops and livestock.   The results of the survey will be shared to help guide development of resources to benefit all.
• A smaller team is conducting in-depth case studies of 6 Upper Midwest farms that have successfully integrated crops/livestock in their operation.  These studies will be shared as a guide that other farms can use, and a field day will be hosted at each farm.
• Creation of a curated central resource library with shared tools for both educators and farmers (such as the Midwest Grazing Exchange tool).

At the heart of this project is collaboration between farm groups that don’t always get to work together: crop and livestock associations, folks involved with education and service, and farmers themselves.  We’re all putting our heads together to move shared interests forward and learn how we can be most effective in our efforts to support farmers.  This project is a great opportunity for organizations to hear from their members, and will build great foundations for future projects.

We are always growing!  Your viewpoint is a valued contribution. We hope you’ll participate and lend your perspective!  Compensation is available for serving in the Advisory Group or helping to distribute the survey.

The Project at a Glance

• Six main buckets of work
• Introductory Slide Deck
• Participating Organizations
• Press Release
• Grant proposal
• Year 1 Grant report, March 2023

There are many ways to participate in the project!

• • Join the project or be added to our mailing list: Sign up here

• • Do you farm? If yes, please: Take the survey

• • You can help promote and distribute the survey

• • Know a farmer who has successfully integrated crops & livestock?
    Recommend them to be one of our six Case Study farms!

• • Know of a tool that is useful for integrating crops & livestock?
    Suggest it for our resource library!

• • Other questions or feedback? Contact our team

Infographic Press Release, May 2022

This infographic was made for sharing!

You don’t need any special permission to use the Infographic files. Please download them, use them in presentations, print them, and share them!

Farmers!  Integration of crops and livestock brings both benefits and challenges!  The “Match Made In Heaven” survey needs your help to understand what’s working and what isn’t in integrating crops and livestock.  We want to hear where you’re at: about your interests, experiences, and barriers around integration.

“Match Made In Heaven: Livestock + Crops” is a partnership between crop and livestock associations, universities, public agencies, and soil/water groups.  The results of this collaborative survey will help guide development of resources to benefit all.

Help promote and distribute the survey using our toolkit!

Thank you for helping to promote & distribute the Match Made In Heaven survey!

We are a grant-funded project and need to report on our activities, please let us know how you’re helping to promote the survey!  Send your activity to Amy at fennsfolly@gmail.com, thank you!

We have several ways you can interact with the Survey Distribution Toolkit:

Google Drive version

Word version

HTML version
Copy text directly from web pages

Livestock and crop integration is happening across the Upper Mississippi River Basin. We are profiling one farm per state in each of the six states involved in this project: Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

These farms all operate at least 200 acres and integrate crop production and livestock production. A feature of integration that runs through all these case studies: so much flexibility to tailor systems that work with a particular farm’s location, soils, topography, markets, and skills of the farmers. Integration opens up space for generation-to-generation and neighbor-to-neighbor collaboration: the same farmer need not manage both the livestock and the crop enterprises.

Please feel free to download and distribute these case studies!

White Oak Farms, Dave Lubben – June 2023

Reach out to the Match Made in Heaven Project Team with any questions!

• Amy Fenn, outreach coordinator, fennsfolly@gmail.com
• Jane Jewett, project co-lead, jewet006@umn.edu
• Laura Paine, project co-lead, lkpaine@gmail.com
• Erin Meier, administrative lead, tegtm003@umn.edu