Match Made in Heaven: Livestock + Crops

Building Relationships – Listening for Common Ground – Integrating Crops & Livestock

This project is a collaboration among groups that don’t always get to work together: crop and livestock associations, universities, public agencies, and conservation organizations. We’re finding common ground and putting our heads together to move shared interests forward. We hope you’ll join in and add your perspective!

About the Project

“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

Participate in the Project

There are many ways to participate in the project!
    • Join the project or be added to our mailing list: Sign up here

Infographic

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!

Integrating crops and livestock infographic

Survey

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!

Survey Distribution 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

Case Studies

We have a team of experts in livestock and cropping systems working on case studies of farms that successfully integrate crops and livestock. We are hoping to profile at least one farm per state in each of the six states involved in this project: Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

We are looking for farmers who operate at least 200 acres and whose operation integrates crop production and livestock production, although the same person need not directly manage both.

If you know someone who would make a great case study subject, please recommend them to be one of our six Case Study farms!

This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under agreement number 2021-38640-34714 Am 3 through the North Central Region SARE program under project number LNC21-453. USDA is an equal opportunity employer and service provider. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.