The day promises to be witheringly hot. Guolong Liang BS’19, MS’22 arrives at Isherwood Farm around 8 a.m. to get an early start. As an agriculture water quality outreach specialist with the UW–Madison Division of Extension, his work focuses on, of course, water. Today he’ll be sweating through the installation of 20 lysimeters — devices that measure nitrate leaching into groundwater — across numerous potato fields, each instrument placed two feet below the surface. Liang is joined by Kevin Masarik MS’03, a groundwater specialist with Extension and UW–Stevens Point. Thankfully, they can share the workload on this sweltering day.

They’re also sharing the work with Justin Isherwood. Ahead of their arrival, he had gone around with a mechanical auger and drilled a series of precisely placed holes where the lysimeters needed to be buried. Isherwood is a fifth-generation farmer who co-owns the farm with his brother, Donald, and his son, Isaac. He’s been hosting on-farm research projects since the late 1970s.

“We’ve been doing lysimeter work for most of that time, one kind or another,” Isherwood says. “Some of the earliest ones that we put in were the size of a stove, so we had to dig this huge hole. This version is a hockey-puck sized thing, so we can put in a whole bunch of them.”

All morning and into the afternoon, Liang and Masarik take turns stretching down into the augered holes, using a butter knife to scrape out a little ledge on which to set one of the lysimeters, which are fabricated from slices of two-inch PVC pipe. They then refill the holes with soil, and, come next spring, they’ll return to dig them back up.

At that point, Liang will drive the devices to the lab of Steven Hall, an assistant professor and extension specialist in the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at CALS. Hall and his research team are also key partners in the project. They will take care of sample extraction and nitrate analysis — generating data that will show how different nitrogen fertilizer application rates affect nitrate leaching. Finally, Liang will make sure the findings are shared back with the Isherwoods and, more broadly, to growers in the Central Sands region.

CALS and Extension’s Agriculture Institute, where Liang is based, have a long history of working collaboratively — with each other and with producers — to address the many challenges of farming.

Traditionally, CALS faculty have handled the research side of things, while Extension staff have helped identify farmers willing to host on-farm projects, after which they share findings via outreach programming. But things have changed, and the Isherwood Farm project provides an instructive example.

Extension personnel are now playing a larger role in on-farm research, an outcome of changes at the Agriculture Institute. The institute has undergone several rounds of structural reorganization in recent years to ensure its long-term ability to provide high-quality service to farmers. Most recently, the institute revamped its approach to staffing by developing a model for hiring staff with more specialization and expertise.

“In addition to their primary outreach duties, our new hires will have the capacity to be involved in conducting really good, solid research,” explains institute director Heidi Johnson MS’07, PhD’09. “Farmers want to see things happen on their own farms, so we will be doing more of that in the future.”

The institute has been adding staff in a big way over the past couple of years, hiring around 35 outreach specialists (including Liang) and 24 regional educators. Seven CALS faculty (including Hall) co-funded by the college and Extension have also joined the institute.

Liang, who was hired in July 2022, has a master’s degree in horticulture from CALS. He’s passionate about sustainable food systems and enthusiastic about applying his training and experience to support vegetable growers in the Central Sands region.

“By nature and by training, I am curious about science and research,” says Liang. “So, although my position focuses more on outreach, being a part of the research process is exciting to me. Plus, it helps me to better understand and communicate about the research and findings when people are asking about the ins and outs of a certain project.”

Hall joined UW in September 2023. He specializes in measuring nutrient cycling and leaching using a wide range of approaches, including small, inexpensive lysimeters — the kind Liang, Masarik, and Isherwood installed on the Isherwood farm. He is already involved in multiple collaborative projects with Liang to quantify the impact of field management decisions on nitrate leaching.

“I think Extension’s new model is really exciting,” Hall says. “We faculty can provide a lot of expertise in how to take particular measurements and how to design studies, and then we can really partner with regional educators and outreach specialists who can handle some of the finer details of implementation. I think it allows faculty to scale up our impact a lot more than if we were directly leading all of these studies.”

After a long stretch of gradual contraction in Agriculture Institute staffing and activity around the state, things are really ramping up. Extension personnel and CALS faculty can feel it. Farmers are beginning to feel it too — in the form of increased personnel and resources to help study and solve their problems.

“Working with specialists like Guolong, they have a depth of knowledge about things, and I’m delighted to be exposed to that kind of intelligence and enthusiasm,” Isherwood says. “It’s not like there weren’t any interactions with Extension before, but there just seems to be far more exchange and dynamism in these kinds of projects now.”

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So many major changes have happened in the recent past, it’s easy to have an outdated idea of the structure of the UW–Madison Division of Extension. (For a longer historical timeline of  changes, see sidebar, “The Evolution of Extension at UW,” below.) In 2005, the Division of Extension was called Cooperative Extension, and it was part of UW Colleges and Extension, an independent campus of the UW System. Almost 20 years later, much has happened, and the organizational structure now looks quite different.

For one, Cooperative Extension used to have county agricultural educators  (“ag agents”) who were co-funded by Extension and county governments. The idea was to have one ag agent per county who would serve as that county’s go-to person for any and all questions related to agriculture and horticulture. It worked well — until it didn’t.

“At Cooperative Extension, we were suffering from budget cut after budget cut,” Johnson explains. “If we didn’t make some strategic decisions, we would have continued to suffer.”

At the same time, county governments were having their own fiscal challenges. Between the county and Extension budgets, there wasn’t enough money for an ag educator in every county. The system wasn’t working as planned.

In response, in 2015 Cooperative Extension launched the nEXT Generation project with the goal of making major structural changes to better serve its clients and to position the organization for a strong and sustainable future. One of the many recommendations involved establishing a new Agriculture Institute to house Extension personnel working in agriculture, plus a new director position to lead it.

Cooperative Extension was in the middle of implementing this reorganization when, in fall 2017, UW System announced Cooperative Extension would be integrated into the UW–Madison campus. Its new name would be the UW–Madison Division of Extension.

After the institute’s first director left, Johnson was named interim director in early 2019 before stepping into the permanent role that summer. Previously, she had served as an agriculture educator for 10 years in Dane and Jefferson counties. When Johnson took over as director, there were 55 ag educator positions serving 72 counties. There was also high staff turnover due to lagging salaries and increased expectations.

Johnson had just started looking for opportunities to solve staffing challenges when the next big obstacle arose: the global coronavirus pandemic, which prompted an extended hiring freeze for Extension. During that time, numerous ag educators left their positions, part of the Great Resignation that impacted the entire nation. Yet Johnson saw a silver lining — an opportunity to conduct a major staffing overhaul. It was a rare chance to make strategic adjustments to better meet the needs of the state’s ag community.

“Agriculture has changed a lot over the years, especially moving towards specialization, but our approach to Extension staffing stayed the same,” Johnson says. “Our ag partners had been telling us for a while that they needed greater expertise to serve a progressive industry. They were becoming increasingly reliant on our CALS faculty because they were experts and doing research in relevant areas. While county educators, who were trying to cover all aspects of agriculture and horticulture for their county, struggled to carve out the hours in a day to build and maintain the expertise progressive producers were looking for. This dynamic was going to result in us continuing to struggle to maintain funding for staff across the state.”

Johnson, along with a group of faculty and staff, envisioned a new approach that would enable Extension staff to bring more discipline-based expertise to their roles by having positions that worked over a larger geography. Some positions would continue to be co-funded with counties. These new staff members — called regional educators — would each cover three to five counties. With this model, each county would have access to two regional educators: one focused on crops and soils, the other focused on either dairy or livestock, depending on the needs of farmers in the immediate area. The other part of the new staffing model involved hiring fully Extension funded outreach specialists who would complement the regional educators. Each outreach specialist would bring valuable expertise to the mix while covering larger regions of the state.

Johnson pitched her new approach to county officials across the state, seeking buy-in — figuratively and literally— for the shared positions. For some counties in some regions, it was easy to come to agreement. For others, it proved challenging — particularly when the benefits of sharing might seem uneven across counties. “Counties are trying to use their limited budgets in the best way possible to meet their needs, and it’s understandable that they would have different needs than we do,” Johnson says. “There’s also a nostalgia for that one dedicated go-to ag agent.”

During the hiring hiatus, Johnson approached ag groups around the state and shared the staffing plan. The Wisconsin Ag Coalition, a group of farmers and agribusinesses, demonstrated their support by lobbying for additional funding, and the effort was a success. The 2021–23 Wisconsin state budget included money to hire three Extension-funded faculty in CALS and eight outreach specialists. Additionally, in 2021, the Agriculture Institute received a special grant through the USDA Dairy Forage Research Center to hire staff to help integrate conservation-based agriculture practices across the state.

This infusion of funding enabled Extension to immediately start hiring people with expertise in grazing, beef, swine, water quality, and conservation agriculture, as well as launch an on farm research program to support institute staff.

When the hiring freeze lifted in spring 2022, the Agriculture Institute hit the ground running. Over the past two years, around 50 new employees have been brought on — all to help respond to the needs of the state’s agricultural community.

“Almost everybody is new,” Johnson says. “And we’re still hiring.”

The Evolution of Extension at UW

1881

University Extension begins at the University of Wisconsin.

1914

The U.S. Congress passes the Smith-Lever Act, which creates a Cooperative Extension Service by establishing relationships between counties, states, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and makes federal funds available for extension activities related to agriculture, 4-H, home economics, economic development, and government leadership.

1965

The University of Wisconsin System is created and University of Wisconsin–Extension becomes a “campus” with its own chancellor. This new campus houses Cooperative Extension, which has its own dean.

The University of Wisconsin Colleges, the administrative umbrella for the state’s two-year campuses, is also created at this time. Eventually, UW–Extension expands to include units devoted to continuing and online education, business and entrepreneurship development, conference services, and public radio and television.

2005

UW–Extension and UW Colleges merge administrations. They share a chancellor, but Cooperative Extension continues to have its own dean.

2015

Extension launches the nEXT Generation project, a major reorganization of its programs and administrative functions.

2017

UW System President Ray Cross makes a major announcement about the reorganization of UW System, including moving Cooperative Extension back to UW–Madison.

2018

Cooperative Extension officially rejoins UW–Madison as the UW–Madison Division of Extension. The Division of Extension is composed of six institutes, including the Agriculture Institute, as guided by the nEXT Generation plan.

For a more comprehensive historical timeline, visit Extension’s website.

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For late July, it’s a rather pleasant morning. Jordyn Sattler, a regional crops educator for Grant, Green, Iowa, and Lafayette counties, pulls up to the side of a corn field outside of Shullsburg. She’s there to gather soil samples alongside Monica Schauer MS’22, a researcher focused on nitrogen management in the CALS Department of Soil and Environmental Sciences. They label some paper bags, grab their soil sample probes, and step into the rows of 10-foot stalks.

The samples are for an on-farm research project involving four area farmers who want to assess the efficacy of winter rye as a cover crop — how much rye to plant in the fall, how much to let it grow in the spring before termination, and then, critically, how much nitrogen its biomass releases over the growing season. The big question is, after rye, how much additional nitrogen should be applied to maximize the yield of the season’s corn crop?

“Cover crops are still relatively new in the scheme of things,” Schauer says. “Early on we just focused on getting something to grow that would survive the winter. But sometimes the corn doesn’t look good after rye, sometimes it does.  So now we’re exploring the idea that maybe we don’t need quite as much biomass, and we can still get the cover crop benefits. We’re trying to find that sweet spot.”

This project is funded by the State of Wisconsin’s Commercial Nitrogen Optimization Pilot Grant Program (NOPP), which encourages agricultural producers to develop innovative approaches that optimize the application of commercial nitrogen. Each project must span at least two growing seasons, and producers must collaborate with a Universities of Wisconsin campus.

In summer 2024, there were 37 NOPP projects in the works — 17 in their first growing season and 20 in their second season. Extension regional educators and outreach specialists are involved in many of these projects, working alongside farmers to manage the field research and make sure the findings are shared with the agricultural community. In doing so, they collaborate with CALS experts.

Mark Ruark, professor and extension specialist in the soil and environmental sciences department, serves as NOPP supervisor, and Schauer serves as research director.

“You can think of it like we’re the consultants,” Ruark explains. “We are reviewing all of the projects to make sure they are well-designed and scientifically sound. And then at the end of the year, they’ll provide us with the data, and we’ll help them with the statistics to work up their results.”

Part of Schauer’s role involves visiting the various field sites, and she lends a helpful hand as often as she can. This has given her a chance to support new Agriculture Institute staff as they get started in their jobs — which proved helpful to Sattler, who inherited her NOPP project from her predecessor.

“This project is more technical than I’ve experienced before,” says Sattler, who joined Extension in January 2024. “It has much more replication to make the findings statistically significant, and that’s what I like about it. Data integrity is huge to me. Monica was critical in helping explain the process and the goals, so I could really take off with it and have a lot of fun.”

There are currently 45 CALS faculty who are co-funded by Extension — Ruark included — and they continue to play a key role in the Agriculture Institute’s new service model.

“These CALS faculty are charged with doing high-impact research and sharing their findings with the agricultural community across the state, and the best way for them to do that is with Extension partners,” says Troy Runge, CALS associate dean for research and extension.

“I know our integrated faculty have their home in CALS, but they are really embedded into our Ag Institute program teams,” Johnson says. “We consider them part of our functional system. It’s like they have dual citizenship.”

Before the reorganization, the Agriculture Institute had also co-funded numerous CALS staff positions. With the new model, these staff are moving to Extension — over time. As CALS positions open, they are being refilled in Extension. Additionally, some staff have been proactively moved, as were five members of the Nutrient and Pest Management (NPM) program in spring 2024. So far, around 15 former CALS staff positions are now housed in Extension.

“Change is hard, but Extension is really the outreach arm of UW–Madison now, so it makes sense not to duplicate that within CALS,” says Damon Smith, who served as NPM faculty director when the program was housed in CALS and helped NMP staff navigate the transition. “Plus, outreach specialists should be with other outreach specialists, so they are surrounded by other folks who do that type of work.”

Faculty are starting to feel the surge in momentum — more people, more activity, more energy, more collaboration. Ruark, for instance, found a new collaborator in  Bandura MS’17, an outreach specialist in conservation cropping. The two were happy to discover they share many similar interests, and now they’re working together to analyze a large soil health data set and share the findings.

“Some of us on the faculty side had been disengaged a little bit because Extension just couldn’t keep people hired. There just weren’t the people, right? So, there was a gap there [in CALS-Extension collaboration],” Ruark says. “Now everything is being built back up, and the new staffing approach is fantastic. Now it’s like there’s this new culture at Extension. We just have so much more capacity to do things now.”

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It takes time to implement change and build new high-quality extension programming. Likewise, says Johnson, it will take some time for new Extension personnel to establish relationships and build trust with the state’s farmers.

“We’re still early to bear the full fruits of our new model,” she says. “But it’s great to see us making such large strides in the right direction.”

The big-picture goal is robust, impactful extension activity — based on collaborative research involving CALS and Extension personnel — that supports Wisconsin’s agricultural community.

“When farmers interact with us, I want them to have a good experience with us, that they feel we are holding our reputation of being a valued resource for research-based, nonbiased information that can help them make management decisions for their operations,” Johnson says. “The purpose of all these changes is to enable us to be a part of helping Wisconsin’s agriculture be successful into the future.”

Isherwood, for his part, is also looking to the future — and anticipating long-term engagement with CALS and Extension.

“I feel it’s a duty that we farmers owe the science some of our efforts, and it’s delightful to be part of these on-farm research efforts,” Isherwood says. “There’s a real satisfaction that comes from working with others on a project that matters. And I like to see the grandkids noticing what we are doing. Hopefully that will have an impact on them; and, if they happen to take up this vocation, it’ll be part of their lives too.”