Annual Iowa Forage and Grasslands Conference returns to Des Moines

For the first time since 2014, the annual conference of the Iowa Forage and Grasslands Council will be held in Des Moines during November. The 2018 Iowa Forage and Grasslands Conference is set for Nov. 26 to 27 at the Des Moines Airport Holiday Inn. While plans are still being finalized, two featured speakers are sure to draw attention of IFGC members and others interested in forage, grazing and grasslands topics.

Jim Gerrish, renowned grazing consultant from American Grazinglands Services, and Byron Shelton, senior program director of the Savory Institute, are scheduled to speak during the Nov. 26 evening session and again in in-depth sessions on Nov. 27.

New this year, the event will begin with a bus tour of cover crop grazing farms in central Iowa. This tour is sponsored by the Fall Grazing Cover Crops project funded by the North Central Extension Risk Management Education Center, the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Award Number 2015-49200-24226, and the Iowa Beef Center at Iowa State University. Following the tour, a producer panel will discuss cover crops, along with the presentations by Gerrish and Shelton.

The Tuesday agenda will include more in-depth sessions by Gerrish and Shelton as well as breakout sessions on grazing, wildlife and conservation and other production topics.

Additional conference and registration information will be available soon on both the IFGC website iowaforage.org and the IBC website www.iowabeefcenter.org.

For more details, contact either IFGC President Patrick Wall at [email protected] or by phone at 515-450-7665, or IFGC annual meeting chairman Jeff Matthias at [email protected] or phone at 515-323-2257.