Lake Effect
WUWM Radio
Wisconsin is second only to California for the number of organic farms in operation. And over the last few days, LaCrosse has been overflowing with advocates for organic farming.
The occasion was the 24th annual Organic Farming Conference. The more than 3,400 attendees included farmers themselves and nationally renowned experts such as Maureen Wilmot. She says organic farming in the Midwest could have an impact far beyond this region alone.
“We could clean up the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico if we just converted all the farms along the Mississippi Basin to organic, because we would reduce nitrogen runoff by 50 percent,” she says.
Wilmot is director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation, which has funded over three million dollars in grants to farmers and scientists to further research on organic growing.
