CenUSA Internship Program
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Master Gardener and Youth Programs
Extension Master Gardeners
Is biochar a good soil amendment for home gardens?
To answer this question, University of Minnesota Extension Master Gardeners and Iowa State Master Gardeners tested the productivity of vegetable and flower gardens amended with biochar at four Minnesota sites and three sites in Iowa from 2012-2015.
Markets and Distribution
The Markets and Distribution team was responsible for evaluating farm-level adoption decisions and exploring policy, market, and contract mechanisms that facilitate broad scale adoption of perennials in the landscape.
The team focused on two research themes:
System Performance
The System Performance team focuses on providing detailed analyzes of feedstock production options. The team also creates models to assist policymakers, farmers, and the bioenergy industry to make informed decisions about which bioenergy feedstocks to grow, where to produce them, what environmental impacts they will have, and how biomass production systems are likely to respond to and contribute to climate change or other environmental shifts.
Feedstock Logistics
The Feedstock Logistics team works on developing systems and strategies to enable sustainable and economic harvest, transportation, and storage of feedstocks. The team focuses on the development and evaluation of harvest and logistics systems that are easily adaptable, produce consistent and quality feedstock for conversion, and are economically, energetically, and environmentally efficient and sustainable.
Sustainable Feedstock Production Systems
The Sustainable Feedstock Production Systems team conducts comparative analyses of the productivity potential and environmental impacts of the most promising bioenergy and bioproducts crops and management systems using a network of 17 fields strategically located across the Midwestern region.
Feedstock Development
The goal of Feedstock Development is to develop new and improved perennial grass cultivars and hybrids that can be used on marginal cropland in the Central US for the production of biomass for bioenergy and bioproducts.
Our Feedstock Development team members have produced an extensive resource library with material for everyone involved in the development of perennial grasses. Click the links below to jump to each one on the page:
Evaluation
The Evaluation Team assesses learning and behavior change resulting from extension and outreach activities, compiling evaluation results and preparing reports, and coordination of team meetings. Sorrel Brown (Iowa State University) is CenUSA's lead evaluator.
Health and Safety
Bioenergy feedstock production will have inherent differences from current agricultural processes. These differences could increase the potential for workforce injury or death if not properly understood and if effective protective counter measures are not in place.
The Health and Safety research team addresses two key worker safety elements in the biofuel feedstock supply chain:
Extension Staff Training
Extension Staff Training/Extension Team
This Team concentrates on creating and promoting professional development activities and a useful body of approachable educational materials for Extension educators and agricultural and horticultural industry leaders with a special emphasis on materials development.