Wisconsin Potato Growers Lead Way with Water Stewards Program
By Jed Colquhoun, Professor
Department of Horticulture, University of Wisconsin-Madison
In about 6th grade or so I remember preparing for a particularly challenging test and my father’s lasting advice: “Prepare the best that you can, always put your best foot forward and don’t worry about what you can’t control.”
In a much broader and more impactful sense, we have the same challenges when it comes to Central Sands water. We can’t control the weather, and for the most part we can’t control public sentiment. The global pressure on water resources isn’t going away.
What we can control, however, is how we manage water on our individual farms and even individual pivots. And we can tell the story of agricultural technology adoption, advances in water conservation and irrigation innovation on our own farms and on those of industry at large.
With this in mind, UW-Madison and the Department of Natural Resources are working with Wisconsin potato growers and a number of other conservation groups to create the Wisconsin Water Stewards program.
This program will document and recognize water management on participating farms and identify opportunities for continuous advancement.
