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From Poop to Profits: Dung Beetle Management for Farms & Ranches
July 1, 2019 - July 2, 2019
$149
Join us for this 2-day seminar focused on the role of Dung Beetles in your healthy farm or ranch ecology, how to manage to encourage their populations, and about potential market incentives for your products. And, start your own management plan utilizing Holistic Management.
The seminar will be hosted by two area farms. Day 1 will feature a keynote address by rancher Spencer Smith of Surprise Valley, California. It will include education about dung beetles of the prairies and include a farm tour, led by Dr. Mary Liz Jameson and Morgan Trible of Wichita State University.
Day 2 will provide a hands-on holistic management workshop in which participants can start their own paths toward dung beetle management, co-presented by Smith and Lawrence-based Holistic Management field professional Julie Mettenburg of the Tallgrass Network.
“Dung beetles in pastures is a sign of a healthy and productive land base. However, to the alarm of entomologists and ranchers worldwide there has been a decline in the population of dung beetles on industrially farmed land,” Smith wrote in an article for Acres magazine, November 13, 2018. “Recent studies of nature’s ‘pooper scoopers’ have indicated that these amazing creatures are important to the health of the soil and to the farmer and rancher’s bottom line.”
The seminar is provided with additional financial assistance from the Kansas Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Alternative Crops.
