Addressing Challenges Farmers Face in the Great Lakes: The Organic Research Hub
Addressing Challenges Farmers Face in the Great Lakes:
The Organic Research Hub By Brian Geier, Communications Manager, Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), and Organic Farmer, Bundle Sticks Farm Every day, farmers make decisions that can have shortterm and long-term effects on our farms. And as organic farmers, we depend on complex, intertwining relationships amongst all the moving parts of an organic system to work with us: plants, animals, soils, climate, microbes, workers, insects, processors, consumers, and more. To put it mildly, good information is key for our success, and wrong or misguided information can be costly. Many farmers will tell you that the best information comes from our experiences on the land. “A farmer’s footstep is the best fertilizer,” they say. Our second-best source of information, reflected in survey after survey, is the information farmers get from other farmers. Third may arguably be what we find using the internet. But there, we risk running into an overwhelming array of sources of info with varying degrees of reliability, which may or may not be accessible or useful to anyone, let alone organic farmers!
Ohio dairy farmer John Settlage, who serves on the Organic Stewardship Council for OFRF, described his first experience testing out the “Hub” at a recent advisory meeting. “We’re changing our compost management right now, and I had some questions about it. I searched the site, and within about 30 seconds, I found the answers I was looking for. I thought, ‘Wow, this is a powerful tool. This is fantastic.’ What really stood out is that it wasn’t just some random person on YouTube or a questionable link from Google. The information came from Rodale and other credible sources. It was actually helpful— and I was able to make real management decisions based on what I read.” The Hub is easy to use. It can be searched by typing a keyword, by selecting from one or more of 17 topics (for example, Cropping Systems, Tools and Technology, or Livestock Feeding), by choosing a USDA-SARE region, or filtering by production category. You can also combine these options for a more refined search. Let’s take a look at how it works, using the Great Lakes region as an example.
Introducing the Organic Research Hub
Challenges for Organic Farmers in the Great Lakes Agro-Ecoregion
A new tool seeks to remedy this overwhelm, and it is worthy of a close look. The Organic Research Hub, launched in early 2025 by the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), is a curated collection of scientific and technical resources to help organic farmers understand and solve their challenges. It is a gateway to research and resources that are applicable to organic farmers, and it is a connection place between farmers, researchers, technical service providers, and extension agents.
The Great Lakes agro-ecoregion, as defined by the National Organic Research Agenda (NORA), includes Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. (National data and larger USDA-SARE regions, including the “Northcentral” region, are also used in the NORA report. Smaller agroecoregions like the Great Lakes are used to provide a finer scale of categorization that reflects geographical specialization of farm commodities, and regional differences in soil types, climates, and environmental
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