Sarah Carlson

Sarah is a Field Crops Specialist with Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI). Her works includes coordinating PFI's on-farm research program started in 1987. Her program areas include a breeding corn for sustainable agriculture systems, increasing cover crop use on-farm and assisting PFI's grazing clusters activities. Before joining PFI full-time in January of 2008 she was completing her Master's degree at Iowa State University co-majoring in Sustainable Agriculture and Agronomy. Her research included field research on university farms as well as on 9 PFI farmer cooperators farms across Iowa. She studied the effect of adding flax to farming systems.

Prior to arriving in Iowa in 2004 Sarah served in the Peace Corps in the southern highlands of Ecuador as a Agribusiness Development and Sustainable Agriculture Extension Agent for 2.5 years. She started 4 community banks, worked with community members to increase school gardens, worked with farmers to plant alfalfa on hill slopes for erosion control and also as a more nutritious feed source for guinea pigs, a culturally and highly consumed protein source for Ecuadorians.

Sarah graduated with her bachelors in Geography, Biology and Environmental Science from Augustana College in the Quad Cities in 2001. During those years she interned on an integrated vegetable and livestock farm in southern Vermont and also traveled abroad to Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Mexico. Although a native of northern Illinois she and her daughter have established themselves in Ames.

Sarah Carlson
Program Specialist
Practical Farmers of Iowa
137 Lynn Ave, Suite 200
Ames, IA 50014
Phone: 515/232-5661 x305
Fax: 515/232-5649
cell 515-441-3062
sarah@practicalfarmers.org