Northern Indiana Grazing Conference
NIGC-Expanding to Two Days in 2012
The Northern Indiana Grazing Conference developed out of the Great Lakes International Grazing Conference, an event that was alternately held every year in either Indiana, Michigan or Ohio. Rotational graziers from northern Indiana, desiring a more regional, grass-root based event, met with LaGrange County District Conservationist Barry Bortner after the last GLIGC in 2001. The LaGrange County SWCD got involved, and by March 2002 the first NIGC was held at the LaGrange County 4-H Fairgrounds Community Building. The original grazing committee was half afraid the event would turn out to be poorly attended, but the opposite turned out to be true; registered attendance exceeded 200 participants and the crowd packed the builing to capacity-and over!
For the next year, the Grazing Conference moved to larger facilities at the Shipshewana Antique Auction Barn. From there, the event continued to grow until it reached a zenith in 2008, when registered participation reached over 800 and the builidng was packed beyond capacity once again. In 2011, the location was moved once more to a larger building at the Michiana Event Center (MEC) in Howe, IN.
The 2012 Conference is planned to be expanded to a two day event for the first time in its decade long history.
The secret to the success of the NIGC has been the Conference's emphasis on the practical. Though the event has sponsored many expert speakers in various grazing-related fields from locations all over the United States, priority has been placed on getting speakers from successful farming operations that actually use management intensive rotational grazing practices. In other words, speakers have typically been farmers, not university professors. Topics at the conference have ranged from soils, resource concerns, watering systems, irrigation, equipment, forage species, paddock arrangement, fencing techniques, livestock genetics and the grazing of various species.
NIGC 2012 is scheduled for February 3 and 4. It will be held for the second year at the MEC north of Howe. Friday's schedule includes grazing related topics and speakers from 8 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. and Saturday will include a wider range of farm related topics from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. |
