Final report for ENC21-206
Project Information
North Central Region Water Network (NCRWN), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and partners will educate Extension educators, agricultural lending institutions, and conservation professionals about the financial implications of agricultural conservation practices for farming operations to enhance farmer and lender knowledge and abilities to invest in conservation profitably and achieve soil health and water quality improvements. Our train-the-trainer approach will target educators who can play a powerful role in closing the financial information gaps: 1) educators from land grant university Extension and technical colleges who focus on farm financial management; 2) educators at agricultural lending institutions; and 3) conservation professionals who support farmers, including those in local government and conservation-focused Extension educators. We seek to increase their knowledge about the financial impacts of conservation practices and how to best support farmers’ investments in them. We also seek to improve our audiences’ knowledge about good practices for financial data gathering related to conservation production systems that can help lenders and farmers assess investments. Our activities will include 1) collecting and synthesizing existing resources about the financial impacts of conservation practices and making them available in an online hub, 2) developing and distributing methodologies to enable better financial data gathering on conservation production systems, and 3) developing replicable trainings that empower our educator audiences to share this knowledge with lenders and farmers. These short-term outcomes will lead to more accurate understanding of the financial impacts of conservation practices, more lenders collaborating with farmers to invest in these practices, and more farmers practicing conservation profitably.
The project will deliver an accessible collection of educational resources, trainings, and crop budget data gathering methodologies.
Online resource collection about conservation practice profitability. The project will publish an online collection of resources in conservation finance tailored to ag lending institution educators, farm finance educators, and conservation educators to help them support farmers in financing conservation practices. We will organize this collection into a centralized online location that leverages the project partners’ existing visibility in the region and ensures traffic from our target audiences. We will also produce 5-10 original educational materials, such as fact sheets and budgeting spreadsheets, based on learnings from our activities to contribute to the resource library.
Trainings and training materials for farm finance educators, conservation educators, and ag lending educators. We will deliver sets of training curricula and related resources tailored for 1) farm finance educators, 2) conservation educators, and 3) ag lending educators. These materials will help these audience groups educate farmers and lenders on the financial impacts of conservation practices, best practices for budgeting and financing these practices, and available tools to support their conservation investment decisions. With in-person and online components, the trainings will be designed for replicability by others, to ensure their use and impact beyond this project. In the project, the trainings will reach at least 40 farm finance educators, 40 conservation educators, and 40 ag lending educators, with the potential to reach many more beyond the project. Moreover, we will deliver at least one peer learning opportunity that brings together all three of our target audiences in conversation to learn from each other about how they each can support farmers better and build stronger connections between these groups. For this opportunity, we aim to reach at least 30 total participants.
State conservation production system crop budgets. The project will deliver at least two state crop budgets, one for conservation tillage/cover crop production systems and one for grazing systems, in collaboration with Extension economists. These state crop budgets will ultimately be used by farmers and lenders for budgeting purposes. Extension educators and others will also use them to educate farmers on the expected costs and cost savings associated with conservation production systems and provide state-specific benchmarks.
Stronger cross-sector collaboration potential between Extension, conservation NGOs, and farm financial institutions. We will enhance cross-sector collaboration between Extension, conservation NGOs, and farm financial institutions by exemplifying the value of cross-sector collaborations for advancing conservation agriculture solutions. We will produce at least one communications product and one educational event, such as a webinar, to share what we learned from our partnership to inspire subsequent partnerships.
Cooperators
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Education
We are using a train-the-trainer approach, training conservation educators, farm finance educators, and ag lenders in the financial impacts of conservation agriculture, so they can feel more empowered and informed in advising and supporting producers. We are in the process of developing these trainings and will be conducting in-person and virtual workshops to each of these audiences in the next year.
Education & Outreach Initiatives
Discuss barriers, opportunities, data sources, and methodologies for developing crop budgets that incorporate conservation practices (cover crops, conservation tillage, grazing) to envision how to develop these budgets.
Annual crop budgets produced by Extension economists are valuable tools used by farmers, lenders, and policymakers to understand the costs of crop production. Budgets that capture the costs of crop production using conservation practices have been identified as tools that would assist in closing the financial information gap for farmers and the target audiences. They would help farmers and lenders project the financial impacts of adopting cover crops into the farmers' operations and inform management and lending decisions. To explore the development of these budgets, Extension economists were convened on July 13, 2022 for a two-hour workshop to discuss data collection, methodology, opportunities, and barriers.
Through this workshop, the project team was able to identify applicable data sources and next steps for developing crop budgets that incorporate conservation practices. In the next year of the project, the team aims to collaborate with an Extension economist to pilot a crop budget in one of our project states (Wisconsin or Minnesota).
Equip conservation educators with the knowledge about conservation finance and economics they need to be able to address producers’ financial concerns.
We developed and delivered a virtual training about conservation finance for conservation educators in July 2023. This two-part training covered a range of topics identified as important to this audience through audience research, such as the basics of farm finance, what the aggregated economic data say, navigating landowner-tenant relationships, and how to have conversations with farmers about conservation finance. Furthermore, we designed the training to be replicable, meaning other educators could use our curriculum to deliver the training in their local area or state. We developed a Facilitators Guide to encourage this replication. The training development and delivery were led by project partners Marcelle Lewandowski and Anna Cates from the University of Minnesota, with support from Jenny Seifert of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension. Content was presented by subject matter experts from our advisory team.
201 people registered for this training; peak attendance for part 1 was 113 participants and for part 2 was 95. Recordings were made available to the registrants who were not able to attend; we also put the recordings on the YouTube channel of the North Central Region Water Network. According to our evaluation of the training, 79% of responding participants said the training increased their knowledge about how conservation impacts farm profitability by at least a moderate amount, with 37.5% saying it increased their knowledge a lot or a great deal. Also, 62.5% of responding participants said the training at least moderately increased their confidence in talking about conservation finance topics with farmers. Moreover, 55% of respondents said they will probably use something they learned from the training with producers, while 25.5% said they will definitely use something they learned. Seventy-two percent of responding participants said they are at least somewhat likely to incorporate finance topics into their programming as a result of what they learned.
Equip conservation educators with knowledge about conservation finance and the role agricultural lenders play in farmer decision-making to help them address producers’ financial concerns.
We had the opportunity to conduct a short training presentation at the Wisconsin Land + Water annual conference in March 2023. The target audience for this conference is county conservation staff across Wisconsin. The training was led by project team member Paul Dietmann of Compeer Financial, and he focused on the basics of farm finance and how agricultural lenders play a role in producers’ conservation decisions.
We were unable to track how many attended the conference session, but 33 people completed our evaluation survey of it. Among them, 97% said the training increased their knowledge about farm finances related to conservation practices by at least a moderate amount. 97% of responding participants also said the training at least moderately increased their understanding of how agricultural lenders support producers’ decisions, particularly those related to conservation. Also, 91% of respondents said they will at least probably use something they learned in their work with producers. Finally, 79% said they will at least probably seek out interactions with agricultural lenders as a result of the training.
Equip farm business management educators with the knowledge about conservation agriculture and its financial impacts and considerations they need to be able to address producers’ concerns.
We developed and delivered a virtual training about conservation finance for farm business management educators in July 2023. This two-part training covered a range of topics identified as important to this audience through audience research, such as the basics of conservation, conservation funding programs, what the aggregated economic data say, navigating landowner-tenant relationships, and how to have conversations with farmers about conservation. Furthermore, we designed the training to be replicable, meaning other educators could use our curriculum to deliver the training in their local area or state. We developed a Facilitators Guide to encourage this replication. The training development and delivery were led by project partners Marcelle Lewandowski and Anna Cates from the University of Minnesota, with support from Jenny Seifert of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension. Content was presented by subject matter experts from our advisory team.
117 people registered for the virtual training; peak attendance for part 1 was 50 participants and for part 2 was 36 participants. Recordings were made available to the registrants who were not able to attend; we also put the recordings on the YouTube channel of the North Central Region Water Network. According to our evaluation of the training, 61.5% of responding participants said the training increased their knowledge about how conservation impacts farm profitability by at least a moderate amount. 61.5% of respondents said the training increased their knowledge of tools and resources farmers can access for information about the financial impacts of conservation agriculture by at least a moderate amount. Also, 61.5% of respondents said the training increased their confidence in talking with producers about conservation finance by at least a moderate amount. Furthermore, 69% of respondents said they will at least probably use something they learned from the training in their work with producers, and another 69% percent said they are at least somewhat likely to incorporate conservation topics into their programming as a result of the training.
Increase knowledge among agricultural lenders about the financial impacts of conservation agriculture practices and ways they can support farmers’ conservation investments.
We conducted a total of two in-person trainings and one virtual training for agricultural lenders, each targeting a different type of lending institution. Our first was for the Wisconsin Bankers Association Ag Lenders Section at their annual meeting in April 2023, which targeted lenders from commercial banks predominantly. The second was for USDA Farm Service Agency loan officers from across Wisconsin in August 2023, during their annual training. The third was for Compeer Financial loan officers from across Wisconsin and Minnesota, who represent Farm Credit institutions, in January 2024. The trainings were led by project partner Vincent Gauthier from Environmental Defense Fund.
Our evaluations of the two in-person trainings showed positive learning outcomes. Roughly 200 agricultural lenders attended the Wisconsin Bankers Association training, 50 attended the FSA training and 50 attended the Compeer training. Of the 37 lenders who responded to our evaluation of the Wisconsin Bankers Association training, 54% said the training increased their knowledge about farm finances related to conservation practices at least moderately. Nearly 95% of respondents said the training increased their understanding of how they, as ag lenders, can support farmers’ conservation decisions by at least a little. Finally, 54% said they will at least probably use something they learned from the presentation in their interactions with clients. Of the 28 participants from the FSA training who completed our evaluation, 50% said the training increased their knowledge about farm finances related to conservation practices at least moderately. All respondents said the training increased their understanding of how they, as ag lenders, can support farmers’ conservation decisions by at least a little. Finally, 50% said they will at least probably use something they learned from the presentation in their interactions with clients. We did not provide an evaluation survey to the participants of the Compeer training, so we don’t have data to share from it.
Strengthen connections between conservation educators, farm business management educators, and ag lenders and deepen their understanding of how these groups - separately and together - could help farmers adopt conservation practices profitably.
Even though conservation educators, farm business management educators, and agricultural lenders are often supporting the same producers as trusted advisors, these groups often do not interact with each other nor understand how each supports producers. This results in significant knowledge gaps among these advisors and inconsistent messaging to producers. Each group could learn from each other about how to support producers’ conservation investments. With increased collaboration and knowledge sharing between them, there is potential to help more farmers implement conservation practices. Thus, we organized a five-hour, in-person workshop called “Connecting Farm Finance and Conservation” that brought together conservation educators, farm business management educators, and agricultural lenders from Minnesota and Wisconsin. The purpose of this workshop was to help participants meet each other, understand how each group supports producers, and share ideas for how they, together, could better support producers’ conservation investments.
Thirty people participated in the workshop (32 people registered, but two could not attend); 12 participants were agricultural lenders, 13 were conservation educators, and 5 were farm business management educators. Half of the participants (15) completed our event evaluation survey. Eighty percent of the survey respondents said the event at least moderately increased their understanding of how each sector represented influences producers’ conservation decisions, with 100% indicating it increased their knowledge by at least a little. Sixty-seven percent of respondents said the event at least moderately increased their knowledge of programs, resources, and tools available to producers to help them be profitable with conservation practices. Eighty percent of respondents said the event at least moderately helped them understand how ag lenders, conservation educators, and farm business management educators could work together to support producers’ conservation investments. All respondents said they will at least probably use something they learned from the event, with 53% saying they would definitely use something they learned. Ninety-three percent of respondents said they are at least somewhat likely to reach out to someone in one of the professions represented at the event (and not from their own profession) as a result of the event, with 33% indicating they are extremely likely to do so. Eighty percent of respondents said they will at least probably follow up with someone they met at the event, with 27% saying they will definitely do so. Finally, through qualitative feedback from participants during our wrap-up discussion at the event, we heard there is a great need and desire for more events like this that bring together these groups to connect with and learn from each other. They also suggested including farmers in such events. We also asked participants to tell us one thing they plan to do as a result of their participation in the event, and responses ranged from conservation educators wanting to connect with local lenders to farm business management educators who intend to share their financial work and knowledge of farm economics with conservation educators, and to lenders who want to reach out to local conservation professionals and share what they learned with other loan officers in their institution.
Expand farmers’ access to financial planning resources on conservation practices by developing data gathering methodologies with land grant university agricultural economists.
We collaborated with economists at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Farm Financial Management to develop a new cover crop financial data gathering methodology within the FINBIN database- the largest publicly available farm financial database in the U.S. We worked with farm business management programs across Minnesota and Wisconsin to gather this new financial data on cover crops.
The data gathering methodology improvement allowed EDF and partners to gather cover crop financial data across 121 farms in Minnesota and roughly 15 farms in Wisconsin. EDF and partners analyzed the data and published a data summary report for the 2022 data. EDF also published a blog on the results and hosted a webinar. The data results were also shared with producers and other stakeholders at many regional benchmarking meetings and conferences.
Increase the accessibility of data and research about the financial implications of conservation practices to conservation educators, farm business management educators, and agricultural lenders so they can better support producers’ conservation investments.
To our knowledge, there had been no previous effort to bring together findings from existing research about the financial implications of conservation practices in the Upper Midwest. To address this gap, we conducted a comprehensive collection of existing case studies, reports, and other research-based materials from a variety of sources, ranging from universities to environmental NGOs. We focused on research that covered the financial impacts and considerations of cover crops, conservation tillage, nutrient management, and managed grazing. As a result of this effort, we developed two products that synthesize the data and research. The first is an online resource hub, called the Conservation Economics & Finance Resource Hub, which houses the collection of case studies, reports, and other research-based materials we found. The second is a booklet called The Financial Implications of Conservation Agriculture: Insights from Analyses of Farms in the Upper Midwest, which synthesizes the research in this collection. Both resources are housed on the Soil Health Nexus website, a program of the North Central Region Water Network.
The online resource hub includes over 70 reports, case studies, and other research-based materials, which focus on the financial implications of cover crops, conservation tillage, nutrient management, and/or managed grazing. The booklet is intended to support the informational needs of conservation educators, farm business management educators, and ag lenders in their work with farmers. In addition to the full booklet, we developed four separate “fact sheets” that each cover one of the conservation practices highlighted in the booklet - the same four on which the online hub is focused. Our intention was to make this information as accessible and consumable as possible for our target audiences.
To understand how agricultural lenders in the Upper Midwest think about conservation practices, how they interact with clients around it, and their knowledge needs.
To our knowledge, there has been little effort to understand ag lenders’ attitudes and knowledge about conservation agriculture. Given the important role ag lenders play in supporting farmers’ decisions, including conservation investments, it is important to know how lenders perceive conservation agriculture, whether it is part of their interactions with their clients, and their knowledge gaps that could be resolved through training. Ag lenders can play an important role in helping producers invest in conservation practices, particularly if they are equipped with sufficient knowledge about the costs and benefits. Therefore, we developed and conducted a survey of agricultural lenders in four Upper Midwestern states - Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois - to get a snapshot of how ag lenders think about conservation practices and what they know.
We received 179 responses from agricultural lenders to our survey, and we produced this report that summarizes the survey results. The intent is for this survey to inform leadership at agricultural lending institutions so they can better equip their staff with the knowledge and resources to help their farmers in conservation decisions and investments. The survey can also inform outreach efforts to agricultural lenders - which may be conducted by conservation educators, farm business management educators, and other stakeholders. EDF also published a blog about the survey results that was shared with over 175 agricultural lending institution leaders and other stakeholders. To reach target audiences for the report, EDF held two webinars in March 2024 that covered the main takeaways from the report. The webinars were attended by leaders at major agricultural lending institutions in the region including Compeer Financial, AgCountry Farm Credit Services, Bremer Bank, BMO Harris and others.
The findings from the survey and the success of the agricultural lender trainings led to training replication after the project through a collaboration between EDF and AgCountry Farm Credit Services. EDF and AgCountry are launching a three-part training series on climate-smart agriculture mandatory to all AgCountry loan officers and insurance agents. That includes direct education to 175 agricultural lenders!
Share lessons learned from the project with project audiences - conservation educators, farm business management educators, and ag lenders - as well as professional counterparts who may be interested in implementing similar programming.
We developed and disseminated several communications products to share our lessons learned and convey important messages from our work, in order to help advance this work beyond our grant.
We produced two blog posts on The Confluence for Watershed Leaders’ blog, which reaches conservation and watershed professionals across the Mississippi River, Great Lakes, and Red River Basins: 1) Why Conservation Professionals Should Get to Know Their Local Agricultural Lenders, and 2) Survey of Agricultural Lenders Reveals Opportunities for Collaboration with Conservation Professionals. Both focus on the need for stronger connections between conservation professionals and ag lenders. We also produced two articles for the North Central Region Water Network about the major resources we developed through this project: 1) A One-Stop Shop for Research-based Resources about the Profitability of Conservation Ag Practices, and 2) New Resource Summarizes Current Data on the Financial Impacts of Conservation Agriculture. We also produced a blog post for the Environmental Defense Fund blog, titled Lenders Want to Support Farmers’ Conservation Efforts. Here’s How Their Executives Can Help, to share the results of our agriculture lender survey. EDF also produced a blog post about the data gathering methodology called Cover crop financial data from large database will inform climate-smart investments.
In addition to these written communications products, we delivered webinars to share results of our project. The first was for the Soil Health Nexus Digital Cafe in November 2023, where we shared about the trainings and facilitators guide we developed, with the goal of promoting the use of our training framework and facilitators guide in other places. This webinar series reaches extension educators and similar professionals across the North Central Region. A second webinar was to share the findings of our agricultural lender survey. Environmental Defense Fund organized this 30-minute webinar on March 19th and 20th, 2024 (same content, two date options). Also, earlier in 2023, EDF hosted a webinar to share the cover crop financial data gathering methodology.
Educational & Outreach Activities
cover crops data gathering methodology
Participation Summary:
Learning Outcomes
Project Outcomes
First Year Outcomes
In the first year, we completed three focus groups with farm finance educators, four with conservation educators, and nine interviews with agricultural lenders to understand their information and learning needs regarding the financial impacts of conservation practices. This research informed our development of trainings targeted at these audiences.
We also completed a workshop with 9 Extension educators and researchers to understand barriers, opportunities, data sources, and methodologies for creating crop budgets that incorporate conservation practices. This workshop produced next steps for creating a pilot crop budget.
We conducted an extensive search and synthesis of existing resources (e.g., reports, case studies) about the financial impacts of cover crops, conservation tillage, and grazing, to be incorporated into the online resource hub.
Second Year Outcomes
In the second year of our project, we developed and piloted one virtual training about conservation finance each for conservation educators and farm business management educators. We also developed and disseminated a facilitators guide for these trainings to enable other educators to replicate it in their local areas. Previous to these trainings, we did an additional in-person training about conservation finance and ag lending for conservation educators at the Wisconsin Land + Water annual conference. We also conducted three in-person trainings for agricultural lenders, each targeting a different type of lending institution: 1) the Wisconsin Bankers Association’s Ag Lenders Section annual meeting, targeting primarily commercial lenders; 2) the annual training for the Wisconsin office of USDA’s Farm Service Agency loan officers; and 3) a Compeer Financial “Brain Bin,” which reaches their lenders from Wisconsin and Minnesota and represents the Farm Credit System. Finally, we organized a cross-sector peer learning workshop, called Connecting Farm Finance and Conservation, that brought together conservation professionals, farm finance educators, and ag lenders to discuss how each support farmers’ decisions and how they could work better together to support conservation agriculture.
We also developed and launched the Conservation Finance & Economics Resource Hub, our online collection of case studies, reports, and other research-based resources about the financial implications of cover crops, conservation tillage, nutrient management, and managed grazing. Included in this hub is a booklet we produced that synthesizes and summarizes available data about the financial impacts of these four conservation practices, called The Financial Implications of Conservation Agriculture: Insights from Analyses of Farms in the Upper Midwest. To increase the usability of this booklet, we designed it so each section about an individual conservation practice can be used as a stand-alone fact sheet; thereby essentially creating five resources in one. Both the online hub and the booklet are products that arose from our resource search and synthesis from our first year.
Our work on crop budget methodologies with land grant university economists informed new cover crop financial data gathering abilities in the FINBIN database that led to benchmarking financial data from 121 farms in 2022 that will grow in the coming years. This has led to more farmers and their advisors having access to reliable on-farm cover crop financial benchmarking information.
Furthermore, we collected and analyzed the results of our agricultural lender survey, which assessed lenders’ perceptions and knowledge needs regarding conservation agriculture. We received responses from 179 lenders from various lending institutions across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. We have produced a report of those survey results, entitled Lender Perceptions and Actions on Conservation Agriculture: Survey Insights from Four Upper Midwest States.
New Grants and Collaborations
The Minnesota Office for Soil Health at the U of MN received $20,000 from MN NRCS to help local government units establish relationships with farm finance specialists so they can provide conservation finance information for farmers. The foundation of this work will be the curriculum developed during this project.
The Soil Health Nexus received an NCR-SARE PDP grant entitled “Expanding Regional Economic and Livestock Integration Soil Health Information and Resources.” This project will develop tools that will assist educators in working with producers to make holistic soil health practice changes taking into account environmental and economical parameters. It will provide in-person and virtual training outlining how to use these tools, including using the training curriculum developed by this project as part of its in-service training.
Environmental Defense Fund received private philanthropic funding to support financial data gathering and analysis of conservation practices and to engage agricultural lending institutions to develop proactive lending solutions for farmers adopting conservation practices.
- We received very positive reactions from attendees of our peer learning event “Connecting Farm Finance and Conservation.” Several emphasized the need for more events like it to help bridge knowledge and social capital gaps between conservation professionals, farm business management educators, and agricultural lenders. Examples quotes:
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"I really appreciated the opportunity to hear others present and then interact with the world cafe activity, it really brought out great discussions, ideas, and opportunities to improve."
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"Cross training on topics like lending and conservation will only benefit all producers in the long run. Excellent work putting together this meeting."
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"This opened my eyes to how I can better support lenders of our area and equip them to understand farm situations to make better lending decisions with them!"
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"I think this model was very successful, I’d like to have it reproduced in Minnesota if possible, awareness will lead to action and improvements.
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- Olmsted Soil and Water Conservation District in Minnesota has invited two bankers to be involved in upcoming events after their attendance at our peer learning event.
- As a result of work on this project, Environmental Defense Fund is collaborating with AgCountry, a Farm Credit institution, to develop a training for its loan officers building on the results of the loan officer survey and the ag lender training from this SARE grant.
Our work laid bare the promising opportunity for building stronger connections between conservation professionals, farm business management educators, and agricultural lenders. There is much these groups can learn from each other and do together to better support producers’ conservation investments. We recommend SARE consider how they can encourage such cross-sector relationship-building and collaboration in future projects. We also recommend that SARE keep funding projects at the nexus of finance/economics and conservation, a recommendation our advisory team also suggested at their closing meeting.
Our project also underscored the importance of cross-disciplinary and cross-sector collaborations. Our team represented the university extension and research, environmental NGO, and agricultural finance sectors, and we all brought unique expertise and skills to the table that, combined, enabled us to produce strong results. We believe a project like this would not have been possible without our diversity of expertise. Thus, we recommend SARE encourage cross-sector collaborations in future projects, perhaps by emphasizing them in RFPs and ranking them highly in your evaluation process.
Information Products
- The Financial Implications of Conservation Agriculture: Insights from Analyses of Farms in the Upper Midwest (Fact Sheet)
- Basics of Conservation Finance: Facilitator’s Guide (Course or Curriculum)
- Conservation Economics & Finance Resource Hub (Website)
- Why Conservation Professionals Should Get to Know Their Local Agricultural Lenders (Article/Newsletter/Blog)
- Lender perceptions and actions on conservation agriculture (Decision-making Tool)
- Survey of Agricultural Lenders Reveals Opportunities for Collaboration with Conservation Professionals (Article/Newsletter/Blog)
- Financial impacts of cover crops in Minnesota (Decision-making Tool)
- Cover crop financial data from large database will inform climate-smart investments (Article/Newsletter/Blog)