Final report for ENC22-213
Project Information
This project will expand the reach of the successful Leadership for Midwestern Watersheds (LMW) meeting series, stimulating knowledge exchange and accelerating outcomes among watershed projects in the North Central Region with emphasis in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.
The new LMW events will serve watershed coordinators—paid professionals who collaborate with farmers to improve water quality within specific watershed boundaries. This community includes employees of conservation districts, non-profit organizations, and state agencies. Many have a farming background and live in agricultural communities. The common thread is that all work cooperatively to encourage farmers to adopt land management that reduces water quality impacts and improves ecosystem services.
As a result of participating in LMW in-person and online events, at least 100 watershed project leaders will gain skills and confidence to scale-up farmer adoption of practices that improve soil health, water quality, and wildlife habitat in their project watersheds. They will also learn how to engage historically underserved farmers in their outreach. At least 50 participants will incorporate new planning and assessment tools or methods in their work, and 25 will accelerate delivery of technical and financial assistance to agricultural producers due in part to knowledge gained through engagement in the LMW network.
We will achieve these outcomes by adding a new in-person LMW event held annually over three years in the eastern states of the NCR-SARE region. “LMW East” will mirror and complement the existing LMW series that Sand County Foundation has successfully delivered in the Upper Mississippi River Basin since 2011.
This project will deliver three in-person events, each lasting one full day and the following morning, for approximately 12 total hours of engagement. Each event focuses on a specific theme, with two or three speakers on the first morning focusing on that theme followed by facilitated breakouts sessions for participants to discuss relevance of the topic in their work. In the afternoon, watershed leaders and invited farmers provide case study accounts of projects and farm operations, with additional facilitated discussion among attendees. The second morning focuses on current tools and resources that watershed leaders may apply in their projects, as well as presentations about current and pending policies and state or federal programs. This usually includes a presentation by the State Conservationist for the NRCS in the host state of that year’s LMW event.
Around these presentations and discussions are lengthy breaks, lunch, and a group dinner providing time for spontaneous discussion among participants. We intentionally leave unprogrammed time to allow for participants to build connections among each other.
We also invite farmers to speak about their operations in the context of watershed protection, farm profitability, and factors that influence behavior of other farmers. We recruit early adopters of conservation practices to discuss their conservation experiences and their suggestions for influencing their farmer peers to adopt similar practices. Soil health and economics are a common thread in these discussions, with a focus on commodity crops common to the Midwest as these are the acres and cropping systems generally with the greatest opportunity to reduce their impact on water quality.
Each LMW East event will follow this general format and will draw approximately 70 watershed project professionals from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Approximately 150 professionals will attend at least one annual event during the three year course of the project. Also, each year a 2-hour virtual event, presenting additional content on the theme of that year’s prior in-person event, will reach approximately 120 attendees, including both LMW West and East network attendees.
This project will also produce an annually updated database of active watershed leaders across the NCR-SARE region. We anticipate the complete database to include at least 300 individuals currently employed or (in limited cases) volunteering as the lead coordinator or manager of water quality improvement effort based on a watershed boundary (USGS HUC-8 or smaller size) where agriculture is a primary land use.
Cooperators
Education
A core strategy to improve soil health and water quality is to build the capacity of farming and conservation leaders to organize efforts at the small watershed scale. Since 2011, Leadership for Midwestern Watersheds has become a popular annual forum for conservation professionals and farmers to develop networks, apply effective planning tools, better leverage state and federal programs, consistently monitor progress, and achieve economically positive conservation outcomes.
Education & Outreach Initiatives
Strengthen a “community of practice” among leaders of projects to improve water quality in specific agricultural watershed across the Midwest.
Annual in-person professional training events, each lasting 1.5 days and including presentations, facilitated discussions, case studies from farmers and meeting attendees, and ample time for networking.
Watershed coordinators will achieve: 1) increased confidence in facilitating the implementation of conservation practices to improve soil health, water quality, and wildlife habitat in their project watersheds; 2) accelerated delivery of technical and financial assistance to agricultural producers, 3) progress in engaging historically underserved farmers; and 3) intention to incorporate new planning, implementation, and/or assessment tools or methods as a result of participating in Leadership for Midwestern Watersheds events.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Learning Outcomes
Project Outcomes
Our Nov 3-4, 2022 LMW event in Fort Wayne, Indiana drew 52 attendees. An online post-event evaluation drew a 70% response rate, with 97% of respondents rating the event “excellent” or “very good” and 80% ranking 9 or 10 (out of 10) when asked if they would recommend the event to a colleague. 83% felt the balance of presentations vs discussion time was about right.
A May 24, 2023 virtual LMW session focused on the USDA-NRCS Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) drew 104 attendees. A follow up online survey in March of 2024 yielded a response rate of only 8%, with few respondents expressing likelihood of pursuing RCPP funding due to the administrative and matching fund challenges for small, locally based conservation entities to pursue. This in part motivated Sand County Foundation to apply for and secure a $13.8M RCPP award in late 2023 to support and sustain farmer-led watershed protection groups in Illinois, Wisconsin, and northeastern Iowa.
Our Nov 2-3, 2023 LMW event in West Lafayette, Indiana drew 53 attendees (9 of whom also attended in 2022). An online post-event evaluation drew a 55% response rate, with 96% of respondents rating the event “excellent” or “very good” and 82% ranking 9 or 10 (out of 10) when asked if they would recommend the event to a colleague. 89% felt the balance of presentations vs discussion time was about right.
In both of the Indiana in-person event evaluations, the farmer presentations/panels ranked highest for usefulness to attendees. Due to this and SCF’s recent RCPP award to support farmer-led groups in Illinois, we scheduled the next in-person event to occur in Illinois with more farmers on the agenda, and timed to align with farmers' availability between fall harvest and spring planting schedules.
Our Feb 27-28, 2025 LMW event at Starved Rock State Park near Oglesby, IL was titled Growing the ‘Farmer-Led’ Model. It drew 71 attendees including 13 farmers (all providing presentations or panel discussions) as well as staff of Soil and Water Conservation Districts, state and municipal government, non-profit conservation organizations, food and beverage companies, and agricultural service providers from Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, and Nebraska. An online post-event evaluation drew a 58% response rate, with 98% of respondents rating the event “excellent” or “very good” and 66% ranking 9 or 10 (out of 10) when asked if they would recommend the event to a colleague. 90% felt the balance of presentations vs discussion time was about right.
Finally, our September 4, 2025 virtual LMW session titled Navigating Change through Innovative Partnerships drew 99 attendees. A post-event evaluation drew a 58% response rate, with 98% of respondents rating the event “excellent” or “very good” and 71% ranking 9 or 10 (out of 10) when asked if they would recommend the event to a colleague. 82% felt the balance of presentations vs discussion time was about right.
At our most recent in-person event in February 2025 in Illinois, we highlighted farmer leaders who participate in the Wisconsin agriculture department’s Producer-Led Watershed Protection Grant (PLWPG) program. State agency representatives from Michigan and Nebraska (two states developing similar efforts as Wisconsin’s to support farmer-led conservation groups) attended this meeting and presented at our subsequent virtual LMW event in September 2025 along with Wisconsin’s PLWPG program manager.
Beyond our SARE PDP grant conclusion, we are planning our next LMW event February 25-26, 2026 in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The event will immediately follow the annual Wisconsin PLWPG workshop, drawing an audience of farmer leaders and conservation professionals from Wisconsin and other states to help advance “farmer-led” and watershed-based conservation efforts across the Midwest.
Over the past three years Sand County Foundation has secured sponsorship of Leadership for Midwestern Watershed events from Field to Market, Conservation Technology Information Center, General Mills, the Environmental Protection Agency, Purdue University, Iowa State University, ISG Engineering, Nutrien, Nestle Purina, the Iowa Soybean Association, American Farmland Trust, The Nature Conservancy and Compeer Financial.
We continue to construct a geospatial database of at least 100 watershed-based agriculture conservation projects and their project leaders across the Midwest, to be publicized in early 2026. In collaboration with Iowa State University we have developed a prototype online geospatial map of watershed projects in Iowa, and with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection we are initiating a similar map of projects in Wisconsin. Once complete, we will work to integrate projects across the Midwest states to enable watershed project leaders to better identify other projects and leaders across state lines.
Responses from the three in-person events confirmed the value of time to network with peers, including across state lines, and the value of having farmers’ voices on the agenda. Specific comments include:
“This was my first interaction with this group. Very happy to have found you!”
“I look forward to the next conference and hope to start building relationships from this one!”
“There is always something to learn and gain from this event, and it always recharges my batteries.”
“Well worth the time, especially for the networking”
“I thought it was very valuable as I am just beginning my career in conservation”
"We are in a challenging time right now, and it was very refreshing to be among a group of farmer and conservation leaders [who] want to inspire and create a new future for agriculture."
"Great event. I value the topics and the opportunities during meals and social times to candidly sit down with the presenters and others present for discussion on the topics presented."