Progress 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.
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:
Project Outcomes
Our Nov 3-4, 2022 LMW event in West Lafayette, Indiana drew 53 attendees. An online evaluation distributed at the conclusion of the event 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.
Our Nov 2-3, 2023 LMW event in Fort Wayne, Indiana drew 52 attendees (9 of whom also attended in 2022). An online evaluation distributed the week after the event 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 entity to lead proposals to the RCPP. 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.
In both in-person events’ evaluations, the farmer panel presentations and discussion ranked highest among the representations for usefulness to attendees. Due to this and SCF’s recent RCPP award to support farmer-led groups, we scheduled the next in-person Leadership for Midwestern Watershed event to occur in Illinois, to include more farmers on the agenda, and to better align with farmer’s availability by occurring between fall harvest and spring planting schedules.
Our next LMW event titled “Growing the ‘Farmer-Led’ Model” will occur Feb 27-28, 2025 at Starved Rock State Park near Oglesby, IL. We have 80 attendees registered including 13 farmers (all giving presentations and/or joining 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. Represented states are Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, and Nebraska.
Based on follow-up educational needs identified in evaluation results from the February 2025 event, we will schedule a follow-up virtual LMW event in late summer (likely August, 2025) to coincide with farmer availability.
We intend to distribute a project impact survey in 2025 to assess learning and action outcomes by those who attended any of the three in-person events.
To offset costs not supported by SARE (including meals and additional staff time and travel), 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, and The Nature Conservancy and Compeer Financial. These sponsorship offset approximately 25% of total LMW costs (direct costs, staff time, and indirect costs), with registration fees covering approximately 18%.
We are in the process of constructing a detailed geospatial database of watershed-based agriculture conservation projects and their project leaders across the Midwest, to be made public later in 2025. 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 and integrated with other states, this product will enable watershed project leaders to better identify other projects and leaders. Also Sand County Foundation will promote this digital project inventory to potential funders of watershed projects, especially in the private sector.
Responses from the two in-person events (2022 and 2023) 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”