Partners tout conservation efforts, work remains

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Numerous organizations sharing common goals aimed at protecting soil health and water quality joined in a “Cultivate Connections” luncheon during Ag Day at the Illinois State Fair.

Hosted by the Illinois Sustainable Ag Partnership, the stakeholders reflected on the successes over the past 10 years since the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy was released and the challenges ahead.

Jean Brokish, American Farmland Trust Midwest deputy director and ISAP treasurer, gave the history of the partnership that was formed in 2017 out of a need to ensure unified action in meeting the NLRS goals of a 45% reduction in both nitrate and total phosphorus loads.

“At the same time the NLRS was released in 2015, the state of Illinois had a few financial challenges and really cut a lot of the technical assistance that was through the Soil and Water Conservation Districts and University of Illinois Extension,” Brokish said.

It was during that time, she noted, when “three wise and wonderful women,” one from AFT, another from Illinois Farm Bureau and a third from the Illinois Corn Growers Association, were commiserating on the next step.

“They were thinking, there’s all this work to do. There’s no people to do it. What are we going to do? And they said, ‘Let’s work together.’ That’s how ISAP was born,” she said. “Those three organizations are still very much a part of ISAP today, along with 15 other organizations.

“That is that collaboration, that willingness to share information together, that willingness to put heads together and research together to solve problems and try to really advance more conservation practices and awareness on the ground. That’s how Illinois meets those nutrient loss reduction goals.”

The collaborative work of ISAP has led to successful education, demonstration and research programs focused on building the capacity of conservation practitioners to meet the needs of Illinois farmers and advisers as they work to improve the efficiency of their production systems and environmental outcomes.

NREC Efforts

Julie Hewitt, who’s in her 10th year as Illinois Nutrient Research and Education Council executive director, said since 2012 when NREC was created by state statute, over $43 million has been invested on behalf of Illinois agriculture into nutrient research.

NREC began partnering with ISAP a year ago, but had a close relationship with the organization in the years prior to joining.

“NREC is responsible for administering the funds that come in through the fertilizer assessment. All farmers and retailers in the state pay an assessment on the fertilizer that they purchase. Actually, it’s not just farmers and retailers. It’s anybody who is a seller of a bulk fertilizer product,” Hewitt explained.

The rate was 75 cents per ton from 2012 until last year and is now $1 per ton, with 97% of all funding going directly towards university-level research.

NREC research focuses primarily on managing nutrient efficiency, cover crops, edge-of-field practices and novel new technology.

“My real big hope is that 10 years from now, when we get back together at the Illinois State Fair that we can celebrate the successes that have happened and to see how this investment in research has translated to changes on the ground, which then translates to changes in the water,” she said.

“It’s tough to measure. A lot of the issues that we’re dealing with and the things we talk about didn’t happen overnight. We would like to be able to solve them overnight, but that’s just not how Mother Nature works.

“We know that the majority of the farmers are doing the right things. They’re managing the risks they best can, but we’re also dealing with legacy (nutrient) issues, things that have been around forever. So, we can’t expect to solve that overnight, but I do think there’s so much great information out there. There’s so much research.

“I appreciate all of the groups that are here and through ISAP really being a great conduit for getting that research out and in front of people, because research that exists on paper or research that exists only in a lab really doesn’t mean anything.

“We really do count on our partners to get that out to not just our farmers, but for all of you, all of the practitioners, all of the people that influence the decisions.”

STAR

Another ISAP partner, Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources, was also created in 2017 in response to the NLRS.

“We became members of ISAP this last year. Working with ISAP made a ton of sense because a lot of the organizations involved in ISAP were founding members for STAR,” said Natalie Kerr, STAR coordinator in Illinois.

STAR’s story began with two farmers, Steve Stierwalt and Joe Rothermel, teaming up with the Champaign County Soil and Water Conservation District to “provide a roadmap for fellow farmers who were interested in getting involved in conservation,” Kerr recalled.

A conservation evaluation tool was developed to determine a one through five star rating based on conservation practices implemented in a field.

“This has grown a lot. We have gone from a paper form in Excel sheets in 2017 when it started to a web tool that was developed and then a national non-profit was launched in September 2023,” Kerr said.

“Other states across the country have seen this idea of taking local practices and local natural resource concerns, putting them into a forum that can give farmers a means to communicate progress. Eleven states now have a STAR program that they are either building or already established.”

In 2024, Illinois had 1,200 fields in the STAR program, covering 66,000 acres.

“I’m thrilled about this number personally, because in 2024 we started using our brand new tool for the first time. This tool also has a conservation innovation plan feature, so farmers can get access to different financial, technical and educational resources, and all of the Soil and Water Conservation Districts across the state are now involved in using this with the farmers and their regions. That’s through the Illinois Department of Agriculture’s Partners for Conservation Program,” Kerr said.

“Partners for Conservation requires a soil health assessment tool, and STAR is able to provide that through our field form, our scoring system, so people can set a baseline, establish where they are and move on from there.

“We have some really incredible partners. We have a pay-for-performance program with Siemer Milling Company, where farmers can get up to $25 an acre based on a five-star rating or improving the rating from one year to the next.”

Field Days

Illinois Farm Bureau, another ISAP partner, hosts nutrient stewardship field days to help educate farmers on the issues.

“Since 2015, we have sponsored 174 projects with 71 counties. Those are led by county Farm Bureaus. They identify projects and conservation that they want to work on and we help fund those. We have some really good results,” said Amelia Cheek, IFB associate director of environmental policy.

“Other projects we work on are pollinator projects. Since 2022, we have funded 38 projects of those in 35 counties.”

Eliot Clay, Association of Illinois Soil and Water Conservation Districts executive director, was on the Senate Republican staff when the NLRS was released 10 years ago.

“I was still very much learning agriculture. I was always passionate about conservation, but when I first read about it, I was like, aren’t nutrients a good thing, and it’s come a long way since then. But I think that that actually gets to the core of where we need to be going,” he said.

Clay also looked ahead to where these nutrient management efforts may be 10 years from now.

“Mine is trying to figure out how do we make the work that we all collectively do tangible to everybody outside of this tent? The public knowledge gap between conservation practices and what’s happening in-field, edge-of-field practices and all these things are really hard to convey sometimes. I think if we collectively work together, we can figure it out,” he said.

“We see real-world examples of these. The water issues up at Kankakee and what’s going on in Mattoon right now with their drinking water. We need to do a better job about explaining this to the public.

“Then, from the Soil and Water Conservation District perspective, we were created in 1948. It’s been a number of years, obviously, since this happened, and we were born out of the biggest land-based environmental disasters in human history — the Dust Bowl.

“There were lessons that we learned from that, which is why SWCDs exist, but I do get worried that we’re losing sight of kind of why we are here and where we need to be going.

“Groups like ISAP and all the organizations that are involved with that are how we can move forward to trying to make sure people know the importance of this work.”