Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources expands

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A program that started seven years ago when a pair farmers teamed up with the local Soil and Water Conservation District went national last year.

Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources recently released its annual report documenting the continued growth of the program.

STAR was born out of a grassroots, farmer-driven movement to help guide agricultural producers in meeting conservation goals established to reduce soil and nutrient losses and address local water quality challenges.

In 2017, Illinois farmers Steve Stierwalt and Joe Rothermel teamed up with the Champaign County SWCD and other partners to design a simple, voluntary tool to track conservation progress and meaningfully address local resource concerns using sound science, producer experience and conservation expertise.

Designed as a simple, straightforward and easy-to-use tool, the STAR concept grew to include an implementation framework and was soon adapted and expanded into other Midwestern and Western states to meet their local needs.

The STAR Tool is a simple, free and confidential resource that generates a 1-to-5 STAR rating to evaluate conservation progress on individual fields and provides tailored recommendations and resources to enable conservation progress.

STAR ratings are guided by science and expertise to address local resource concerns. The nationally standardized 1-5 scale gives producers and partners a clear and credible pathway to incentivize and reward conservation practice adoption — no matter where producers are on their conservation journey.

Accomplishments

The annual report noted the program’s key accomplishments in 2023. National STAR was launched in September 2023 with the established STAR Affiliate states of Illinois, Colorado and Washington. Developing affiliate states are Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico and Utah.

“STAR Affiliates are partners who are aligned with the program’s strategies to increase conservation adoption and are using the STAR tool and framework to amplify conservation efforts with farmers and ranchers in their states and region,” the report stated.

Other key accomplishments last year included:

• Web tool design and development was created to enhance the design and expand development of STAR’s progressive web tool to meet the needs of a national scale program to help landowners implement conservation on their land in a way that keeps it productive and profitable. The web tool developers team includes Houston Engineering Inc. and Heartland Science and Technology who are building the tool, Wave Interactive who is leading web tool design and user interface and PLANT Group who is coordinating this project.

• A website — STARconservation.org — was launched to fully communicate the program’s background, activities and story. The website provides details of how STAR was founded, the team, STAR Affiliates, how to start an affiliate, the resources offered and how to get in touch.

• Signal Group joined STAR in the fall of 2023 and worked closely with the program’s staff and board members to develop and synthesize our messaging, communications strategies and branding for the national STAR organization and provide resources for STAR Affiliates.

2024 Plans

“We are preparing for enrollment launch in established Affiliate states in 2024. We’ll also be releasing our new, enhanced version of the online STAR Tool that will integrate and automate the field forms and scoring systems for current and developing STAR Affiliates,” according to the report.

The new tool will also provide STAR participants with a tailored Conservation Innovation Plan including recommendations and connections to technical and financial resources to support changing production systems to include more conservation practices.

The STAR team will be spending significant time visiting — both in-person and virtually — with state STAR Affiliate leaders, staff, partners, producers, landowners and supporters in the West and Midwest.

“We’ll be listening carefully to identify their locally specific needs and challenges and the opportunities they see to amplify conservation learning, promotion, implementation and collaboration. As we refine our new offerings for 2024 enrollment, STAR is committed to supporting those producers testing and implementing more conservation practices on more acres,” the report added.

“Working in partnership with STAR Affiliates and their producers, state agencies, conservation districts, universities, nonprofits and other conservation focused entities, STAR has the potential to cost-effectively target a majority of production acres in the U.S.,” said STAR Executive Director Caroline Wade.

“The standardized STAR framework provides producers a simple and straightforward entry into conservation practice adoption, which can then bridge the gap between producers’ perceptions of sustainability and the many outcomes-based market programs and supply chain initiatives.”

Locally-Driven

“Our journey started with the firmly held principle that ‘locally driven conservation is the best path to success’ — local people making local decisions on how to best address locally identified natural resource concerns instead of a complicated, top-down approach,” said Stierwalt, STAR co-founder and board chair.

“The development of STAR met this need as a simple, locally led, practice-based, scientifically supported tool and framework that makes sense to us farmers and ranchers. STAR creates an easy pathway to grow conservation practices to effectively and efficiently scale grassroots conservation efforts by incentivizing and rewarding the adoption of practices that have relevance to producers and their supply chain partners.”

“Steve Stierwalt and I were kicking around ideas for a roadmap for conservation practices. Say a farmer wanted to try conservation practices: What would we tell them? Make a list of all the practices that would work best in this area — a recipe for success. It recognizes farmers for their practices, but there is also an educational part of it. My goal was to provide information to farmers who wanted to try this,” said STAR cofounder and board member Rothermel.

Cindy Lair, Colorado Department of Agriculture Conservation Services Division deputy director and Climate Resilience Specialist, and STAR Board member, noted the program’s commitment to soil health and voluntary, incentive-based stewardship practices has been a key priority for the state of Colorado.

“STAR is an ideal solution for meeting our soil health goals because it is shaped from the ground up by farmers, ranchers, conservation districts and other partners who helped the Colorado Department of Agriculture to tailor it to work for different crops, range and ways of farming and ranching across the state,” Lair said.