By: Garrett Hopkins, Communications Specialist
“Above all else, farmers listen to other farmers.”
This quote from lifelong Jefferson County farmer Scott Schultz sums up the power of producer-led land and water conservation groups. Schultz is a co-founder of the Jefferson County Soil Builders, the county’s most prominent such coalition.
“Most farmers do things how their parents did it, and how their grandparents did it,” says Schultz. “It’s a generational thing. It’s a point of pride, carrying on their family’s tradition.”
Farmland makes up more than 60% of the Rock River Basin. While this scale of agriculture brings undeniable cultural and financial value to the region, it also compromises the Basin’s freshwater resources through nutrient runoff and sediment erosion. Producer-led groups like the Soil Builders have a simple mission: recruit fellow farmers to adopt new cost-sharing farming methods, like cover cropping, that can help mitigate these issues.
Schultz, who runs 300 acres of cropland and a 50-acre cattle pasture, first learned about cover cropping when he was invited to a community meeting for the Dodge County Farmers for Healthy Soil & Water. He tried it out on his own farm and was impressed by the results.
“I was able to cut my fertilizer back by a third,” he says. “The cover crops that I used were growing my nitrogen, so I didn’t need to apply so much. It was a ‘working smarter, not harder’ sort of thing, and I came out about the same financially. It was a no brainer.”
A few years later, Schultz approached the Jefferson County Land and Water Department with a neighboring farmer named Dean Weichmann to start a producer-led group in Jefferson County. The county quickly threw their support behind them by helping obtain funding through the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP)’s Producer-Led Watershed Protection grant, and the Soil Builders were born.
“Jefferson County is basically the Soil Builder’s fiscal agent for the grant,” says Sam Peterson, a resource conservationist for Jefferson County’s Land Conservation Department. To qualify for DATCP funding, producer-led groups must have at least five members who are farmers, with at least two adopting cost-sharing practices. “We help them apply for the grant and keep them on track throughout the process.”
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The Jefferson County Soil Builders offer a number of agricultural cost share opportunities to regional farmers who want to adopt water quality conservation practices, including:
Cover Crops
$60 per acre for multi-species cover crops, up to 40 acres
$30 per acre for cover crops, up to 100 acres
Harvestable Buffers
$225 per acre of harvestable buffer installation payment
Pasture Establishment
$220 per acre of land converted to rotationally grazed pasture from the cropped land, up to 40 acres
Field Borders
$225 per acre
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Like most conservation groups, much of the Soil Builders’ effort is directed toward raising awareness about their mission and recruiting new participants. They accomplish this through two different types of events: quarterly community meetings and field demonstration days.
The community meetings involve guest speakers from across the county including farmers, veterinarians, and conservation specialists, and the field days involve demonstrations about innovative, environmentally friendly farming practices that range from seeding fields with drones to planting cash crops directly into living cover crops.
“The field days are usually attended by about 25 people,” says Peterson. “It’s mostly farmers who are trying to get their neighbors to come and see what kind of conservation practices they are doing. They’re the ones doing all of the talking and educating, which is really beneficial. Other farmers want to listen to farmers that are having success.”
Schultz, who helps organize each event and often leads field day demonstrations on his own farm, emphasized the importance of reassuring farmers they can implement new practices that help protect the Basin’s water quality and still produce high yields.
“When I was growing up, nobody talked about what they were doing. You farmed your own farm and that’s the way it was,” he says. “Now, at our quarterly meetings, we might have a hundred people in a room, and farmers standing up and saying, ‘I tried this, it worked.’”
With 80 members, 54 of whom are farmers, the Jefferson County Soil Builders has rapidly grown into one of the largest producer-led groups in the state. In the last four years, 2,582 acres across 41 farms in the Rock River Basin have been transitioned to cover crops using Soil Builders grant money, and a number of the farmers who no longer utilize cost-sharing have chosen to continue planting cover crops.
“I feel great about it,” says Schultz. “You can go many years of just doing your own thing and not changing anything, but with the Soil Builders I really feel like we’re making a difference.”
Implementing impactful, widespread conservation action is a complicated endeavor, and the Soil Builders are accomplishing it with impressive results. Rock River Coalition is grateful for their work and wishes them continued success in the future.
While no current dates are set, the Soil Builders are planning to host a field day in August that is open to the general public. Keep an eye on the Jefferson County Soil Builders Facebook page updates. More information about Jefferson County’s cost-sharing program can be found here: Programs & Services