Extension Partners With STAR To Support Farm Conservation Goals

Dec 26, 2025

By Tara Heath

Healthy soils, cleaner water, and stronger farms, one field at a time —University of Illinois Extension and STAR (Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources) are working together to make it happen.

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

Developed for farmers, by farmers, the STAR Tool is a free conservation evaluation and guidance tool that generates a 1-5 STAR Rating at a field scale. Farmers are then encouraged to build a Conservation Innovation Plan for the next crop year to identify next steps in their conservation journey and explore the technical, educational, and financial opportunities available to help them implement practices. Producer data remains confidential and can only be shared with the producer’s explicit permission or as part of aggregated and anonymized results.

Extension is partnering with STAR by serving as a local resource for agronomic advice and conservation planning. Commercial Ag Educator Tara Heath is now a STAR Navigator for Fulton, Mason, McDonough, Peoria, and Tazewell counties. She will assist producers with completing assessments, interpreting results, and connecting them to technical and financial resources.

Tara shares, “I’m excited to help farmers take practical steps toward improving soil health and water quality. STAR makes it easy to see where you’re doing well and where small changes can make a big difference.”

Source : illinois.edu

Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.