By Emily Haley

Environmental Initiative is excited to announce the next phase of a groundbreaking project – accelerating the adoption of conservation agriculture practices. The project aims to support organizations in significantly increasing the uptake of regenerative practices by taking an intentional approach to understanding the unique hurdles, motivations, and values of “moveable middle” farmers and ranchers.

Through data-driven, tailored engagement strategies, the initiative expects to:

• Provide outreach and engagement support to organizations through in-person workshops, online workshops, and self-guided learning influencing at least 200,000 acres.
• Move ranchers representing 100,000 acres forward in their readiness to adopt conservation practices.
• Use data-driven outreach strategies in partnership with an organization enrolling ranchers to put an additional 10,000 acres above and beyond program goals into conservation practices.

Putting producers at the center

The project builds upon two years of work where Trust in Food™, a social purpose division of Farm Journal, analyzed the values, interests, and barriers to conservation agriculture practice adoption of more than 55,000 row crop farmers in Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. Trust in Food and members of the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative, administered by Environmental Initiative, designed an engagement strategy rooted in producer insights and tested a range of values-based messaging and creative visuals over several months.

Outreach materials were designed to support project area farmers who were “not quite sure” about the benefits of sustainability practices. Strategically designed content provided information about the benefits of various programs and practices. The engagement was available in digital and print formats and across a range of channels including radio, email, websites, and social media. The approach performed at a rate of three-to-five times benchmark, demonstrating increased interest in the information. Additionally, a longitudinal study showed that sentiment related to conservation agriculture improved measurably in the project area during the one-year span.

As part of the first phase of the project, Environmental Initiative and Trust in Food™ developed ReachFarmersFaster.org, a web-based tool to share results and provide steps to help organizations design data-driven outreach and engagement strategies that more rapidly motivate producers to connect to conservation agriculture programs and resources.

“Connection is at the heart of any action. When farmers feel heard and understand their values are reflected in a program, they are more likely to engage,” said Deborah Carter McCoy, partnership and communications director at Environmental Initiative. “We are excited to offer data-driven communications and outreach support at this time of extraordinary opportunity in agriculture.”

From row crops to ranching

The Northern Great Plains encompasses more than 180 million acres across five states – Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming, and two Canadian provinces. This vast region is crucial for biodiversity supporting numerous plant and animal species found nowhere else on earth. Ranching is an integral component of the Northern Great Plains economy, history, and culture. Maintaining a healthy ecosystem as the climate changes is essential for the lands and animals depending on them and for the ranchers who produce the foraging livestock available in the market.

Over the next 24 months, Environmental Initiative and Trust in Food™ will apply a refined methodology to enhance ranchers’ readiness for conservation practices, using proprietary tools to assess and measure progress. This approach includes a detailed analysis of ranchers’ values, barriers, and drivers, guiding the design of a 12-month outreach effort. The objective is to demonstrate how understanding the unique motivations and challenges of different farmer groups can accelerate conservation success. Readiness to adopt conservation practices will be measured again at the end of the engagement campaign.