New Reports Help Conservation Professionals Understand What to Expect for Watershed Monitoring and Farmer Outreach Efforts

Watershed management in agricultural watersheds commonly includes monitoring to track changes in water quality and outreach to farmers to encourage their involvement in educational events and conservation practice adoption. But what results can conservation practitioners realistically expect of these efforts, especially when budgets and timeframes can be limited?

A new series of reports, published by a multi-state team of university Extension professionals and researchers, shares insights to help guide conservation practitioners in how they deploy monitoring and farmer outreach. The team was led by University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension and comprised of Extension professionals from Purdue University and University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.

Each report presents case study, along with the results and the implications for watershed monitoring and farmer outreach generally. A bottom-line takeaway from the set may be that detecting and making large-scale change – whether to water quality or farmer involvement – is a long game.

Watershed Monitoring Requires Thoughtful Design

Despite its importance, watershed monitoring to detect changes in water quality is tricky, especially given short grant cycles. The first report provides an overview of common monitoring challenges in watershed projects, along with guidance on how to intentionally design monitoring efforts to generate useful data for making progress.

Its case study focused on a pair of watersheds in Indiana, where the “treatment” watershed represented about a decade’s worth of conservation practice implementation and the “control” watershed served as a reference, where no to very few conservation practices had been implemented. A decade’s worth of monitoring data showed significant reductions in nitrate concentrations – but not in the other runoff variables – in the treatment watershed.

The case study underscores that using monitoring effectively to measure change and inform decisions is a long-term commitment, not quick proof of success.

Edge-of-field Monitoring Has Management Value to Producers

Poultry litter use by farmers has been on the rise in places like Arkansas as a way to boost crop productivity while cutting fertilizer costs. However, there are still question marks about how much poultry litter contributes to nutrient runoff and what that means for fertilizer application and management.

The second report documents a case study of edge-of-field monitoring on rice fields with poultry litter applications in Northeast Arkansas over a three-year period. Results showed low nutrient concentrations in runoff water, unalarming increases in phosphorus levels in the soil, and increased soil organic matter.

The case study underscored the need to continue collecting monitoring data over the long-term to not only ensure continued poultry litter application does not tip the trend into a concerning direction, but also to help farmers be efficient and economical with their use of the fertilizer.

Conservation Leadership Training Can Boost Farmer Willingness to Engage Peers

A common challenge in farmer-led conservation efforts is recruiting more farmers to be involved and sustaining efforts in the long run. As voluntary efforts, farmer-led conservation can suffer from burnout among existing farmer leaders and limited willingness among other farmers to become involved. One solution may be providing farmers training that builds their confidence and capacity to become more involved.

The third report documents the results of a pilot training geared toward exactly that, called Skills for Building Farmer Networks for Conservation. The training covered key skills, or competencies, farmers need to be effective peer leaders in conservation, as identified through qualitative research. These competencies are highlighted in a research brief also published by the project team.

Results showed the training boosted participating farmers’ willingness to lead and their confidence to do so. But it also highlighted that farmers may need continued encouragement beyond a single training, as well as strong relationships with conservation professionals, for their true leadership potential to blossom.

Digital Advertising May Boost Digital Engagement But Not In-Person Participation

Farmer outreach in watershed management has traditionally relied on relationships, often in the form of conversation and trust between farmers and conservation professionals. While valuable, this form of outreach has limitations, particularly when it comes to reaching farmers who are not yet practicing conservation agriculture. Could digital advertising – such as social media ad, website ads, and text blasts – expand the reach of traditional farmer outreach and bring more farmers in the door?

The fourth report documents a case study that assessed whether digital advertising can augment relationship-driven outreach by increasing farmer participation in the aforementioned pilot leadership training and in field days. Results showed that, while digital advertising generated higher than predicted digital engagement, this did not translate to noticeably higher participation in the training or field days. In fact, most farmers who participated in both types of events indicated they had heard about it from their local conservation technician or Extension educator.

The case study suggests that, while digital advertising was effective for getting the word out more broadly than relationship-driven outreach alone, in-person relationships were still critical for encouraging a farmer to actually participate.

Header photo credit: Arkansas Discovery Farms