American Farmland Trust has fought to protect farmland in the Midwest for 27 years.  Sometimes called America’s breadbasket, the Midwest is blessed with prime farmland soils that are the envy of the world, but we know we can’t afford to take these priceless resources for granted.  That’s why we’ve been hard at work in this important region, and have made significant progress over the past year.  Here are a few highlights:

Protecting Crops While Enhancing the Environment

Over half of the horseradish in the United States is grown in Illinois.  Another 20 percent is grown in Wisconsin.  The industry has been facing a growing threat from fungal diseases that discolor the horseradish root and cause significant yield losses.  AFT is working with the Environmental Protection Agency to invest in integrated pest management strategies that help producers protect their crops from pests while enhancing the environment—and it is paying off!  Together we’ve helped many Midwest farmers protect their crops through healthy, sustainable integrated pest management practices.  

Securing the Economic Viability of Farms
Imagine a strategy to provide a profitable future for farmers and farmland.  That’s exactly what AFT is doing in conjunction with the Chicago Metropolitan Planning Commission’s GOTO2040 plan, which was recently ratified by counties surrounding Chicago, Illinois.  This regional plan is guiding future growth and promoting dialogue between the many stakeholders, thanks to AFT’s involvement!

Improving Water Quality for Our Communities

In August, AFT presented an overview of water quality trading to key agricultural stakeholder groups in the Raccoon River watershed in northwestern Iowa.  We were also asked to help design a state farmland protection program. Our goal is to preserve the agricultural land and reduce nutrient loading in Iowa watersheds in cost-effective ways. To learn more, watch the Water Quality Trading tutorial.

The Rewards of Environmental Stewardship

We conducted four listening sessions on water quality trading with Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky producers.  The audiences were receptive and had a desire to move forward to establish markets where wastewater treatment plants and industries facing expensive infrastructure upgrades can purchase water quality credits from farmers.  The intent is to meet new water quality standards and help farmers install conservation practices at a lower cost to achieve even better results. 

Helping Wisconsin Farmers

Following the enactment of Wisconsin’s Working Lands Initiative in June 2010, AFT is now helping spread the word to achieve a smooth implementation of the new land preservation tools now available to Wisconsin farmers.

More exciting projects now underway:

In August 2010, AFT started an ambitious three-year $1.5M project in the Upper Salt Fork watershed near Champaign, Illinois, to help its 120 farmers significantly reduce the run-off of nutrients and soil into the Mississippi River Basin.  By the end of September, AFT, in collaboration with key partners (the Champaign County Soil and Water Conservation District and USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service), had signed up 22 farmers to implement nutrient reduction conservation practices on nearly 4,000 acres of the 27,000-acre watershed for the 2011 growing season.

AFT, along with the IPM Institute, the Sandusky River Watershed Coalition and Heidelberg College, just took on the challenge of helping farmers in the Sandusky River watershed in North Central Ohio keep soil and nutrients out of Lake Erie.  Unique to this project, we’re focused on helping those farmers who manage critically undertreated acres that could benefit greatly from conservation practices.

The Conservation Marketplace of Minnesota is now up and running, thanks to AFT and our local and regional partners.  The CCM offers a market-driven approach to assist landowners and agricultural producers in their efforts to implement conservation practices through the generation of environmental credits.

Farm policy reform particularly impacts the Midwestern states since most of our farmers are enrolled in farm programs.  We are actively researching issues, planning for listening sessions with producers and identifying partners as we gear up for the 2012 Farm Bill and develop recommendations to improve this key piece of federal farm legislation. 

Anita Zurbrugg is AFT’s Midwest Director, Center for Agriculture in the Environment, where she combines two roles: conducting policy research and directing programs in the Midwest.

Washington’s Yakima Valley, a terrain of rugged hillsides and golden desert, is one of the top wine regions in the country. With an ideal climate for grapes and well-drained soils deposited by prehistoric floods, the valley is home to a third of the state’s vineyards. But the region’s many growers of wine and juice grapes face a formidable foe: the climbing cutworm. The nocturnal insect lives in vineyard soil, crawling from the ground in early spring. “The cutworm prefers to climb up the trunk and eat the buds that are swelling on the grape vine. Then the fruit’s gone,” explains Rick Hamman, viticulturist for Hogue Ranches and Mercer Estate Winery in Prosser, Washington.

Previously, Yakima Valley grape growers dealt with the cutworm threat by spraying an organophosphate insecticide that ended up killing beneficial insects while only minimally controlling cutworms. But then entomologist Doug Walsh from Washington State University in Prosser—a recipient of a research grant from the Environmental Protection Agency and American Farmland Trust—hit upon a better solution. His research team figured out they could apply a more environmentally friendly insecticide in a highly targeted fashion that avoided impacts to beneficial insects. By spraying only a banded area of the vine’s trunk rather than the entire vineyard canopy, cutworms were discouraged from climbing and destroying the fruit.

“The growers started using this solution, and it was a real cost savings to them,” says Walsh. “The grower response within two years was universal. At this point I think every grower around here has adopted this practice in some form.”

The innovation is saving Washington growers about $5.5 million a year and has reduced insecticide use by 84 percent, according to WSU researchers. “This has been great and has really helped us,” says Hamman. “It is a total success story. Doug nailed it. You can’t just sit back and do the same old thing. You’ve got to try something new.”

Click here to support funding for this and similar projects utilizing Integrated Pest Management.

On the outskirts of Wenatchee, a city in the heart of central Washington where golden hills surround endless miles of irrigated fruit orchards, a large apple-shaped sign reads, “Apple Capital of the World.” In a region that ships over 100 million boxes of apples a year around the nation and the world, education has been the key to helping growers—especially the valley’s many Latino orchard employees and managers—reduce their use of pesticides.

Apple and cherry grower Jesus Limón, who worked his way up the ranks at a fruit company in order to purchase his own Wenatchee Valley orchard, participated in a Latino orchard employee education program—funded by an EPA grant administered by American Farmland Trust—that teaches growers in Spanish about integrated pest management (IPM).

“You get hooked on it,” Limon says about the natural techniques for identifying and eliminating orchard pests. Since the 1970s, researchers have been exploring safer and more ecologically sound ways to manage pests like insects and plant diseases. IPM includes sustainable methods such as scouting for pests, weather monitoring, disruptions to a pest’s life cycle, and ways to reinforce a pest’s natural enemies.

The Wenatchee-region IPM classes—taught initially by pest management consultant Naná Simone and then by Leo Garcia and other IPM experts at Wenatchee Valley College—were integral in helping Limón reduce the use of pesticides in his orchard, which he then converted to 100 percent organic over a three-year period. “Knowledge is the best thing you can acquire,” Limón says. “The classes helped me tremendously because I couldn’t depend on the conventional sprays anymore.”

Limón’s conversion of his orchard to organic had a domino effect on the farms around him. “This guy just became organic and then the next guy and next guy,” Limón says, pointing to neighboring apple orchards. The program’s classes were such a success not only because the Spanish language instruction helped growers understand the complexities of IPM more quickly, but also because they were taught right in the student’s orchards and fit around the schedule of the farmers.

 “This is a much better way to get people to change,” Limón says. “This program got us away from [conventional chemicals] without forcing us. Trying to work with the farmer is better than being the mean guy on the block. If the EPA knew what this program really did for us, they would do more programs like it.”

Limón proudly points to wooden hawk boxes he installed on poles lining the rows of his apple trees. After two years, he finally got a family of hawks to move into his orchard. The hawks scare away birds that like to peck apples and cherries off the trees. This natural approach to managing wildlife is also an outgrowth of learning about IPM, Limón says. “I liked learning about how the bug populations worked. Once you start putting the pieces together, you see everything: the mice, the snakes, the cougars.”