An Overview Of Our Solution
River Alliance of Wisconsin's Clear Water Farms Program works to change the behavior of farmers and agricultural processors in Wisconsin in order to make water protection an essential norm of their business and commitment to their communities. We achieve this by identifying leaders in farm water stewardship and positioning them to convince other farmers and processors that water conservation is achievable and consistent with farm productivity. Clear Water Farms leverages social and stakeholder networks to change the norms around farm water stewardship, provides informational and step-by-step technical guidance on practice improvements, access to formal water stewardship certifications, and the ability to participate in policy change efforts at the state level.
- Population Impacted: 94,000+ families in Wisconsin with contaminated drinking water
- Continent: North America
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More than 94,000 families in Wisconsin cannot safely drink the water in their homes because it is contaminated with nutrient runoff, primarily from agriculture. This contributes directly to eutrophication, fish kills, hypoxia, and nitrate-linked health hazards to humans. Despite expensive long-term efforts to control agricultural water pollution, change has been slow because farmers have had few incentives to comply with regulations, and the economic costs of compliance are very high for farms that are operating with narrow profit margins. The ecological stability of Wisconsin's water (which contributes to the Mississippi River's nutrient loading problems) is at a tipping point. For example, in order for us to meet the Total Maximum Daily Loading limits for the Wisconsin River, we would need to reduce agricultural runoff in some areas by 90 percent. Without a major reversal of state policy, changes will need to begin with the leadership of the agricultural community itself.
Décrivez la solution technique que vous voudriez voir le public cible adopter.
Our chief technical solution to this problem is the implementation of nutrient management plans and water stewardship plans at the farm and processor scale, and ultimately the adoption of price and risk analysis-driven incentives implemented by agricultural products purchasers and processors connected to these plans. Understanding that there are significant differences between individual farms, these plans minimally require the adoption of cover cropping, reduced tillage practices, perennial planting, and greater water efficiency. It is part of the technical solution, we believe, to develop and publicize these plans so that stakeholders can see them, understand them, and hold farms accountable. This is also important for influencing peer farmers to participate. Our biggest challenge in Wisconsin is implementation and consistency rather than data collection on nutrient loss and sensitivity.
Décrivez votre intervention comportementale.
Our approach to implementation is firmly rooted in behavioral change. Historically, this has been attempted through command and control regulation that penalizes non-compliance. While this is still essential, it has proved woefully ineffective. There is no way to make water stewardship an enduring element of farming in the state unless it is internalized as a norm of "good farming." Reviews of farmer decision-making show unequivocally that (1) farmers in our region are only significantly influenced by other farmers and their input and insurance dealers; and (2) land stewardship still ranks highly in farmer self-valuation. As a result, we have worked to partner with farmer-led watershed groups, processors, input dealers and others to identify financially successful farmers with stand-out stewardship practices. We then help them get recognition for these efforts and build opportunities for them to influence potential next-adopters in their immediate area. A critical mass of participating farmers changes the calculus from one in which deviation from environmentally damaging conventional methods are socially sanctioned into one in which failure to participate in stewardship is socially sanctioned. We support this by trying to funnel credentials, recognition, and financing toward these farmers as an extra incentive.
Leviers comportementaux utilisés
Au besoin, veuillez expliquer comment vous avez utilisé le ou les leviers avec plus de détails.
We use all of Rare's "Levers of Behavioral Change." We provide information through step-by-step resources for farm-scale stewardship plans consistent with AWS International Certification. We host, partner, and facilitate events with farmers and others on water stewardship. We actively participate in the development of rules & regulations at the state and county levels. We provide material incentives through financially supporting certifications and working to build price incentives for stewardship within local supply chains. We use emotional appeals through our social media and direct farmer outreach to share their personal pride and hope for the environment with our members. We leverage social influences by highlighting farmer-leaders to make them into trusted messengers and advocates and produce public commitments. By implementing stewardship plans and supply chain pressures we create choice architecture for water protection.
Décrivez votre mise en œuvre.
To address the agricultural nutrient pollution problem in Wisconsin, we believe it is necessary for farmers and processors to internalize a commitment to water stewardship as a norm of business. We work to implement this in three main ways. The first is through providing resources and incentives to pursue structured water stewardship planning at the individual farm scale. Rather than simply trying to verify that runoff meets empirical metrics, the implementation and promulgation of a plan requires the development of processes that persist over time and adjust to new conditions. River Alliance partnered with the Alliance for Water Stewardship to apply their International Standard to farms for the first time. Last year we successfully certified the first farm in North America to this rigorous standard. This year we are working to scale adoption of stewardship planning to other farms in a few select watersheds. This is part of a general effort to make water stewardship planning and practice implementation a common norm of farming in Wisconsin. The key enabling conditions have included deep engagement with farmer-led groups supported by county conservation departments and local processors and input dealers. Success has been measured both in increasing adoption of stewardship planning and rising amounts of acreage under conservation practice. The main obstacles this year have been COVID-related, as much of this work relies on in-person networking that has been less possible than we would like. We have overcome this through virtual meetings and producing guidance documents to help farmers self-implement, but we expect to be fully active in the field again soon.
Décrivez le leadership de votre solution. Qui dirige la mise en œuvre?
Ultimately, the leadership for our work is driven by the farmers who we support. We have intentionally endeavored to make them the focus and the guiding voices because we know that they are much more meaningful advocates to their peers than an environmental conservation non-profit. As such, we have designed our programs, materials, and media to place them at the center. The director of the Clear Water Farms Program, Dr. Michael Tiboris, has many years of experience in water policy and agricultural stewardship behavior change. Farmers in Wisconsin are not an especially diverse group. However, the community supporting them and reliant on their production is extremely diverse. For instance, more than 80% of the farm labor force is immigrant or migrant. Stakeholder involvement is a central feature of the stewardship plans we support, and they explicitly require the inclusion of relevant tribal leaders, immigrant populations, and communities of color.
Principaux intervenants et partenaires du programme
Because water quality issues touch so many groups within our state, our work is necessarily dependent on relationships with a wide diversity of stakeholder groups. We have long worked with tribal governments, lake associations, state government agencies, other environmental non-profits, university extension, county conservation departments, industry groups, and our more than 1500 River Alliance members across the state. The key partners in our stewardship planning efforts have included the Alliance for Water Stewardship North America, which administers the AWS International Standard; the Eau Pleine Partnership for Integrated Conservation, which is a farmer-led watershed group we co-founded in Central Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin Extension, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection. We are active participants in other agricultural water conservation projects in the state, as well as agriculture industry groups.
Qui a adopté le(s) comportement(s) souhaité(s) et dans quelle mesure?
While we have been active in the regions we work for many years, the certification elements of this program began its pilot effort to certify a farm to the rigorous AWS standard last year and completed its first certification in September 2019. This was the first successful certification of a farm to the AWS Standard in North America. We have used that success to both advocate for broader adoption of the practices that farm used as well as engage multiple other farms and processors in various aspects of certification. We cannot claim credit for the nearly 300% increase in no-till and cover crop adoption over the last year, but believe that our efforts and presence have contributed to these outcomes. Norm internalization is difficult to measure, but we have many years of experience in advocacy and are extremely encouraged by the social energy and collaboration we are seeing.
Quel a été votre impact sur la pollution de l'eau?
The hydrology and dynamics of field management do not permit meaningful empirical measurement of pollution reductions at either the field or watershed scale currently. There are simply too many farms and not enough data to do this. Moreover, field-level data collection is almost entirely achieved through modeling rather than sample collection. Focusing on this misses the forest for the trees. We are perfectly aware of what needs to happen--farms need to implement stewardship plans and to adopt the basic practices of continual living cover, no-till, inter-seeding, riparian buffers, and prairie restoration. Our goal is to increase practice adoption with the expectation that numeric water quality improvements will not be recognized for many years. We have no hesitation in saying that practice improvements we support will yield water quality benefits over time. This is a slow process and norm internalization is imperative.
Quel a été l'impact de votre solution sur les problèmes d'équité?
Two elements of our implementation have impacted equity and we have plans to extend them over the next couple years. The first is that the watershed coordination group we formed to facilitate practice experimentation includes representation from a large number of stakeholder organizations which represent a diversity of members and perspectives. The second is that our stewardship plans guidelines explicitly require farms to detail their existing efforts to engage stakeholders from historically disadvantaged groups. Where they do not have existing efforts, they are required to develop them. Over the coming years, we will be working with the immigrant and migrant farm labor organizations in the area to include environmental quality and water access in their negotiations.
Quels ont été les co-bénéfices environnementaux de votre solution?
Reduced nitrate-nitrogen, phosphorus, agricultural chemicals, and bacteria have a significant impact on environmental health. In the regions we work, the main issues are related to direct toxicity, eutrophication, and low oxygen levels. Erosion is also a major concern. The stewardship practices that are endemic to our work with individual farms can make a significant difference here if broadly adopted.
Quels ont été les avantages connexes de votre solution par rapport au développement durable?
The agricultural community in Wisconsin is well aware that the path it is on is not economically sustainable for the long term. The regulatory risks and treatment costs for water as severely contaminated as it is inclined to become are exceptionally high. The processors we work with are very interested in anticipating these costs and using the public's increased willingness to pay for sustainable production as a way to implement it in the supply chain.
Durabilité : Décrivez la durabilité économique de votre solution.
At present, our program relies largely on grant funding. While we aim to facilitate the creation of market-based incentives for stewardship practices at the farm level, our program activities are not funded by this model. Our staff is committed to solving an environmental change problem by influencing farmers' normative commitments and the enabling choice architecture elements of regulation, subsidy, public reputation, and price premiums. Our intention is that, once these elements are firmly in place they will be self-supportive.
Retour sur investissement : Combien a coûté la mise en œuvre de ces activités?
Our costs are largely related to staff time, specialist consulting from agronomists, and subsidization of certification activities. The return on investment is difficult to measure because network development, advocacy, and norm internalization are not strictly priced activities. But we have been very effective at extending our advocacy with modest resources.
Comment pourrions-nous reproduire cette solution ailleurs avec succès?
There is nothing that works to change farmer behavior besides supporting peer influence. This is well borne out by research and experience. In places with conventional agricultural systems tied to commodity markets, there is little room for radical experimentation. We have had success working at the individual level with farmers in small areas to produce networks of co-influence. This is absolutely replicable, and at scale. However, it must (we believe) be implemented from the grassroots level up. Thus funding depends on the amount necessary to create a critical mass of farmer peers who are following the same stewardship planning structure. The key partners are (1) unambiguously successful farmers who are stewardship leaders; (2) processors or other companies representing the local farm supply chain; (3) local and regional conservation organizations; (4) local residents. The ability to build these networks an have them meet regularly is imperative.