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Talking Crop is a row crop production podcast that brings current trends, actionable management considerations, and research updates from guest experts to farmers, agribusiness representatives, and agriculture agency professionals.
Hello, and welcome to the Talking Crop podcast. I'm Kathryn Seebruck, Commercial Agriculture Educator with University of Illinois Extension serving Jo Daviss, Stephenson, and Winnebago Counties. Talking Crop is a seasonal crop production podcast with episodes occurring every other week during the growing season between May and September. In each episode, I bring on a guest speaker to discuss topics related to their areas of expertise. In today's episode, I'm joined by Katie Peterson, who is a Resource Conservationist with the Winnebago County Soil and Water Conservation District.
Kathryn:Katie and I discussed the difference between the Natural Resources Conservation Service and Soil and Water Conservation Districts. We went over some of the cost share programs that the Soil and Water Conservation Districts offer in addition to some offered by the NRCS, and we talked about how a farmer or a landowner would find more information about these programs and how to work with their local offices. We also discussed a really great resource offered by the Illinois Sustainable Ag Partnership that compiles all of the offered cost share programs into one neat database. The video description is where you can find any relevant links for each episode. For today's episode, you can find the link to the Illinois Sustainable Ag Partnership's FIND tool, the Winnebago County Soil and Water Conservation District website, the STAR program, and Katie's contact information. This is also where you can find a link to review the Talking Crop podcast. Now if you're a regular listener, you know I always insist that listeners review and evaluate the podcast, but despite this, I haven't received many submissions. In the event that some may be unaware, I want to direct you to where you can find the video links, which are, again, in that video description. To find the video description, if you're listening on a desktop computer, simply scroll down and you will see a light gray box under the podcast video itself that has the beginning of the video description listed. Click on more, and the box will expand so that you can see the entire description plus all of the links mentioned in the podcast.
Kathryn:If you're listening on a mobile device, tap on the video as it's playing, then click on the small square in the lower right hand corner. This will expand the video to full screen mode. Once in full screen mode, tap the video title at the top of the video, and this will open a panel on the right hand side that displays video information, including the description. You may need to click on the description to further expand it, after which you can scroll down to find the provided links. The next episode of Talking Crop will release on Wednesday, August 7, and I will be joined by Nicole Haverbach, an Illinois Extension Watershed Outreach Associate, to talk about the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy. With all that being said, enjoy this episode of Talking Crop, Talking Soil and Water Conservation District Cost Share Programs with Katie Peterson. Katie, thank you for joining me and welcome to this episode of the Talking Crop Podcast.
Katie:Thank you for having me!
Kathryn:Absolutely! As always, I like to just dive right in and start off with some questions. My first question for you should hopefully be an easy one seeing as you're the expert here, but can you describe for the audience what the Soil and Water Conservation District does? What is its role as a whole and if you want to talk specifically too about your role within the organization as well that would be great.
Katie:Okay, we do a wide variety of things but to put it in a nutshell we provide technical assistance and education or outreach on natural resources and conservation practices. My role within that I'm the Resource Conservationist I do a lot of infield stuff. I also do a lot of things for the city like I'll do zoning reports looking at natural resources that might be impacted during development or construction. Then I do a lot of educational things just touching bases with everybody else.
Kathryn:Awesome and with that it sounds like you work with a broad spectrum of different types of people I'll say. Obviously on my end it would be farmers and you said you also work with the city and also I'm assuming landowners as well right?
Katie:Correct. We have lots of people walk in or call our office so I deal with that too.
Kathryn:Okay. Just out of curiosity, t who do you think is like your largest audience as it pertains to people coming in and requesting your guys' services?
Katie:Definitely just landowners. We classify them all as customers, but the general public would be our biggest customer base. From there, we do a lot with the city workers, and municipalities.
Kathryn:Awesome, that's really interesting. I think for me I might be a little bit biased just because I think a lot of it from the terms of from a perspective I should say of farmers and landowners so it's interesting learning about all the other things you guys do as it pertains to city ordinances and things like that. Being that I come from more of the farmers and the landowners perspective, how might a farmer benefit from working with their county soil and water conservation district? If a farmer were to go into your guys' office, what kinds of things would they be going into your office for?
Katie:Honestly, it's a wide variety of variety of things, but I think our biggest benefit is that if somebody were to walk in with a problem and we can't solve it that day or we don't know what the solution might be, we do work with a lot of partners and we can usually check back in with that customer, once we do find out that answer or we can recommend a different agency for them to work with.
Kathryn:Okay, what other agencies might you either get referrals from or maybe refer others to?
Katie:A lot of times it'll either be the Extension office, honestly with you guys, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, the Farm Service Agency. Earlier today, I recommended somebody to contact the health department. Some of our other partners would be Pheasants Forever. Those are the biggest ones I can think of right now.
Kathryn:It sounds like you work with a lot of different institutions and I know we get questions on our end, like you guys, just a wide variety of them. And then either we take them or we do the same thing where we kind of hand them off to others like you guys. You mentioned the NRCS and I think a lot of the times at least for me and I know with others when I've had conversations with them, the difference between you guys Soil and Water and NRCS I think is a little bit hard to discern. As someone in the Soil and Water Conservation District what would you describe the difference between those two organizations as?
Katie:The biggest difference would be Soil and Water Conservation District where local government and then NRCS they do have local offices but they are a federal agency and that's important to note too when looking at their funding sources.
Kathryn:And probably their services. Because another thing I wondered too is do your guys' services overlap? Is there any program you do that NRCS does or are they completely separate or is there any interplay between the two?
Katie:Yep, a lot of our services overlap honestly and that's why I love that we all work together here in the same office because then we can try to find what's best for each customer, each farmer, whether that be regarding their goals, their timing, payment information, or the long term effects that they're looking for.
Kathryn:Okay yeah that would be a really nice benefit to have them them right next to you to make sure that what the the best direction is. With those services, I keep saying services, but I think what we'll dive into next is more like the programs that you guys offer to farmers, landowners, etc. Of course we'll probably stick to farmers and landowners here. What kinds of programs do you offer? You can talk about either really big ones.
Kathryn:I know there's a ton of them so we don't have to go through all of them but just are there any that you think would be important to note for the listeners?
Katie:Specifically we have a cost share program called the Partners for Conservation. It is a 75% cost share up to established rates and those rates are averages based off of past projects. They do get updated annually and then they do try to stick to local stuff so then it's an average of an area. Most common of those practices in that project would be waterways, cover crops, no till or strip till, pollinator plantings, and then we can do some other stuff like filter strips, well ceilings, bioreactors. From there sometimes they have cap payments, sometimes we have l acreage limitations, so if anybody's interested in that definitely best to reach out to our office. All soil and water conservation districts have the SCAH share program available.
Kathryn:Okay. If I were a farmer or a landowner and let's say I think one of the things you mentioned was a pollinator planting and I was interested in doing that, would I go into your office and say, Hey, I'm interested in this, and would one of your employees go out and survey the area that the individual is thinking? If you could walk me through how it would work whereby someone wants to implement one of those programs.
Katie:Specific to pollinator planting, it could be as hands on or hands off as the landowner or farmer would like. Whether that be starting out on-site looking at what they would need to do ahead of time, giving recommendations, and then up through post once the project is completed, we can come look at it and check stuff out. We can even help people identify species and stuff that they've planted. But going back from the beginning, once they come into our office we can t basically talk about that, whether they want to do a site visit or not, look at the area that they're interested in, to pollinator planting. We do a tenth of an acre up to 10 acres, and then we help them again like site recommendations ahead of time. We'll help you pick the right seed mixes and we do have a list of like seed sources.
Katie:And then we do have some contacts for seeding if somebody won't be able to seed it themselves. Then once that project is actually planted and established well just planted pretty much and got going we will collect all those bills from them and then it's just a couple of forms of paperwork signatures that kind of things and then they will receive payment once we get payment approval.
Kathryn:Okay awesome that's great. It's not just a here you can do this have fun, it's here you can do this and we have a lot of resources that will enable you to do it and make it easier for you too.
Katie:Absolutely and if somebody's more familiar with a project that they're doing we can be as hands off as them approaching us with a project they want to do. We just need a map of where they're going to do that and then just doing all the paperwork even by email.
Kathryn:Sure yeah that makes it really easy. I know another one of your programs that's pretty common or popular is the STAR program, Saving Tomorrow's Agriculture Resources. Can you talk a little bit about what that program entails?
Katie:Absolutely. The biggest time that we've been doing that currently is with our Partners for Conservation program. It is a requirement for that. But with the STAR program, it just looks at ag land specifically, it has to be a crop field. We look at crop rotation, whether implementing any other conservation practices like cover crops or waterways or whatnot, and then what their tillage is, what their nutrients are, if they're doing any soil sampling or soil testing, and then it gives you a rating of one to five stars.
Katie:So whether you were to be a one star or a five star right away, it's basically looking at what you're currently doing, rating it, and giving you some ideas of what you can do in the future to address that. A fun side note it was an Illinois only program so it was started here in Illinois and is now becoming a national program.
Kathryn:Awesome. Wow that's really significant. If you get a two star rating then you said how you'll get recommendations for other things you can do so that's to get a higher rating, right?
Katie:Right, yep and you get higher ratings by establishing more conservation practices pretty much.
Kathryn:Okay, gotcha. Out of curiosity, if someone has the highest rating, do you still give them recommendations or are they just kind of capped out?
Katie:They can still get recommendations on things that they can do. Say there's somebody who's already no tilling and cover cropping we can give them recommendations on like maybe introducing a more diverse cover crop mix or things like that that they could still do to help make more improvements.
Kathryn:Okay awesome yeah always something more to do right? So moving on and talking a bit about the NRCS programs because I know in the beginning you mentioned how you guys do very similar things and they can overlap and be very similar. The first one and I know we talked a little bit before we started recording here that the acronyms and such can kind of turn into letter salad. I know with them I hear CSP, CRP, EQIP those are the three big ones. I wondered if we could go through those starting with CSP or the Conservation Stewardship Program.
Katie:Absolutely. Know NRCS refers to it more as a continuing to do what you're already doing of practice and it's typically for some larger sized practices and whereas like EQIP, so the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, is what they classify as their fix it program. And it does have some higher rates just depending on the situation, but they do both cover the same practices. Some typical ones are like cover crops, no till, pollinator plantings, filter strips. There are some forestry things that you can do in either program as well if somebody were interested in that. But yeah, a lot of the same stuff that we can do in our cost share program.
Kathryn:Okay. Interesting. I think that was CSP and EQIP. What about CRP or the Conservation Reserve Program?
Katie:CRP is actually through the farm service agency, but then here in our office, I handle a lot of that just because they hire out that technical services. I do all like the field work for that but it is a cost share program to establish the conservation practice and it also has annual rental payments. So you get 50% cost share for establishment and then the annual rental payments are based on the soil types for the farm and those rental rates are established off of the county harvest averages, so that'll kind of fluctuate year to year depending on what the harvest will be. But again, a lot of the same common practices like waterways, filter strips, prairie or pollinator plantings, tree programs like riparian buffers. The one thing with CRP is it does have to have crop history to be eligible.
Katie:Okay, interesting.
Kathryn:A lot of these sound really great because they're enhancing conservation, protecting our resources, which in turn I know we've talked about in different episodes of this podcast and one in particular that those practices do have a secondary effect of also helping crop production which is fantastic. But I think the biggest thing especially from a farmers perspective is that cost share aspect of it. So you're not just helping your land, your soil, your water, etc, but also having that added benefit of getting some financial incentive for it. Do you feel that you get do people seem to appreciate that that's an option for them rather than them having to do all these out of their own money entirely?
Katie:I do see it a lot just both sides of the gate I think. So a lot of people do rely on that cost share incentives and then some people like to do things on their own even without the cost share because then they have more flexibility on what they can do. They don't have like the restrictions on things. Like I know CRP is a ten year, contract so that can scare people away sometimes a lot. It's nice to see both ends that people are using and utilizing them and some people don't but are still doing conservation.
Kathryn:I hadn't even thought about that. That's a great point that even though those programs are available and they can get that financial incentive from it, that they might still be implementing these practices but they're just not going through like an official means and doing it through these programs. Yeah I hadn't even thought about that that's interesting. And so we've talked about a few different programs here and I know it might be a little bit confusing to some people because it's like you said a lot of the actual practices that fall under these programs are very similar or identical between them, right? So it's kind of hard to know kind of hash them out and figure out which one's which.
Kathryn:I know another thing to kind of add into the complexity is that some of these are kind of list quote unquote stackable where if you do one you can also do another and then you'll get cost share from both. And so can you speak to that at all? Is there an easy way to figure out whether a program you want to do is stackable with another or I guess what's the status of all that?
Katie:Absolutely. The biggest thing that I've been told or I keep hearing from our partners is, like, most government programs generally aren't stackable. But then again, sometimes that that's not always the case. Mhmm. But, like, I know our SWCD cost share program is most of the time is not stackable, or I should say always is not stackable.
Katie:But I always refer to the Illinois Sustainable Ag Partnership has a couple different stacking matrices. So like they have one specific to edge of field practices and then they have one specific to cover crops, which I often refer to myself just because it's already done. Why? Break what's broken. Sure.
Katie:But I do like I just found out recently they have this new find tool which is called the financial incentive database. So it has 60 different financial programs that'll filter through, and you can filter by county, crop type, and conservation practices, and then you can even compare those, like, programs side by side once you get down to it. And I'm actually excited to use that myself this fall.
Kathryn:Yeah, that sounds like the perfect solution to what I was describing before where you don't know what a program is and you don't know if it's stackable. When you said I think it was 60 my mind was blown that there's that many programs to have to consider. So yeah that's great and so is there a link to that? Is it an online program I'm assuming or directory?
Katie:Yes so it is right on their website which I believe is Sustainable Egg. You know what I'll have to look for the link and get back
Kathryn:to you. That's okay, that's no problem because what we can do is we can speak offline and I can get those links from you and we can The links for those listening will be in the video description which you can find below this video. We will provide any and all links that we deem relevant from today's conversation and put them in in that video description so it's easy to find for listeners. Especially we might put that ag partnership one directory right at the top just because that's extremely helpful as a resource. So I had a question just and I don't know if you have an official number on this or if it's just kind of an opinion based on what you've seen, but with the different programs that you work with on a daily basis, which ones do you feel are kind of the most popular and why might that be the case?
Katie:So with my opinion I think CRP is the most popular one just because it's widely known and it's been around for a long time. I also think EQIP and CSP are starting to gain more recognition. They are starting to branch out and get more programs within them. I'm sure everybody's heard of the IRA funds, the Inflation Reduction Act funding that we're getting. I think that's starting to one) send more funds their way and two) be able to get more practices that they can utilize in those as well.
Kathryn:Okay, nice. And then what about I guess the opposite of that? Are there any programs that you think might not be super widely known but you might wish that they were more widely known or were more utilized?
Katie:I honestly think I wish our cost share program, so the Partners for Conservation, was more known about. I think some people just don't know it's an option because we are such like a local small office And I hear all the time too that like we're the easier side of quote unquote easier side of conservation programs as far as like we have less paperwork. It is just for establishment so it's not like a long term commitment too. Okay.
Kathryn:And so with that Partners for Conservation is that just just your office is doing that or are there other soil and water conservation district offices in Illinois doing it as well?
Katie:So it is available in every soil and water conservation district and it is 75% cost share for each office as well.
Kathryn:Okay great, that's awesome. So yeah we've covered a kind of a wide range of things so far today. Some kind of you know quick and fast and so if someone's listening and they're still like I don't know if like I need to go find some more information, how would that person go about getting more information and finding information about these programs?
Katie:They can definitely reach out to their local soil and water office or if they wanted to reach out to a specific agency that we've talked about today, definitely do that, like NRCS or FSA because I know we talked about their programs a lot. Otherwise, if they wanted to reach out to our office specifically, they can reach us by phone. Our phone number is (815) 965-2392. They can just drop by otherwise they can check out our website as well which is winnebagoswcd.org so that will have our address in like an email contact as well.
Kathryn:Awesome, perfect. I have one last question for you and this is coming from kind of an Extension side of things. I know this is outside of Extension too but Extension does a lot of work in the area of the Illinois nutrient loss reduction strategy. I know there's lots of talk about getting that strategy achieved. And so we have been talking a lot about obviously stewardship programs, conservation programs, and that helps with water quality, health, all of that.
Kathryn:So would you say that these programs help with achieving the goals of the nutrient loss reduction strategy?
Katie:Yes I would and I actually think that we're starting to track some of these programs and their benefits better for the nutrient loss reduction strategy.
Kathryn:Okay awesome. Yeah that's really great because I think you know you can kind of double up your goals. Like if that's something that you're interested in contributing to is you know reducing that nutrient loss because obviously from a farmer's perspective that's you know money but then also just conserving your resources as a whole. I think doubling that up and then having that extra incentive of getting cost share in that too, I think all of that is just really great all put together in one nice package. Katie again thank you so much for joining me and providing me and the listeners with all this really great information.
Kathryn:Hopefully you guys get some hits especially with that new directory and when people find out about that stackability and are able to easily see that up front hopefully you guys get some contacts about kind of doubling up your programs with others.
Katie:Absolutely! Thanks for having me!