Spotlight Series
Collaboration for Sustainable Stewardship
Southwest Wisconsin has a relatively unique natural resource concern. The area’s karst topography, a natural landscape that is largely the result of chemical weathering by water, has created shallow soils and persistent groundwater quality concerns. Conversations about ways to address these water quality concerns have grown in recent years, and farmers have come to the table to help develop solutions.
“Farmers rely on clean water and healthy soil for their farms, so they know they have the responsibility to protect and improve those resources,” says Lauren Brey,, managing director of Farmers for Sustainable Food (FSF). “They are stepping up to do their part.”
That includes the development of the Lafayette Ag Stewardship Alliance (LASA), a farmer-led, nonprofit organization committed to the sustainable stewardship of the area’s natural resources. LASA aims to share and promote conservation practices that demonstrate continuous improvement and preserve and enhance the quality of life in the community.
In 2020, LASA became a Field to Market Continuous Improvement Accelerator Project, bringing together additional partners from across the agriculture value chain - FSF, Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative, Houston Engineering, Inc., The Nature Conservancy and Grande Cheese Company. This collaboration formed to help these farmers utilize tools and data to increase knowledge and maximize the benefits of on-farm conservation work.
“This project came about because farmer-led groups have been seeing great enthusiasm for adopting conservation practices and those practices getting established on the ground,” recalls Brey. “They wanted to take it to the next step and better understand what those practices mean for the environment and their bottom line. They’re committed to measuring their impact to put some data behind their actions.”
“This is about continuous improvement — more innovation, more collaboration, more data — to ensure we are protecting our natural resources and remaining productive,” says Jim Winn, dairy farmer, project participant, and LASA board president.
“In this project, LASA has had the opportunity to collaborate with a companies and others in the dairy supply chain, giving them new insights into the importance of consumer demand for sustainably grown food,” says Doug Thomas, senior scientist at Houston Engineering. “These insights have reinforced the importance of LASA’s goal to increase the adoption of conservation practices in their area and at the same time measure their impact in new ways such as greenhouse gas emission reduction and energy use.”
Lafayette Ag Stewarship Alliance (LASA)
Southwest Wisconsin
“Farmers are willing to do a lot of things, but they’re also looking for local partners or people buying their products to support them in the added responsibilities being asked of them. Everybody has to participate, from the farm to the processor to the retailer and everyone in between, and this project is proof that a farmer-led effort can succeed with supply chain support."
Lauren Brey
Managing Director
Farmers for Sustainable Food
The project utilizes the Fieldprint Platform™ to measure on-farm sustainability with Field to Market’s eight metrics. Partners are involved to help with the data input and collection needed for the Platform. Brey also noted the project partners are critical in securing funding and managing the project.
“The LASA project has been an opportunity for farmers to get information to better manage their farms, as well as have information to share their impact with the supply chain and their local community in terms that are meaningful to all those audiences,” explains Brey. “That’s why we like the Fieldprint Platform — the metrics are terms that mean something to you, no matter who you are. Farmers can use them to prove to their community that what they’re doing is helping.”
Results generated by the Platform provide individualized farm reports, aggregated/anonymized project results presented at farmer-to-farmer meetings, and project reports presented at LASA’s annual meeting and to project funders.
“A key component is providing resources to help farmers with data collection and input into the Fieldprint Platform, and also those one-on-one and group discussions to review results and help farmers understand what it means and what they can do to improve certain areas,” explains Brey.
“I have enjoyed working with LASA, helping them provide that critical opportunity for farmers to share lessons and ideas on how to succeed with new conservation practices,” says Steve Richter, director of agriculture strategies at The Nature Conservancy, Wisconsin. “I attend the group’s monthly board meetings and I am so impressed by the board’s conversations — the passion towards conservation is very evident in these conversations.”
The project also developed a Framework for Farm-Level Sustainability Projects so that other groups could follow their methods to achieve similar goals in other geographic locations.
“With everyone trying to figure out how to best answer sustainability questions and how to work together to gather data, we wanted to do something that could also be shared with others,” Brey says. “We wanted to create something that could help other people succeed, too.”
Collaboration has been integral to the success of this project, as it’s heard time and time again that it takes a village of support to achieve the best and most impactful outcomes.
“In early April, I got to visit with one of the LASA members,” Richter recalls. “Spending a couple hours with the family left me feeling proud that The Nature Conservancy was supporting LASA’s efforts to build more sustainability practices into their member’s farm operations.”
“Houston Engineering was happy to be involved in the project and to assist LASA in understanding how their work could be measured beyond just reducing soil erosion,” adds Thomas. “The group and individual participating farmers are now able to think about how changing or adding new conservation practices impacts greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, carbon, and groundwater.”
“Farmers are willing to do a lot of things, but they’re also looking for local partners or people buying their products to support them in the added responsibilities being asked of them,” says Brey. “Everybody has to participate, from the farm to the processor to the retailer and everyone in between, and this project is proof that a farmer-led effort can succeed with supply chain support.”
"We like the Fieldprint Platform — the metrics are terms that mean something to you, no matter who you are. Farmers can use them to prove to their community that what they’re doing is helping."
Lauren Brey
Farmers for Sustainable Food
