AFT Celebrates Five Years of Soil Health Stewards Program
Toolkit released to assist agricultural land conservationists in promoting the benefits of soil health
(Washington, D.C.) American Farmland Trust is celebrating the fifth year of its Soil Health Stewards program, a national effort to educate the agricultural land protection community that healthy soils drive productive farmland and viable farms and ranches. Soil Health Stewards is one of several initiatives offered through AFT’s National Agricultural Land Network (NALN), a national information and peer learning network building the capacity of individuals, organizations and state and local governments to do more to retain and protect America’s threatened working farm and ranch lands.
Launched in 2021, the program trained and supported staff from 123 land trusts and state and county agencies that administer state and local farm and ranch land protection programs. Through the program, participants learn about the basics and benefits of improved soil health; barriers to and economics around soil health practice adoption; assessing soil health; connecting producers and landowners to financial resources and technical service providers; and using conservation easement deed terms, conservation and management plans, and easement stewardship to promote soil health on permanently protected farm and ranch lands. In total, 239 staff from 36 states have graduated from the program.
“The agricultural land protection community is in a unique position to support and assist producers and landowners who want to see their land remain productive and profitable for future generations,” said Cris Coffin, Director of AFT’s National Agricultural Land Network. “And over five years we’ve seen this community really step up to provide information, help assess soil quality, and connect farmers and ranchers to the technical support and financial resources they need to build better soil health.”
Program impacts have been significant. A component of the program requires participating agencies and land trusts, in exchange for a small grant, to develop and then report on progress towards a multi-year action plan guiding their soil health work. Since the program began, participants estimate that they collectively reached over 260,000 farmers, ranchers, landowners, and additional land trust and agency staff and board members through outreach, educational events, and stewardship activities. Participants estimate that the producers and landowners they’ve engaged to date steward over 6.5 million acres of farmland and ranchland.
To expand the reach of the Soil Health Stewards program to additional agricultural land protection practitioners, AFT recently released a Soil Health Toolkit on the Farmland Information Center website. The toolkit, developed primarily for a land protection audience, includes core soil health principles and practices and covers both the benefits and barriers farmers face in improving soil health. It offers suggestions for engaging producers and agricultural landowners and lays out key considerations in addressing soil health through permanent conservation easements and easement stewardship. The toolkit also describes different resource assessment tools as well as technical and financial assistance programs offered by USDA’s National Resources Conservation Service.
“The Soil Health Toolkit is a critical guide to help people understand the relationship between conservation easements and soil health, and how they work together,” said AFT Farmland Information Center Director and Senior Advisor Jennifer Dempsey. “The materials are invaluable to help practitioners engage, educate, and connect producers and landowners with soil health networks, technical support and providers, and financial assistance for practice adoption.”
In addition to the toolkit and grant funds, program graduates have benefited from:
Training and ongoing technical support from AFT’s national Climate and Soil Health division led by former NRCS founding Soil Health Division Director Dr. Bianca Mobius-Clune
Access to a range of resources around the economics of soil health, including “soil health successful” case studies developed from AFT’s Retrospective Soil Health Economic Calculator (R-SHEC) Tool, which evaluates the costs and benefits of various soil health conservation practices
An opportunity to be part of the National Agricultural Land Network and a supportive community of practitioners committed to explore new ways to help farmers and ranchers protect their land and improve its productivity and resilience for future generations
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provided vital financial support for the first five years of the program.
“We are tremendously grateful to NRCS for its support of this program,” said NALN Director Cris Coffin. “It makes a lot of sense to invest in building soil health on permanently protected farm and ranch land, especially land that NRCS has helped to conserve for future generations of producers. If we want to set the next generation up for success, what better way to do that than start with healthy, productive and resilient soils.”
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American Farmland Trust is the only national organization that takes a holistic approach to agriculture, focusing on the land itself, the agricultural practices used on that land, and the farmers and ranchers who do the work. AFT launched the conservation agriculture movement and continues to raise public awareness through our No Farms No Food® message. Since our founding in 1980, AFT has helped permanently protect over 8 million acres of agricultural lands, advanced environmentally sound farming practices on millions of additional acres and supported thousands of farm families.
