Managing Organizational Farmland for Conservation
2022 - 2023: Survey and Interview Report
Introduction
You are likely reading this because your work compels you to wrestle with one of humanity’s fundamental challenges – how do we use the land and water around us for our survival and prospering without fatally diminishing nature in the process?
This report will, I hope, be valuable to you as you and your organization address that challenge around farmland.
The core content you will find here is practical information about how 11 public and private conservation-minded, farmland-owning institutions in the Midwest are managing their 100,000+ acres of farmland holdings. That information comes in the form of responses to our survey, followup interviews, and other responses. We have provided some analysis and synthesis as well.
Our purpose was to contribute to this emerging and important community of practice. The majority of organizations whose information you will find here are public institutions which were not established to manage farmland. Managing the farmland they acquired for eventual restoration to natural habitat was, at first, largely an afterthought. After all, the leaders of the organizations assumed the farmland was not going to be farmland for very long.
But several things changed over time. First, there came to be a much broader awareness across society that the dominant forms of production agriculture in North America are profoundly damaging. Land, water, wildlife, and even the soil biome, an ecosystem increasingly recognized for being foundational for the working of nature and regenerative agronomy, have all suffered. Second, it became clear that many of the public organizations would not be able to carry out restoration of all of their farmland any time soon. And third, some private organizations, like land trusts, began to focus on owning and managing farmland specifically for marrying agriculture with conservation.
Liberty Prairie, a farmland-owning nonprofit organization in Grayslake, Illinois, saw these confluence of factors and pitched in to help develop the field of conservation-minded institutional farmland management. In 2018, our first report of this kind featured survey answers from eight organizations. As farmland management systems continued to evolve among the public entities, several asked if we could do an update of the surveys. We were happy to do so. The project resonated with our originating values around conservation and agriculture, and we deeply respected the energy and convictions of the organizations’ staff. We also wanted to contribute to a community of practice so that the staff and their organizations could be more effective by having opportunities to share ideas, lessons, and resources.
We are hopeful the information in this report will be useful to you and your organization as you engage the challenge of managing hundreds and even thousands of acres of farmland in ways that are regenerative for land, water, and wildlife while dealing with human and ecological complexity. The good news is that people like you are being innovative at a time when a mind-boggling array of regenerative forms of agriculture are being developed and rediscovered across the globe. Press on.
This report would not be possible without the generosity of the organizations that shared their information, without the thought partnership and support of Stepwell Strategies, and without the funding support of Food:Land:Opportunity: Localizing the Chicago Foodshed. We offer our gratitude to all of them.
Sincerely,
Nathan Aaberg
Director, Conservation and Working Lands
Liberty Prairie
Surveys & Interviews
In the second half of 2022, we sent surveys to 10 farmland-owning organizations on various aspects of their farmland management systems. In early 2023, those 10 organizations plus the Iowa Department of Natural Resources were kind enough to participate in followup interviews with us, which allowed us to dive deeper into particular aspects of their systems that we were intrigued by from their survey responses. The first grouping of logos below is of the 10 organizations that were participants in the survey. Click on their organizational logos to view each organization’s individual survey responses, interview summaries, and resources.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources did not participate in the survey but did provide an overview of their farmland management system and was willing to be interviewed. Clicking on the Iowa DNR logo will allow you to read its overview statement, interview summary, and resources.
Scroll past the logos to efficiently compare answers to survey questions across organizations and see consolidated quantitative information. We do recommend taking in the interview summaries for the organizations whose practices are especially interesting to you, as the “backstory” can be very illuminating.
Interview summary, resources, and contact information only:
Explore the Data
Below you will find two interactive tools that will allow you to dive into the survey results in the context of all of the survey responses so you can compare and contract. The first conveys the quantitative data collected, while the second allows you to view the narrative responses. Use the bar at the top of each section to navigate through the survey questions and responses.
Quantitative Data
Narrative Responses
Insights and Observations
Below we share some observations that have emerged from our experience of producing two survey reports in the last five years and from working closely with a number of organizational farmland managers for nearly ten years. To be clear, these are the writer’s own analyses and opinions. These are not those of any of the participating organizations. These insights are also just the tip of the iceberg as this is a field of practice that would benefit from more exploration and development.
Nature-friendly agriculture is essential for whole landscape conservation
For some time, conservation has had an uneasy relationship with agriculture. This is not surprising in light of the negative impacts conventional industrial farming has had on land, water, and the life of native ecosystems. Although ecological pioneers like Aldo Leopold gave a great deal of thought to the intersection of conservation and farming, conventional conservation for some time has become largely focused on preserving and restoring areas of pristine native habitat with little regard for the wide swaths of farmland that often surround those areas. There is no question that core reserves of restored and maintained habitat are essential for giving flora and fauna sanctuaries for long-term survival. There is a growing realization across the globe, however, that archipelagoes of habitat will not be enough for true resilience for wildlife. Wildlife need to be able to move between those islands and even live outside of those islands on private land, even land that is being used for human purposes. And those islands will not be true sanctuaries if activities beyond their borders harm and diminish flora and fauna across the whole landscape.
Applying conservation principles to farmland owned by conservation-focused organizations returns these organizations to the roots of the modern ecology movement. As Leopold insisted, the land is one organism. Happily, visionary conservation leaders, including staff and former staff at organizations interviewed in this report, have recognized this. It’s imperative that many more farmland-owning leaders and their boards do so as well.
Nature-friendly agriculture is community-friendly agriculture.
Agriculture practices that build soil life and support local ecologies have benefits far beyond wildlife. Practices that build soil life help a community reduce erosion and flooding. Studies have found that each one percent increase in organic matter enables an acre of land to hold up to 25,000 more gallons of stormwater. The ability of farmland to hold water will become ever more important in coming years as a changing climate brings more intense storms and longer periods of drought. Reducing or eliminating fertilizer use also protects drinking water and recreational use of waterways. Professors David Montgomery and Anne Bikle detail in What Your Food Ate that food produced from soil with thriving ecologies is more nutritious than food coming from unhealthy soils depleted of life. And, finally, organic and regenerative farming can boost net income per acre, enabling more families to profitably live in the same area and bring more life back to their Main Streets.
In short, even if a public and/or civic-minded organization with farmland holdings is not specifically driven by conservation values, it more truly serves the public and the commonwealth of its community if it manages its farmland with conservation outcomes as an indicator of how well it is managing its farmland.
Managing an organization’s farmland (especially in public organizations) in ways friendly to conservation is hard for many reasons.
There are a variety of reasons for this. The following are just some of those factors:
- Availability of farmers: In densely populated counties with little farmland left, it can be very hard to find farmers of any kind, much less conservation-committed farmers. Some forest preserve districts in counties where farming is almost extinct are facing the prospect of not being able to keep land in farming at all. It can also be hard to find farmers, even in more rural areas with many farmers, who are willing to take conservation to a deeper level. The reality is that the percentage of farmers dedicated to truly regenerative and/or organic farming, while growing, is still very low in many areas. In some places, farmers balk at even basic conservation measures like cover crops. And to be fair, the current agricultural system, including the crop insurance program of the USDA, makes farmers perceive conservation-friendly agriculture as an unnecessary and risky approach. This whole situation requires organizational farmland managers to figure out what conservation practices to require and which ones to incentivize. Require too little, and little conservation progress is made above or below ground. Require too much without sharing risks and resources with the farmers and you risk not having anyone to farm the land.
- Tension between the efficiency of standardization and the uniqueness of the context of each field: Management of many pieces of land when staff resources are few adds further complexity. Management of anything is “easiest” when it is done in simplified, standardized ways. But each parcel of land is unique as is its ecological context. So attentive farmland managers must wrestle with the tension of needing to have some standardization and yet also needing to customize the farming for each site. Good examples of this are the systems of the Illinois DNR and Iowa DNR which combine a standardized leasing template with customized management adjustments made by local conservation staff.
- Desire to maximize revenue and make revenue flows predictable: The revenue imperative, especially when an organization relies on farmland lease income as a significant source of funding for operations or land management, can impact how much organizations prioritize conservation and can constrain farmland managers. Most row crop lease pricing, for example, is bid at a price level that is either the same for all years of the lease or fluctuates on a formula. In either case, the pricing system is built on commodity corn and bean economics. What is best for the soil in row crops systems, however, is a longer rotation that includes years when small grains are planted that pair well with mid-summer plantings of cover crops. But small grains do not generate corn-and-bean levels of income so a corn-and-bean lease pricing system is prejudiced against small grain production and its benefits. Maximizing crop revenue can also disincentivize organizations from trimming tillable acreage for good edge-of-field practices.
- Infrastructure: Most public and private entities seek to avoid owning and maintaining infrastructure, partly because it is a depreciating asset that requires maintenance and partly because it is a hindrance to eventual restoration to native habitat. But the most regenerative forms of agriculture integrate livestock in some way, and livestock production requires water and fencing. How to reconcile these tensions remains a major challenge.
- The world of chemical inputs: One of the defining features of conventional row crop agriculture is the widespread use of chemical inputs. This is perhaps the most underestimated threat to conservation-led farm management because of many chemicals’ negative and yet hard-to-see impacts on life on the land, in the water, and in the soil biome itself. Most farmers do not know all of the details of what they are applying nor of their negative side effects. This is not surprising as the total chemical input universe includes thousands of active ingredients, combinations of those ingredients, associated inert ingredients, and various ways of applying those inputs, including seed coatings which are not regulated by the U.S. government. Asking overstretched farm managers at relatively small public and private organizations to each be experts on the pros and cons of thousands of variations of ag chemicals, which even trained conservation agronomists must carefully study, is asking too much.
One shortcut to preventing chemical harm to the ecology of farm fields and their surroundings is to transition land to certified organic production. A shortage of organic farmers is a significant obstacle in many but not all cases. We believe significant conservation advances could be made if more organizations creatively and energetically pursued organic farming options, even if that meant using incentives and providing some agronomic assistance to farmers with no organic farming experience. Collaborative learning and policy-setting on agricultural chemicals by farmland-owning organizations in an area or even a region could also be a wise and efficient approach on many levels. - Organizational complexities: Farmland management, even of just one field, is itself complex. Doing so across many fields adds to the variables and challenges. Working within organizations adds a whole other dimension of challenge. This is especially true of public organizations that operate within a dense thicket of internal management structures, legacy restrictions, politics, laws, and many other factors.
In short, the “habitat” of the farmland manager in a conservation organization is a highly complex one. Farmland-owning organizations that commit themselves in their policies and practices to applying conservation principles to their farmland management help mitigate some of the challenges their farmland managers face. There are also farmland managers who, because of their tenacity and commitment to conservation, take on all of those challenges with little organizational support. They deserve much credit.
Conservation-minded organizational farmland management is a field of its own where mutual learning is beneficial and needed.
The unique challenges and unique context of organizational farmland management for conservation make for a unique professional niche. It deserves to be recognized as a field of its own. We believe that members of that field would strongly benefit from communities of practice where farmland managers and their organizations can learn together. We have already seen this happen with the informal learning group that Liberty Prairie organized and facilitated from 2021 to 2023 (building on work the Delta Institute had initiated) and which is now being facilitated by The Land Connection and The Nature Conservancy among a number of organizations in Illinois. The informal learning group, essentially a community of practice, has enabled participating farmland managers to grow their knowledge and learn practical tips and insights from each other.
Frank Rademacher, conservation agronomist with the Illinois chapter of The Nature Conservancy, has also noted the parallels in roles between organizational farmland managers and farm managers in private, for-profit farm management companies. Conservation-minded farmland managers could, in Rademacher’s thinking, benefit from learning some of the professional expertise that the field of farm management has built up over decades. We would build on that insight. We would advocate for a new hybrid field of professional farm management that puts authentic soil life regeneration and conservation of land and water ecologies first and profits only a close second. The creation of this field would benefit from the cross-pollination of the expertise of both professional farm management companies and farmland managers for conservation-minded organizations.
Farmland-owning organizations need to continue to cultivate collaborative, mutually beneficial relationships with farmer-tenants who are reasonable and respect the organization’s values.
The farmland-owning organizations we have spoken with have generally worked hard to be thoughtful and respectful in their relationships with farmers. This is vital and right to do. The right balance has to be found between moving farming practices towards those that minimize negative impacts (or even renew soil and land habitat) and recognizing that farming is a risky business which makes farmers reluctant to make shifts in their proven practices. Where possible, all farmland owners (whether they be public or private) should look for ways to reward farmer-partners who commit to significant conservation measures with longer leases and to share risks with their farmers when the farmland owners require new practices. For example, Whiterock Conservancy pays for 90% of cover crop costs the first year a farmer must install them but then gradually reduces that share over time.
Farmland-owning organizations also need to invest the resources and energy to help stretch the farmers towards better conservation practices and to be sure their farmer-tenants are respecting the rules under which they lease.
There is a saying that a good compromise leaves neither party particularly happy. Farmland owners with conservation values should not shy away from some friction with their tenants over conservation requirements. Finding that right balance between reasonable practicality and not settling for something that gives low levels of conservation impact on land owned by the organization is an art that farmland managers continue to develop. Requirements for conservation agriculture practices can actually be positive for the farmers in the end, even if they are initially resistant. Those requirements can be the impetus for farmers to take the steps they might not otherwise take that could well cause them to understand that conservation practices are doable and can improve their bottom lines.
Many of the public farmland-owning organizations we have spoken with have also shared that there have been problems with a minority of farmers not following the conservation terms of their leases. When staffing capacity is low, it becomes very hard for organization staff to catch and follow up on compliance issues. In addition, some organizations are cautious of stirring up controversy. Farmland-owning organizations need to strengthen the capacity, systems, and commitment they have to protect all the land they own, including their farmland.
Soil ecosystem restoration is a new frontier for farmers and conservationists.
One thing farmers and conservationists have in common today is that more of them are coming to appreciate the soil ecosystem more than ever before. Mary Anderson of the Wisconsin DNR noted in her interview that the university education of many biologists she has worked with never included a deep dive into how soil biomes work and how their condition impacts the health of vegetation communities above ground. To truly be nature conservation organizations, conservation-minded farmland-owning organizations need to beef up their internal knowledge of soil life and ecologies. Farm fields that are barren of a diversity of microbes, fungi, nematodes, and other natural soil biome organisms should be seen as needing restoration attention just as urgently as an area devoted to natural habitat that has few or no native plant species and is overrun with invasive species.
Ironically enough, it is from the world of agriculture where advancements in the conservation and restoration of soil ecologies are coming. The regenerative agriculture movement is causing farmers to also recognize that soils at their best are full of complex life that impacts how well their plants grow. Conservationists and agriculturalists have the potential to be partners together in renewing the life of soil ecosystems and in making progress towards meeting their respective goals at the same time.
Data management systems and ideas on how to drive customized farmland management by data need attention.
One thing you will notice in this survey report is every organization has developed its own unique system for managing data around its management of its farmland. Organizations, like the McHenry County Conservation District, that have invested in their data systems have also radically improved their staff’s efficiency and effectiveness in carrying out professional farmland management. We would highly recommend that farmland-owning organizations convene to learn from each other about these systems. We would also highlight the opportunity for a software developer to create software (likely to be integrated with ArcGIS in some way) that farmland-owning organizations newly dedicated to real conservation could use off of the shelf.
Another thing you will notice is that the degree to which these organizations customize their farmland management of individual fields based on soil health trends and other conservation data is highly varied. One factor behind this variability is that it takes time and resources to collect the data, carefully review it, and then figure out the farmland management adjustments that need to be made. Because of that, none of these organizations really has that capability. So these organizations must make the assumption that if good conservation practices are followed (like cover cropping or chemical use restrictions) that the soil biome and other life will respond positively. This is a reasonable assumption, but each piece of land is different and how practices are applied is different. In an ideal world, more data-driven farmland management would be possible and fewer assumptions would need to be made.
But just because the ideal cannot be reached does not mean that nothing should be done. Soil health testing (not just for nutrients but for indicators of soil biology) and even more basic measures, like checking earthworm numbers with a shovel, are bare minimum approaches. The McHenry County Conservation District’s Agricultural Conservation Index, which we initially contributed to (along with Delta Institute and Foresight Design), is an interesting experiment in turning a variety of useful data around farmland management into indicators of how a field’s management is working or not working. Farmland organizations would benefit from investing more in data collection use. They would also benefit from learning from each other how to collect and use the right data in the best and most efficient ways. Perhaps there could even be a standard way to do this.
Organizational farmland ownership offers unique opportunities for long-term land access for regenerative producers.
In terms of the ability to attract and partner with regenerative farmers, organizational farmland owners have advantages over many families that own farmland. These advantages can include greater expertise and financial resources as well as greater permanence and stability over decades. This is in contrast to private families that can lack ability or willingness to invest in a property and often must wrestle with succession issues every generation. These advantages can enable organizational farmland owners to more easily enter into long-term farming leases with innovative farmers using perennial forms of agriculture that a farmer might find hard to arrange with a family.
There are already examples of this among the organizations profiled here. All Grass Farms has a lease with five five-year terms with the Forest Preserve District of Kane County. Ruhter Bison has a 15-year lease with McHenry County Conservation District to graze bison at the Pleasant Valley Conservation Area. There are many other examples, too. The Savanna Institute, for example, leases land from University of Illinois in the Champaign area. The Savanna Institute has planted rows of trees for timber production and is subleasing the alleys between the rows to a corn-and-bean producer as a way to demonstrate the practicality of the agroforestry practice known as alley cropping.
All of these pioneering perennial agriculture operations are radiating inspiration and expertise beyond their property lines to other farmers, public landowners, and private landowners. Even if a county or state lacks a deep roster of regenerative farmers, conservation organizations can advance conservation and regenerative agriculture by creative, long-term partnerships where they are possible.
More out-of-the-box thinking - and acting - is needed.
At a time when both farmland acreage and wildlife diversity (especially insects) are declining, organizations with farmland and with conservation principles have special opportunities and special responsibility to find ways to work energetically, creatively, and fairly with open-minded farmer-partners for the benefit of flora, fauna, local communities, local economies, and farmers. The needle needs to be moved further through creativity and action.
Many of the organizations profiled in this report have already demonstrated a willingness and ability to do just that. The examples of All Grass Farms and Ruhter Bison’s long-term leases with public farmland owners illustrate what is possible when farmer-landowner partnerships develop innovative ideas together. Those are not the only examples of innovation. McHenry County Conservation District has incentivized conservation by offering six-year leases for farmers who agree to carry out more conservation measures. Whiterock Conservancy has shown that land trusts can foster conservation in agriculture on their own acreages and through soil health easements that recognize not all farming is equal in its conservation value. Whiterock has demonstrated, too, that organizations can use custom farming and even use their own staff to farm when necessary. The Wisconsin DNR has shown that its staff’s knowledge of where to source untreated corn seed has made it possible for them to prohibit neonicotinoid coatings of both corn and soybean without undue hardship for the farmers. And beyond the groups here, we know of farm management companies that are exploring how they can serve farmland owners who care as much about land and water as they do their financial return.
To be candid, It is safer and easier to avoid integrating conservation principles into the management of an organization’s farmland. It challenges the status quo. It adds more complexity. It can add more risk, even the risk of not having a farmer willing to take a lease. Sticking to the preservation and restoration of habitat islands with blinders on to the implications of how farmland is treated by one’s organization and beyond one’s organization’s borders makes for an easier job but turns one’s back on whole landscape conservation.
Conservation-minded and civic-minded organizations with farmland need to lead when it comes to integrating conservation into agriculture. Tenacity and creativity and collaborative partnerships can go a long way in the right circumstances. Wrestling with the challenges of growing food while sustaining life above and below ground is one of the central conservation challenges of the 21st century. Conservation organizations that own farmland are in a uniquely responsible and rewarding position to engage that challenge. Here are some specific thoughts about out-of-the-box thinking:
- Regenerative farming practices: Where there are farmers available and interested, farmland-owning organizations can stretch the envelope by doing unique and highly regenerative agriculture, including practices like silvopasture (the purposeful integrating of livestock with trees).
- Communities of practice: Communities of practice and other ways of sharing knowledge are needed to generate new ideas and to share knowledge among farmland-owning organizations.
- Sharing of resources: Could farmland-owning organizations share a conservation agronomist (an idea we and The Nature Conservancy have discussed) or even share farming equipment and staff so that the organizations could farm their own land using the latest in regenerative practices where farmers were not interested or available?
- Land trusts needed in conservation agriculture space: More land trusts also need to treat the land as one organism. There are examples in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana of land trusts paying attention to agriculture as a land use that needs to be applying land stewardship principles as much as natural area land management. But they are generally the exceptions. It is time for land trusts, whether they be existing ones or new ones, to join other conservation institutions in being tenacious and energetic catalysts for forms of agriculture that are friendly to the life of land and water across whole landscapes.
Resources
Below you can find tools, resources, and links to relevant tools that each organization referenced in their interviews.
Dane County Land & Water Resource Department
Continuous Cover Program
The Continuous Cover Program (CCP) is a Dane County Land and Water Resources Department program that makes an impact on lands not owned by the Department. The CCP provides funding to help convert traditional row-cropped fields to continuous vegetative cover. This program is available to landowners in Dane County who meet the eligibility requirements.
Forest Preserve District of Kane County
Forest Preserve District of Will County
Illinois Department of Natural Resources
FY2024 Farm Lease Contract – Illinois DNR
The terms of the IDNR lease contracts are the same for all contracts, but the IDNR adds site specific lease requirements, which are generated by the district wildlife biologists and site supervisors. Examples of the specific lease requirements can be found below.
- Lease Requirements Table for Large Grain Property with Cover Crops
- Lease Requirements Table for Large Grain Property with Cover Crops and Sunflower Planting and Maintenance
- Lease Requirements Table for Sample Hay Lease
- Lease Requirements Table for Sample Pasture Lease
Sample Cropping Plan 2023-2026 – Illinois DNR
Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT
Iowa Department of Natural Resources
Lake County Forest Preserve District
McHenry County Conservation District
Agricultural Conservation Index for Cropland
This worksheet shows data that is collected by MCCD staff about practices and conditions of particular farm properties that are then translated into an index rating, similar in principle to the Macroinvertebrate Aggregated Index for Streams.
Standard Agricultural Lease Agreement
Conservation Agriculture Lease Agreement
Tenant farmers who agree to these terms are provided a six-year lease instead of the normal three-year lease. Be sure to scroll down to Exhibit B to see what the Conservation Requirements with Soil Health Emphasis are.
Conservation Grazing Lease at Pleasant Valley
Natural Land Institute
The Foss Farm was donated to the Natural Land Institute (NLI) in 2017. NLI subsequently hired Solutions in the Land to analyze the farm’s total context and condition and to make recommendations for management of the farm in light of NLI’s commitment to sustainability. Solutions in the Land completed the report in 2019.
Whiterock Conservancy
Pasture/Ranchland Grazing Lease
Row Crop Flex Lease Template (2023)
Whiterock Conservancy Overview Webinar
In this webinar from February 16, 2023, staff of the Whiterock Conservancy describe the variety of conservation-oriented farming practices the organization carries out on the Conservancy’s 1,900 acres of farmland. Well worth watching.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Farming Agreement Policy and Guidance
Farming Agreement Sample 2023
Connect
Dane County Land & Water Resources Department
Laura Hicklin
Director
608-516-3096
[email protected]
Forest Preserve District of Kane County
Michelle Blackburn
Agricultural Coordinator
630-232-5981
[email protected]
Whiterock Conservancy
Carissa Shoemaker
Director of Land Stewardship
712-790-8221, ext 4
[email protected]
Tyler Bruck
Land Programs Manager
712-790-8221, ext 6
[email protected]
Illinois Department of Natural Resources
Mike Chandler
Program Manager
Agriculture/Wildlife & Habitat Lease Management
217- 785-8773
Lake County Forest Preserve District
Matthew Ueltzen
Manager of Restoration Ecology
847-968-3290
Forest Preserve District of Will County
Andrew J. Hawkins
Director of Conservation Programs
Forest Preserve District of Will County
815-722-9245
Iowa Department of Natural Resources
Nathan Schmitz
Land Management Specialist
515-371-2062
McHenry County Conservation District
Brenna Ness
Agricultural Ecologist
815-338-6223
[email protected]
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Mary C. Anderson
Grazing and Conservation Agriculture Specialist
608-220-2935
[email protected]
Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT
Claire Mesesan
Vice President, Farmer Relations
847-859-6645, ext. 702
[email protected]
Raya Carr
Senior Relationship Manager
847-859-6645, ext. 710
[email protected]
Natural Land Institute
Alan Branhagen
Executive Director
815-964-6666
[email protected]
Project Lead – Nathan Aaberg
Conservation is a state of harmony between men and the land. By land is meant all of the things on, over, or in the earth. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.”
Aldo Leopold
“Round River”
Project Team and Acknowledgements
Liberty Prairie (formerly Liberty Prairie Foundation) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in Grayslake, Illinois. Located halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee, we believe healing the planet heals people. We seek to realize that possibility by building skills and pathways toward community health and resilience in Lake County and beyond. We do this by integrating education with sustainable agriculture and environmental stewardship at the urban edge. Founded in 1994, our legacy is characterized by collaboration and ingenuity. Our 94-acre farm is located within the pioneering Prairie Crossing conservation community which is in turn located within the Liberty Prairie Reserve, where more than 3,400 acres of open space have been preserved by public and private partners for its natural and historic landscape.
Food:Land:Opportunity – Localizing the Chicago Foodshed is a multi-year initiative that aims to create a resilient local food economy that protects and conserves land and other natural resources while promoting market innovation and building wealth and assets in the Chicago region’s communities. Funded through the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust, Food:Land:Opportunity is a collaboration between Kinship Foundation and The Chicago Community Trust.
FLO generously funded the Liberty Prairie Foundation for this project and its land access work in northeast Illinois for many years. We are deeply grateful for their support.
Stepwell Strategies supported Liberty Prairie on this project. Founded on the belief that food, agricultural, and conservation organizations are at their best when they are connected to the resources they need, Stepwell designs programs and projects that scale environmental impact through creative engagement, finance and funding approaches, and project design support. Working with partners coast-to-coast, they create tools and growth strategies for organizations tackling some of our most pressing challenges–food security, environmental justice, climate change, and stormwater management. Learn more about their work at stepwellstrategies.com
Ben Shorofsky
[email protected]
Paul Kearsley is an experienced designer, educator and illustrator. In addition to his master planning work with Terra Phoenix Design, Paul is also a Senior Instructor in Western Washington University’s Design and Industrial Design programs, as well as a published illustrator. He has taught Permaculture Design within the University and the wider Pacific Northwest. At home, he operates an eight-acre peri-urban homestead with his extended family.
https://kearsleydesign.wordpress.com/
Thanks also to Lane Access Intern Erica Chelmowski for her work on the survey questionnaire in 2022. Chelmowski is studying Environmental Science at Loyola University Chicago.
MAP AND PHOTOS CREDITS
- Bison Image: Brendan Connell – [email protected]
- Prairie Strip: Nathan Aaberg
- Cliff Walking Cows: All Grass Farms
- Pleasant Valley Conservation Area Map: McHenry County Conservation District
- Combine transferring cover crop seed to wagon: Whiterock Conservancy
