The Sustainable Agriculture Partnership (SAP) is a new collaboration of Illinois Central College (ICC), ICGA, Zea Mays Foundation (ZMF), AFT, and the Soil Health Partnership. It will be anchored at the Sustainable Ag Training and Demonstration Center.
This new effort is focused on educating farmers and agricultural advisors on cover crops, soil health, water quality, and sustainability practices. Implementing these practices will improve the productivity, profitability, and resiliency of farming operations while meeting Illinois NLRS goals and consumer demands for more sustainably-sourced agricultural products. The partnership is also involved in expanding the ICC soil laboratory to include multiple water quality, soil health, and habitat practices. This laboratory provides hands-on demonstrations of sustainable agriculture prac tices for a variety of student, professional, and public audiences. The Wetlands Initiative and NRCS are key partners in the design and development of these on-site practices.
The goals of SAP are:
- Making more efficient use of resources and knowledge from programs focused on sustain- able agricultural practices, specifically, reducing duplicative or conflicting efforts through cooperation and communication.
- Establishing shared resources, including collaborative spaces, on-farm demonstration sites, and demonstration tools, such as the mobile rainfall simulator.
- Sharing knowledge, lessons learned, practical applications from current programs and connecting this information to private industry and other research efforts on cover crop use and soil health management.
- Establishing a Science Advisory Committee to review technical information and to guide the development of credible, science-based education and outreach materials on cover crops and soil health
- Establishing a network of cover crop and soil health systems specialists to share and promote this information.
- Training those who work directly with farmers to use research results to develop core BMP recommendations as well as whole system approaches to improved production and environ-mental outcomes, specifically bringing together nutrient management practices with cover crop and soil health practices.
- Educating farmers and advisors directly using printed materials, online resources, webinars, and videos in addition to informational meetings and field days at on-farm demonstration sites across the state. Individual, local farmer networks will also be facilitated by the cover crop and soil health systems specialists.
- Incorporating information into community college agriculture curriculum and using demonstration sites for complimentary hands-on learning for students.
The partners plan to bring together education and research efforts with outreach components of the Illinois Cover Crop training initiative, Illinois Demonstration Farms partnership sites, Soil Health Partnership program, AFT’s watershed efforts, and SARE-sponsored advanced soil health training. The partners will continue the momentum that has built around soil health, cover crop, water quality, nutrient and conservation topics through training, education, and demonstration projects in Illinois.
This effort will also support larger state and national efforts to increase the understanding and adoption of practices and whole farm systems that improve agricultural sustainability, water qual ity, soil health, nutrient stewardship and conservation. This work will connect to private industry efforts to increase the knowledge of trusted agricultural advisors and retailers, such as national and state certified crop advisor training.
