The Pasture Project is working on multi-tier engagement in Illinois and Indiana:
Strategic network development and capacity building. The Pasture Project is working with a broad range of stakeholders in agriculture in Illinois to identify strategic priorities for expanding regenerative grazing in the state. Thus far, the team has conducted interviews, written a white paper on the findings and analysis from those interviews, and held an in-person strategy meeting in the fall of 2019.
Farmer-to-farmer network outreach and leadership development. The Pasture Project identified two current and emerging Illinois farmer-to-farmer networks and will assist them with capacity building and leadership development to help support the transition to regenerative grazing practices in the state.
Critical resource and tool development. Using in-house GIS expertise, the Pasture Project developed a watershed analysis tool for Indiana and Illinois.
Value chain mapping. In 2019, the Pasture Project and the Delta Institute conducted research to understand current grass-fed beef production, processing and end-markets in Illinois. Phase Two of this work will leverage the knowledge of regenerative grazing and grass-fed value chains in Illinois to engage stakeholders in one priority watershed to build localized momentum for regional change.
The Regenerative Ag Idea Network (REGAIN) is an online platform intended to support the efforts of regenerative agriculture educators, advocates, and leaders in the Upper Midwest and beyond. REGAIN provides a critical forum for individuals and organizations working in regenerative agriculture to learn and collaborate. REGAIN will provide users with dynamic options to:
The Pasture Project team has expanded our reach and work on grazing cover crops—a critical on-ramp for row crop producers considering integrating livestock in their operations. At the end of 2018, we completed a project which built the economic and soil health case for grazing cover crops through on-farm data collection with eight farms in Minnesota and Iowa. Notably, this project found that the practice can result in incremental soil fertility and biology improvements, and results in significant cost savings from forage production and improved soil fertility for future cash crops. With our partners, we released a suite of findings and resources developed under this project, including 
The Wallace Center continues to build a positive working relationship with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WI-DNR) to pilot the use of regenerative grazing as a conservation management strategy on multiple sites managed by the agency. Since then, the Pasture Project, University of Wisconsin, and WI-DNR have worked together to scale up and solidify the case for grazing public grasslands instead of burning, mowing, or spraying. As of spring 2019, conservation grazing is being implemented on 24 sites and over 2500 acres, with an additional 23 sites (over 3000 acres) in the WI-DNR approval pipeline.
The initiative has developed and implemented a sequential path for farmers to take towards conservation-minded farming practices through a behavior change model (BCM). This process is informed by the Pasture Project’s own trial and error in providing technical assistance, and through recent research into behavior science. The Pasture Project team has completed a white paper on the 5-step behavior change model that combines the experience of the initiative, behavior science research, and experiences from other agriculture nonprofits in the nation.
In late 2019, the Pasture Project began a $1.15 million project in the Kickapoo River watershed in the Driftless region of southwest Wisconsin. For this new project, funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency, Pasture Project will work closely with an existing partner, Valley Stewardship Network, and a new partner, Tainter Creek Farmer-Led Watershed Council, to implement a cost-share program for fencing and expand grazing technical assistance, develop a spatial decision support tool that models field- and landscape-level environmental and economic outcomes from grazing best management practices, and assess water quality changes during the three-year project period in both Tainter Creek and a control watershed to determine the effect of grazing best management practices on phosphorus and sediment.
