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In the fall of 2019, UMN Morris Associate Professor of Political Science Roger Rose struck up a conversation with Matt Solemsaas, the Stevens Soil Water and Conservation District (SWCD) District Administrator about the challenges of obtaining information from landowners and farmers in the county on SWCD. conservation programs. In Minnesota, SWCDs play a leading role in establishing conservation practices on the ground.
Solemsaas said: “Before our last strategic planning meeting, I challenged our supervisory board to answer a bunch of questions about what landowners were thinking in their service areas. During our planning, we realized that we would benefit from more feedback from stakeholders in our county. “
With this challenge in mind, Rose engaged her Making Environmental Policy course into a service-learning project with support from the UMN Morris Community Engagement Office, who runs the Community Engaged Learning program. During the semester, her students worked with staff at Stevens SWCD to develop survey questions.
After the course was finished, Rose continued with the project. With funding from the UMN Southwestern Regional Partnership for Sustainable Development (RSDP) and UMN Morris Center for Small Towns, Rose hired research intern, Erik Kjer, a student at UMN Morris, to finalize the survey and send it to hundreds of landowners in the county.
“Our local SWCD wanted to know what the farmers thought about their programs and their work. It is difficult for organizations to make improvements or meet urgent needs without good feedback. I hope the survey we have developed can be used as a model for other counties, ”explained Rose.
In the summer of 2021, after the polls were returned and analyzed, Rose and Kjer presented the results to the Stevens SWCD Supervisory Board and the Southwest RSDP Board. A central finding shows the level of support among program participants: almost 70% of respondents consider basic SWCD programs to be valuable or very valuable for the upkeep of their farms and the maintenance of agriculture, and nearly 71% believe SWCD programs help to ensure soil and water quality in Stevens. County.
Kjer said: “It was a fun project to work on and I learned a lot. We have gathered excellent information. We learned which conservation programs farmers are most enthusiastic about, how local farmers are adapting to Minnesota’s climate change, what farming practices they are using, and more.
These efforts are linked to the West Central We Are Water program at UMN Morris, which works to cultivate a shared water ethic in Minnesota.
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