Conservation Agriculture Starts Local and Moves Up
Published: Friday, January 19, 2024
Kyle Burchett, LaGrange County SWCD's district educator and conservation technician, and I just returned from the annual conference held by the Indiana Assn. of Soil and Water Conservation Districts in Indianapolis. In the many informative sessions and breakout presentations held there over the two days of the event, participants were constantly reminded of two things: one, that conservation agriculture in Indiana was founded and designed to be a "grassroots up" movement; and two, that the primary push for conservation initiatives in Indiana is supposed to begin at the county level with local Soil and Water Conservation Districts.
If you look back over the history of agriculture conservation, both at the state and national level, this was indeed the push. The Soil Conservation Service of USDA (now renamed "NRCS," the Natural Resources Conservation Service) at the national level was established in the mid-1930s as a response to the Dust Bowl phenomenon, which occurred simultaneously (and disastrously!) with the Great Depression.
Local conservation districts were founded shortly thereafter to work together with the federal agency to accomplish soil conservation goals, later water quality objectives were identified, and today have been joined with air quality and a whole host of other good intentions and programs designed for the preservation of the vital natural resources that our country has been blessed with.
Whether we have remained true to the idea that the best concepts for conservation come from the grassroots up is anyone's best guess and opinion. One example to the positive that I like to reflect upon is the success of the Northern Indiana Grazing Conference. Rotational grazing is a modern manifestation of a very old agricultural methodology, a rediscovery, after the 1970s, of the idea that livestock management (and everything else, for that matter!) works much better when we seek to understand and cooperate with the natural world around us rather than fight against it.
I can say with confidence that if grassroots movements are good, then that is how the Northern Indiana Grazing Conference came about. For several years around the turn of the millennium, a similar event, the Great Lakes International Grazing Conference was held. This was a cooperative effort between several agencies and organizations such as USDA-NRCS, Ohio State, Purdue, Michigan State and the University of Illinois. A good conference, by all reports, but very heavy on academics, and a little short on practicality.
Local graziers, armed with the zeal and enthusiasm of trailblazers, sought out LaGrange County NRCS District Conservationist Barry Bortner. Barry, along with NRCS grazingland specialist Jerry Perkins and SWCD livestock management specialist Dennis Wolheter, responded to their desire to see a permanent grazing conference established to promote the ideals of management intensive rotational grazing from the perspective of the small family farm.
The first Northern Indiana Grazing Conference was held at the LaGrange County 4-H Fairgrounds Community Building in early March of 2002. Skeptics gave the event small chance to get started successfully. However, attendance and support from commercial vendors exceeded all expectations as the event packed the building out. From 2003 to 2010 the NIGC was held at the Antique Auction Barn in Shipshewana; moved to the Michiana Event Center at Howe in 2011. When the MEC moved to Shipshewana a few years later, the NIGC went with it, and has been there ever since.
The event has steadily grown since 2002. The only major hiccup in the process was in 2021 with the COVID epidemic, when the conference had to be cancelled. Attendance in 2022 exceeded 2,000 by a little bit; in 2023, it exceeded 2,500!
The success of the Northern Indiana Grazing Conference is a testimony to the dedication that many farmers in the American Midwest have developed in the last 30 years to the idea of rotational grazing as an effective, environmentally friendly livestock management strategy.
2024's conference is scheduled once again at the MEC in Shipshewana on Feb. 2 and 3. Speakers this year, mostly drawn from farmers who are practicing what they preach, will be talking about various topics including dairy, sheep and beef grazing. Related topics will feature presentations on farm family health concerns, organic gardening, grazing forages, livestock genetics, and farm financial management and generational interactions.
For more information concerning the conference, you can call us at the SWCD office at 260/463-3166, ext. 3.
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