While they are proud of the work done so far, members of Peninsula Pride Farms hope to do more in 2022 to have a positive impact on your soil and water in Door and Kewaunee counties.

Dozens of members from the community and the producer-led watershed group met Tuesday at the Kewaunee County Fairgrounds for their annual meeting where they reflected on 2021 and looked ahead to the coming year. Jamie Patton from the UW-Madison Extension discussed recent research done championing cover crops, grazing, and carbon storage and how it relates to improved soil health. Ricardo Costa from The Nature Conservancy presented the findings from Peninsula Pride Farms’ 2021 member conservation practice survey results. The Nature Conservancy provided Peninsula Pride Farms with cost-share funds for non-members to try different conservation practices on their operations. That helped lead to its current membership of over 50 farms practicing conservation strategies on 236,000 acres of land. Some of those acres have two or more conservation practices like cover crops, split nitrogen treatments, and low-disturbance manure injection. Brad Gingras from Superior Strategies took a different route for his presentation as he hosted a lively discussion about the differences among people from other generations.

Michael Vandenhouten, Jacob Brey, Eric Olson, and Paul Cornette were a part of a panel in the afternoon that discussed some of the different conservation strategies they tackled. Brey discussed his rotational grazing system they installed in 2021 to help better utilize a portion of their land.

Peninsula Pride Farms member Duane Ducat says a lot of good information was shared at the meeting, much of which he thinks can be applied to other operations.

The organization plans to host more Conservation Conversations later this year to bring farmers and non-farmers together to see how different conservation practices are working out.