Thanks to initial funding in 2009 from the McKnight Foundation, and continued support from a variety of other funders, WFAN is undertaking a ground-breaking peer-to-peer conservation education program with women farmland owners in the Midwest.

During the pilot project in 2009, women who owned farmland in Johnson, Jones and Linn Counties in eastern Iowa were invited to participate in a free series of meetings designed not only to give them information about the various conservation and resource management techniques available to them for use on their farmland, but also to help them feel confident in negotiating these changes with their tenants. The program included a field day to view conservation efforts and challenges on local farmland.

Response to the project was very positive, and WFAN will expand the program into as many counties as funding allows in the future. You can read results from the pilot project by clicking here.

Participants may be farm partners, sole owner-operators, or inheritors, or any other woman interested in soil and water conservation or sustainable agriculture.

Lynn Heuss, WFAN program coordinator, facilitates these meetings. Other project team members include Jean Eells, PhD, of Webster City, IA, who is also a soil and water commissioner and whose ongoing research has focused on conservation education for women landowners; Chris Henning, a landowner and soil and water commissioner from Greene County, IA; Denise O’Brien, a founder of WFAN and an organic farmer and landowner of Rolling Acres Farm near Atlantic, IA; and Laura Krouse, a long-time WFAN member who owns and operates Abbe Hills Farm near Mt. Vernon, IA, who has been a Linn Soil and Water Conservation District Commissioner for nearly 20 years.

For more information, visit the Women Caring for the Land website by clicking here, or contact Lynn Heuss at 515-201-9405, lynn@wfan.org.