How Can Conservation Programs Better Connect to Farmers?

Conservation agriculture is a farming approach that builds and protects soil health by using practices like reducing tillage, keeping ground cover, and rotating crops. Over time, these practices support greater biodiversity and help farms become more resilient to a changing climate. Today, funders of agricultural conservation programs are facing growing pressure to demonstrate impact, which is proving difficult.

Conservation programs are reporting an array of inefficiencies in recruiting and enrolling farmers and ranchers. In fact, 41 percent of program providers say they lack the time, data, and capacity to accurately calculate the return on investment for their program and recruitment costs. This, in turn, means that farmers are not getting the support and resources they need.

The conservation program representatives who participated in our research cited funding bottlenecks, shifting priorities, and inadequate staffing as the main obstacles to enrolling producers, rather than a lack of interest from farmers and ranchers.

Such is a key finding from a benchmark study,  Conducted by Environmental Initiative, where I serve as the associate partnerships director, and Trust In Food, with funding from the Walmart Foundation, the study details the costs, time, and effort involved in recruiting and enrolling producers into conservation programs. It also highlights practical measures to address these challenges by drawing on perspectives from program leaders and implementers who want to figure out ways to better connect farmers to advances in conservation practices.

For those who provide philanthropic support to conservation programs, the research’s findings show that producer outreach and enrollment are core program functions necessary to enable their success. This is why right-sizing investments in staff capacity and farmer recruitment infrastructure is key to achieving conservation outcomes at scale.

Challenges Conservation Programs Face

Agricultural conservation programs are often implemented by on-the-ground NGOs, extension offices, or soil and water conservation districts that depend on funding from philanthropic, corporate, and government partners. Philanthropic funders often invest in innovation and scaling pilots for systems change. The conservation program representatives who participated in our research cited funding bottlenecks, shifting priorities, and inadequate staffing as the main obstacles to enrolling producers, rather than a lack of interest from farmers and ranchers.

Take cover crops, for instance. This practice involves growing plants that benefit soil health but are not necessarily for harvest, and is done on less than 5 percent of US cropland. Although an increasingly common conservation method, it is not being implemented at scale since the majority of conservation programs still draw from a narrow band of early adopters.

Without alignment between funders and organizations, however, the support needed to implement conservation programs and to quickly scale regenerative practices will not happen.

However, the way to growing conservation programs is by reaching the movable middle, also known as middle adopters. These are the farmers and ranchers who are open to change but may be weighing competing priorities, waiting for the right messenger, or simply haven’t been reached in ways that speak to their values and circumstances.

While reaching middle adopters is important, capacity to do so is limited. The research shows that many program implementers work with small teams, typically consisting of five or fewer staff members. These teams often lack dedicated outreach personnel, access to vetted lists of potential participants, and the time needed to assess which outreach strategies are most effective.

Despite these limitations, program implementers are tasked with delivering and managing complex programs involving large numbers of farmers and broad geographic coverage. Many organizations lack the infrastructure and time required to maximize those connections and convert them to enrollment.

Nothing about this is insurmountable. Without alignment between funders and organizations, however, the support needed to implement conservation programs and to quickly scale regenerative practices will not happen—even with the strength of programs and funding currently available.

What Program Funders Say About the Research

Dozens of governmental conservation program implementers and NGO grantees representing on-the-ground organizations participated in a recent webinar hosted by Environmental Initiative and Trust In Food.

The webinar revealed that funders are committed to enabling success. With growing urgency around climate, water, and supply chain sustainability risks, funders are increasingly focused on scaling conservation outcomes in agriculture.

In conversations with program funders regarding this research, many acknowledge that they tend to focus narrowly on grantees’ technical processes and incentive plans for rewarding farmers who join programs—overlooking the time (and, yes, the financial support) required to build relationships and earn trust with farmers. Funders shared that they are receptive when program implementers make a clear, specific case for a program design change. Whether that means longer timeframes or more resources for relationship-building, implementers should not hesitate to ask.

Funders seemed to acknowledge that it is difficult to propose to a farmer or rancher—or the owner of any business—to change their time-tested business practices and conceivably take a significant financial risk. This is a delicate ask that requires trust between program providers and producers. But the ask is essential to addressing the growing climate crisis.

Reaching Middle Adopters, Achieving Scale

With conservation agriculture outreach in small, resource-constrained teams, it can be easy to homogenize farmers and producers by making broad presumptions about their motivations and goals. In reality, these are individuals with their own sets of core values, stressors, and life experiences that influence decision-making.

Is a middle adopter motivated by yield? The ability to right-size an operation? Family legacy? Indeed, those reaching out to middle adopters must consider farmers’ psychosocial factors—whether they see themselves as innovators or driven to leave a legacy for their families or communities.

In our first phase of research, we analyzed the values, interests, and barriers to conservation agriculture practice adoption of more than 55,000 row crop farmers in Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. We designed an engagement strategy rooted in producer insights and tested a range of values-based messaging and creative visuals over several months, which resulted in increased interest and positive understanding of regenerative agriculture. In 2025, we further explored values-aligned messages building from a deep understanding of ranchers’ readiness for change to increase the adoption of grazing management plans in North and South Dakota.

These outreach challenges apply to smaller-scale farmers, as well. Consider, for example, farmers who have full-time jobs in the city and primarily work on their land during the evening and on weekends. They may prefer learning and engagement through podcasts during a commute and online materials to view at night. For small farmers, converting to sustainable agricultural practices may pose a different set of risks than for a larger farm operation.

Building Outreach and Engagement Capacity

A growing number of support organizations are developing tools, training, and producer insights designed to help conservation programs reach further and more effectively.

Environmental Initiative and Trust In Food have developed reachfarmersfaster.org, a free online resource tool that walks conservation program implementers through a five-step process of establishing goals and understanding producers, developing messages, choosing engagement channels, and assessing impact. In-person and virtual workshops are also available to help teams apply these frameworks to their own geographies and producer audiences.

Alongside the resource, there are several spaces that conservation implementers can turn to for support. Trust In Food puts the reach and data of Farm Journal to work by providing organizations with a deeper understanding of their producer audiences and the intelligence needed to design outreach that connects, converts, and builds lasting engagement.

The National Wildlife Federation’s Grow More program offers another resource for implementers looking to sharpen their outreach skills. Developed after nearly a decade of studying farmer decision-making, Grow More provides hands-on training to help practitioners reach middle adopter producers.

With tightening budgets and the need to support programs that produce results, hearing that many grantees struggle to find the time or personnel to simply develop lists of potential program participants or to track their progress is troublesome. For funders committed to scaling conservation outcomes, investing in more strategic outreach and innovative engagement functions isn’t a budget line item to trim. It’s core program work.