By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – “Sustainable farming” is catching on in Illinois. The Champaign County Soil and Water Conservation District has developed a scoring system to help farmers evaluate how conservation-minded their practices are. 

The program, now used in 43 (and counting) Illinois counties, is S.T.A.R. – Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources.

“The farmer can complete a field form for each field,” says program coordinator Bruce Henrikson, a retired college and high school ag educator. “Check off these items, and they identify what kind of practices they are using by categories: Tillage. What kind of crop rotation are you using, when do you put nitrogen fertilizer on your corn field. And cover crops.”

Henrickson says Big Agribusiness has noticed.

“What (buyers) want to be able to do is be able to tell customers that they are buying grain from farmers who are growing that grain sustainably,” Henrikson says. “They see this program as something that can really help them identify farmer/producers who are doing things better.”

Other benefits, Henrikson says, include the prevention of nutrient loss and the protection of water supplies.

More than 27,000 Illinois acres are under S.T.A.R.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].