ATTN OFFICIAL JUDGES FOR THE STUDENT PRESENTATION COMPETITION: If you were contacted by the Conference Planning Committee Student Activities Chair, Allison Lewis, remember to use the appropriate evaluation form when scoring student participants. The link and QR code to this form was emailed to you along with your student assignments. To make identifying student participants easier, the green graduation cap
next to a session title includes a student who is participating in the
PRESENTATION Competition.
Virtual Revolution, Not Evolution: How do We Get Lasting Change While Ensuring Productive Agriculture and Good Water Quality?
Moderators:
Lara Fowler
Presenters:
- Lara Fowler, Penn State University
- Paul Ferraro, Johns Hopkins University (C-BEAR)
- Mark Masters, Albany State (ACF Stakeholders, NRCS Advisory Board)
- Lisa Schulte Moore, Iowa State (Prairie STRIPs, C-CHANGE projects)
- Adam Tarr, US Senate Committee on Agriculture
- James P. Dobrowolski, National Institute for Food and Agriculture, USDA
Ensuring healthy and productive agriculture while meeting water quality goals is a serious challenge across the United States. Our toolkit for achieving water quality goals depends on a toolkit of programs and practices that become an alphabet soup: EQIP, CREP, and more. As we look at current needs and future changes, what can we do to update our toolkit going forward, perhaps as part of the next Farm Bill? What might a revolution in management practices look like, versus an evolution of the status quo? For example, should new programs place additional emphasis on technical or financial assistance? What policy or incentive structures most encourage persistence of initial conservation practice adoption? Join us for a panel discussion of what could be used to foster such a revolution.