Dec. 7, 2022
Conservation and Sustainable Food Growing in Michigan
Our guest is Daniel Moilanen, a Fenton-area native now living in Flint, and the Executive Director of the Michigan Association of Conservation Districts (MACD).
Under Dan’s leadership, Michigan’s soil conservation districts are bringing conservation-minded farmers together to modernize agricultural practices—reducing nutrient runoff, protecting wetlands, and addressing the toxic algal blooms threatening the Great Lakes, especially Lake Erie.
Modern Farming, Healthier Water
A core focus of this work is precision agriculture—using advanced technology to monitor and optimize crop production in real time. Examples include:
- GPS-guided machinery, which allows farmers to precisely apply fertilizers and pesticides, reducing over-application and runoff
- Cover crops and conservation tillage, improving soil health while reducing erosion
- Nutrient management plans, tailored to specific crops and soil types to minimize excess nutrients entering waterways
Together, these practices support both environmental protection and the long-term economic viability of Michigan agriculture.
Michigan is the second-largest producer of agricultural commodities in the United States, yet outdated farming methods threaten to deplete its rich soil base within the next 60 years. Dan joins us to discuss how conservation districts are working to prevent that outcome—protecting water resources while sustaining farming communities.
Background and Community Leadership
Dan is a graduate of Albion College and was recently selected by the Flint-Genesee Chamber of Commerce as one of its 40 Under 40 distinguished young community leaders.
His background includes small-business ownership, civic engagement, and political leadership. He is the founder and former owner of Vehicle City Tacos, a popular downtown Flint food truck, and has served as a leader of the Genesee County Democratic Party and the Genesee County Young Democrats.
Outside of policy and conservation work, Dan continues his long-standing interest in music, performing with a ska-punk band in the Flint area.
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Chapters
00:00 - Podcast Intro
01:27 - Meet Dan Moilanen
03:10 - Vehicle City Tacos
05:23 - Being Part of Downtown Flint's Revitalization
07:59 - Dan Shifts Toward Politics & Public Policy
09:12 - How Dan Got Involved in Soil Conservation
11:00 - All About Conservation Districts
13:47 - Soil: Health, Issues & Conservation
18:43 - Water: Health, Issues & Conservation
21:19 - Labor Shortages & Other Looming Crises of Michigan's Agricultural Industry
23:45 - Public Knowledge of Watersheds
25:33 - What It Means to Be a Flintstone
26:42 - What's Up Next for Dan's Punk Band The Write-Ups
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome.
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You are listening to Radio Free Flint, hosted by Arthur Busch.
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Today, our podcast guest is Daniel Moylanen, a Flinton area native now living in Flint.
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Dan is a graduate of Albion College.
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Recently, the Flint Genesee Chamber of Commerce selected him as one of 40 under 40 distinguished young community leaders.
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Dan has a wealth of experience in small business ownership, community service, and political engagement.
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He is the founder and former owner of Vehicle City Tacos, a popular downtown Flint food truck.
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Dan is with us to talk about the Michigan environmental issues like soil conservation, better and less harmful agricultural practices that help keep our water resources and wetlands free of harmful pollutants.
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The conservation districts in Michigan have helped promote urban hoop farming in Flint and Detroit.
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Dan is currently the executive director of the Michigan Association of Conservation Districts.
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His leadership in this organization brings conservation-minded farmers together to reduce toxic algal blooms in the Great Lakes by encouraging environmentally sound agricultural techniques.
00:01:07.359 --> 00:01:14.959
In recent years, Dan has continued his interest in music by performing with a ska, punk, and rock band in the Flint area.
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We are sure you'll find our guests fun and interesting, and will learn about how important it is to protect our food and water resources through conservation.
00:01:27.359 --> 00:01:28.319
Welcome, Dan.
00:01:28.319 --> 00:01:29.439
Yeah, thank you, Arthur.
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Happy to be here.
00:01:30.319 --> 00:01:36.079
So I understand one of your claims to fame is that you're a former punk rocker.
00:01:37.040 --> 00:01:39.120
Well, former and current, I suppose.
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I grew up in Lake Fenton, but spent my weekends in downtown Flint hanging out at the Flint Local 432, which is, you know, in all ages music venue that's been in various locations since the mid-1980s.
00:01:51.040 --> 00:01:55.599
And yeah, it was really where I found my community and really where I got connected to the city.
00:01:55.599 --> 00:02:01.040
And music is my first passion, and then conservation and policy are sort of my second and third.
00:02:01.040 --> 00:02:03.439
But yeah, music has always been a really huge part of my life.
00:02:03.439 --> 00:02:04.879
What's the name of the band?
00:02:04.879 --> 00:02:06.319
We're called the write-ups.
00:02:06.319 --> 00:02:09.280
It's funny because my bandmates, we have two executive directors.
00:02:09.280 --> 00:02:14.080
We have a PhD who's a local academic, a really well-accomplished artist, and an aspiring chef.
00:02:14.080 --> 00:02:19.199
So we thought, well, at this point in our 30s, starting a band, we're probably gonna get in trouble with work at some point.
00:02:19.199 --> 00:02:21.759
So the write-ups was what we settled on.
00:02:21.759 --> 00:02:26.080
So we're more of like a second wave style ska band, but definitely have some punk elements.
00:02:26.319 --> 00:02:28.319
So what would you call this genre that you play?
00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:30.000
Call it ska or ska punk.
00:02:30.159 --> 00:02:35.759
Now you attended a very good school, which many of Flint's leaders over generations have attended.
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That's Albion College.
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Correct.
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Yep.
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What was your major there?
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I double majored in political science and philosophy, and I was a member of the Ford Institute there for public policy and service.
00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:50.240
So I've always been a little bit of a policy nerd.
00:02:50.400 --> 00:02:56.560
Well, I don't know if you know this, you may, but there are many alumni from that school who served on the bench in Genesee County over the years.
00:02:56.560 --> 00:02:59.759
Judge Jeffrey Nethercutt, Duncan Beagle, just to name a couple.
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It's a school with a fine reputation producing some of the best professionals who have come back to the community and actually want to live here and spend their careers in the front area.
00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:12.000
Another one of your claims to fame, guess what it is?
00:03:12.240 --> 00:03:14.639
I'm guessing it's gonna probably be Vehicle City Tacos.
00:03:14.879 --> 00:03:15.840
Exactly.
00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:19.120
It caught my attention because I do like tacos.
00:03:19.120 --> 00:03:21.280
So tell us about the taco business.
00:03:21.520 --> 00:03:21.759
Yeah.
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Well, back in 2014, at the time I was working for Resource Genesee, which is now a defunct nonprofit.
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They folded shortly after I left.
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It was basically that was my day job, and on the weekends I was the club manager for the Flint Local 432.
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And I had heard about an RFP that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation was offering for food truck concepts.
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So one of my good friends was a chef, and we put our heads together and filled out a proposal on a whim.
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I'm a natural procrastinator.
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We finished it the night before and submitted it, and sure enough, they ended up awarding us $10,000 in startup funds.
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So ended up securing the rest of the funding, and we bought a truck, and we were really the first food truck to operate in downtown Flint, and we were kind of trailblazing.
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I've had a little bit of pushback from some of the business owners and key holders downtown, and we had a little bit of pushback from some other folks City Hall, but we were able to essentially get folks to understand what the vision was and what we could do because it was really mostly about placemaking.
00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:28.480
That was always my whole entire point was that I used to live in Austin, Texas for a little while for a few years when I worked for Apple.
00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:31.600
And when I was down there, I realized food trucks were everywhere.
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I knew that Flint was trying to become more of a college town in that economy.
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So I always thought and kept in the back of my head, hey, if I ever go back to Flint, that would be a really good business to run.
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And sure enough, the opportunity presented itself.
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So I went into the taco business.
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Naturally, I chose tacos because no one really does tacos up here in the same way that you get down there in Texas.
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So that was what I modeled the whole business off of was doing tacos that were a little bit more interesting and not just the usual just ground beef, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a tortilla.
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It ended up taking off, and people really loved it.
00:05:03.439 --> 00:05:04.959
So I did it for about four years.
00:05:04.959 --> 00:05:07.759
A lot of really cool experiences, a lot of really cool stories.
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I could probably spend a whole hour talking about some of the things that we're doing.
00:05:10.560 --> 00:05:12.399
That's the next interview with your partner.
00:05:12.399 --> 00:05:13.519
Sure.
00:05:13.519 --> 00:05:14.079
Yeah.
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Actually, I'd like to interview the band.
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Oh, yeah.
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If you get a few tunes on here for some of the old people that are listening to this.
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Oh, for sure.
00:05:22.560 --> 00:05:23.199
We love that.
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You're really part of a trend in Flint, which is to bring in suburban people.
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I interviewed Phil Haggerman some time ago, and he said his goal was to get the people from the Owl County to come back downtown to Flint, and that's obviously what you've done.
00:05:35.680 --> 00:05:38.240
Phil, by the way, is also from Fenton.
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So you're object number one, exha exhibit number one of his plan coming to life.
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Who funded that taco truck?
00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:50.000
So I took out series of loans to buy everything myself.
00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.240
But you said you got a $10,000 grant.
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I didn't.
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It was from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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But I did have to provide a hundred percent match on it.
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I had to buy the truck, and then they gave us the check for startup funds for other ingredients and other things for inventory.
00:06:04.319 --> 00:06:07.600
And I also won a couple pitch contests too.
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There was one, it was the Michigan Social Business Fellowship competition, and we ended up getting about $4,000 in startup funds from if I recall correctly.
00:06:16.319 --> 00:06:16.639
Cool.
00:06:16.639 --> 00:06:19.439
So you've lived in Flint your whole life, I take it?
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So I have lived now as a resident here in the city for about 10 years.
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But like I said, I grew up in Lake Hunton in particular and went to Linden High School.
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My mom was the school social worker at the middle school for 20, 25 years or so.
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But like I said, I always spent my weekends downtown.
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And back in the late 90s and early 2000s, it was really just the punks kind of keeping the lights on.
00:06:39.360 --> 00:06:42.560
You know, all the lawyers and politicians would clear out at 5 p.m.
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And it was just tumbleweeds and swinging traffic lights.
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Back then it was really just the local and a few dive bars here and there that were open.
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And it was always where I found my community and other people that actually liked the same music and liked the same things.
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And Lyndon and Lake Fenton were schools that I I don't know.
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I had friends there, but it was really in Flint where I found people that were more like me and liked the same thing.
00:07:03.759 --> 00:07:10.160
Now, somehow you ended up you were working for a resource Flint, and I can't remember what that agency's original name was.
00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:18.480
Resource Genesee, if I recall, it was before I came on board when it was a different name, but they were focused on basically human services issues.
00:07:18.480 --> 00:07:23.519
At that time, we housed the volunteer center for Genesee County, and that was the department that I worked in.
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Specifically, I worked with folks that were low-income on cash assistance through Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
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So we basically helped them fulfill their volunteer component of the program in order to get their benefits.
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You've also been named by the Flint Genesee Chamber of Commerce as one of 40 under 40, which means essentially that list over the years has met that these are emerging leaders in our community.
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With that honor comes some expectation.
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Hopefully I can live up to everyone's expectations.
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You've not lost interest in the punk band yet, but your interests have migrated in other areas.
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Tell us about that.
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I decided to get involved with the Genesee County Democratic Party.
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That led me down another career path back into the policy realm.
00:08:06.639 --> 00:08:15.759
So I worked on a few after I kind of hit my burnout point with the taco truck due to some mechanical challenges and other issues with it and just stress of managing a food truck business.
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I decided I really needed to make a change.
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I felt like owning a food truck I was part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution when it comes to the environment.
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So both actually.
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When I got involved with the Dems again, I restarted our Genesee County Young Dems chapter.
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It had kind of gone inactive once some of the former members had aged out.
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You can technically only be a young Dem until 36 years old.
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So I picked up the mantle, and even though I was getting close to that 36 age, I felt I could still try to get it started and make it more of a loose social organization.
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Once Dominique Clemens, who's now our chair of our county commission, once he became involved, he really helped steer us in a new direction, got us active as a political action committee into where we've actually done some fundraising and endorsement of candidates, as well as supporting young leaders who are interested in running for office.
00:09:11.279 --> 00:09:18.480
Dan, eventually you became involved in issues involving agriculture and soil conservation in Genesee County.
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Yeah, so in 2019, one of my good friends works for Genesee Conservation District as our produce safety technician.
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And she reached out to me and said, Hey, our board of directors is gonna have a vacancy.
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You should consider running.
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And at the time, I really thought, oh wow, I don't really know much what what is a conservation district.
00:09:37.919 --> 00:09:40.000
Oh, I have to run for office for it.
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I I was a little I was interested because I've always had a lifelong passion for conservation.
00:09:45.360 --> 00:09:55.840
The reputation of the soil conservation district in Genesee County is a bunch of old guy farmers that sort of dominate it and they keep quiet because they don't get involved too much in politics.
00:09:55.840 --> 00:10:02.320
They resist most every modern way of farming that we tried to introduce when I was on the county board.
00:10:02.559 --> 00:10:07.759
You'd be shocked to hear, too, that that that's sort of a commonality on district board throughout the entire state historically.
00:10:08.159 --> 00:10:10.000
Yeah, good Christmas parties.
00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:14.159
Yeah, so my friend Micah, she said, hey, you should consider joining our board.
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You've got an act for policy.
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And so I did it on a whim, and sure enough, I was elected.
00:10:18.320 --> 00:10:23.039
So that was really my first introduction into the conservation world formally.
00:10:23.039 --> 00:10:40.320
Based on conversations with our district admin and other directors, they really encouraged me to get involved with our statewide association, the Michigan Association of Conservation Districts, who have a legislative work group that meets on a regular basis to discuss legislative advocacy policy.
00:10:40.320 --> 00:10:49.360
So that was where I first got involved then, because at the time, professionally, I was working as a legislative aide for State Representative John Cherry.
00:10:49.759 --> 00:10:50.799
Right place to start.
00:10:51.039 --> 00:10:51.600
It was great.
00:10:51.600 --> 00:11:00.960
I came in, I felt like I could do a lot knowing how the legislature operated to really help form that legislative strategy for a Michigan's conservation districts.
00:11:01.200 --> 00:11:13.679
I'm sure most people in Genesee County have no clue what the Genesee County Soil Conservation District does, what its goals are, or anything like that, or any program or advocacy or anything like this.
00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:23.840
Every county in America is covered by a conservation, and they are a local unit of government that functions sort of in the way of an intermediate school district or something functions.
00:11:23.840 --> 00:11:28.080
They were created in the 1930s in response to the dust bowl.
00:11:28.080 --> 00:11:38.000
The idea was that the farmers in the Great Plains in particular were tilling the hell out of their land, and they were basically just decimating the overall health of the soil.
00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:43.600
A huge drought hit, and that drought then basically turned all of these fields into dust.
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And farmers lost billions of dollars in today's dollars worth of assets and capital.
00:11:48.399 --> 00:11:49.919
So it was a national crisis.
00:11:49.919 --> 00:11:56.240
It wasn't until the clouds of dust were actually showing up on Capitol Hill in DC to where Congress felt that they needed to act.
00:11:56.240 --> 00:11:57.440
So they created the U.S.
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Soil Conservation Service, which is now today the Natural Resource Conservation Service through the U.S.
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Department of Agriculture.
00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:06.639
So they are sort of our federal partners.
00:12:06.639 --> 00:12:10.080
There needed to be more because farmers tend to be pretty skeptical people.
00:12:10.080 --> 00:12:14.559
They don't tend to trust the federal government or state government coming onto their land.
00:12:14.559 --> 00:12:19.279
They realized that there needed to be a local component to help implement conservation programming.
00:12:19.279 --> 00:12:21.120
We started in the early 1940s.
00:12:21.120 --> 00:12:25.360
I want to say Genesee started in last year, would have been our 75th anniversaries.
00:12:25.360 --> 00:12:28.799
Yeah, early 1940s was when our chapter was formed here.
00:12:28.799 --> 00:12:31.440
Initially, we started as soil conservation districts.
00:12:31.440 --> 00:12:33.919
That was the main focus, but we do more now.
00:12:33.919 --> 00:12:46.559
And so we've dropped the soil prefix and we're just conservation districts because we're doing work in water quality, in forest quality, in habitat restoration, in dune restoration.
00:12:46.559 --> 00:12:50.080
So we do a lot of other areas outside of just soil conservation now.
00:12:50.399 --> 00:12:55.919
Most people, when they think of Genesee County, they think of General Motors and they think of it as an industrial hub.
00:12:55.919 --> 00:12:59.200
But really, Genesee County has a lot of agricultural land.
00:12:59.440 --> 00:12:59.919
Absolutely.
00:12:59.919 --> 00:13:06.960
So our district, we work one-on-one with those farmers through the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program or MEAP.
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Our district employees will help farmers apply for federal programming, and then our district employees and engineers will actually design the plans and whatnot that are then implemented and paid for using farm bill dollars from the federal government.
00:13:20.559 --> 00:13:22.159
So Michigan's pretty fortunate.
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We have Senator Debbie Stavenau, who's been chairman of the Agriculture Club of the United States Senate.
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She's been a huge champion for farmers and for conservation programming across the board.
00:13:31.840 --> 00:13:38.639
Michigan gets millions of dollars from the federal government through the Farm Bill program to implement conservation practices.
00:13:38.960 --> 00:13:41.440
And that money flows to Genesee County as well.
00:13:41.600 --> 00:13:47.039
Yeah, honestly, the Art Conservation District brings in millions of dollars from the federal government into Genesee County.
00:13:47.200 --> 00:14:08.879
It's going to be about a month or so, or maybe even sooner, that people will be driving up north to see the colors and to see, you know, go deer hunting, go see their relatives at Thanksgiving, and then they're going to see this big cloud of dust going across the roads, M55, M33, I don't know about M72.
00:14:08.879 --> 00:14:10.480
I don't get over that way very often.
00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:16.480
But in the coastal plain along Lake Huron, it's not uncommon to see these big clouds of dust.
00:14:16.480 --> 00:14:20.720
And sometimes they make visibility, you know, impair visibility and so on.
00:14:20.720 --> 00:14:27.039
I always wondered if you're going up and down I-75, why aren't people riled up about this?
00:14:27.039 --> 00:14:30.080
And what does it mean when we see that cloud of dust?
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Most folks don't understand where their food comes from, period.
00:14:33.120 --> 00:14:34.879
And I think that is part of the problem.
00:14:34.879 --> 00:14:39.759
You know, we've had multiple generations of folks that have grown up just with the invention of the supermarket.
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We show up there, the food's there, we don't have any thought about it.
00:14:42.559 --> 00:14:48.000
And because of that, we're very removed from the processes that are required to create and grow our food.
00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:57.039
So folks aren't more riled up because they think of soil as an infinite resource, that it just goes all the way down to the earth's mantle and we're good, and that's it.
00:14:57.039 --> 00:14:59.919
But the reality is that topsoil is a finite resource.
00:14:59.919 --> 00:15:11.679
There was a study that was released last year, the year before, from University of Massachusetts and Amherst that said that in the Midwest, we've gone through well over a third of our total topsoil.
00:15:11.679 --> 00:15:22.559
So they're predicting we have maybe 60 some odd harvests left at current status quo practices of which would be standards of tillage and herbicide pesticide applications.
00:15:22.559 --> 00:15:26.960
And, you know, there's some other practices that we promote too that help prevent soil erosion.
00:15:26.960 --> 00:15:30.080
This is a major issue that a lot of folks don't really think about.
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The implications of it are really pretty serious.
00:15:32.799 --> 00:15:38.159
Michigan is the second largest producer of produce in the country outside of California.
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And we have one of the most diverse collections of crops grown throughout the state as well.
00:15:43.039 --> 00:15:54.000
Given the future of climate change and what things are going to look like throughout our country, especially in the Southwest, it's likely that Michigan will become the largest producer based on conditions that we're looking at.
00:15:54.000 --> 00:16:01.279
So conservation is more important than it's even going back to the Dust Bowl, soil conservation is even more critical now than it was at that point.
00:16:01.279 --> 00:16:03.279
Again, it's something a lot of folks don't really think about.
00:16:03.519 --> 00:16:10.960
Genesee County, going back at least the mid to late 80s, there were many farmers that began a practice called no-till farming.
00:16:10.960 --> 00:16:12.399
Tell us what that is.
00:16:12.720 --> 00:16:18.960
So no-till farming is an approach to farming where there is as little disturbance to the soil as possible.
00:16:18.960 --> 00:16:25.440
Sometimes there's other equipment that folks can use, like they call no-till drills or strip tillers, which are minimal tillage.
00:16:25.440 --> 00:16:37.600
The idea is that rather than breaking up all of the soil and mixing all the soil, which is what a lot of people think that is one of the best approaches to it, it leaves it where it is to allow cover crops and other plants to maintain their root structure.
00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:45.919
Without getting too much into the science of it, because you know, I am I am not a scientist, so everything I've learned is adjacent to scientists that have explained these things to me.
00:16:45.919 --> 00:16:51.200
And but the root systems basically will create rhizomes and other clusters of nitrogen.
00:16:51.200 --> 00:16:54.480
So it actually is more beneficial to the overall soil health.
00:16:54.480 --> 00:16:55.919
Now, what is soil health?
00:16:55.919 --> 00:17:00.480
Soil health is an overall composition of soil as an ecosystem.
00:17:00.480 --> 00:17:06.160
Soil is a micro universe of microbes and other microorganisms that essentially make it up.
00:17:06.160 --> 00:17:13.279
The more biodiverse that soil is, the overall healthier it is with nitrogen and nutrients there in the soil.
00:17:13.599 --> 00:17:17.359
What impact do you think urban farming will have in the future?
00:17:17.359 --> 00:17:24.720
If Michigan's got such great soil, a lot of this land is being reclaimed in the Flint area, particularly in Detroit and other places.
00:17:24.720 --> 00:17:26.960
Do you see a role for that in the future?
00:17:27.279 --> 00:17:27.839
Absolutely.
00:17:27.839 --> 00:17:38.160
So a lot of our conventional farmers now who farm really large acreage, they tend to grow corn and soy almost exclusively because that's where the money is.
00:17:38.160 --> 00:17:41.440
That's where they're going to make the most return on their time.
00:17:41.440 --> 00:17:43.200
That's how they've built out their equipment.
00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:45.599
That's how they've built out their entire business operation.
00:17:45.599 --> 00:17:50.880
So many farmers are farming primarily corn and soy, and that's how they've built out their business.
00:17:50.880 --> 00:17:57.599
Expecting them to change things over to start producing vegetables and produce is a pretty tall order at this point.
00:17:57.599 --> 00:18:11.680
To me, I see urban farming systems as being a question of stabilizing our overall food system as well as reducing the overall amount of carbon that is emitted through production and transportation of produce.
00:18:11.680 --> 00:18:16.000
Again, going back to the supermarket concept, folks don't understand where their food comes from.
00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:29.839
And we have this expectation that we should always be able to eat tomatoes year-round, we should always be able to eat oranges year round and have these things that are really only a privilege that has been allowed us by globalization of production and shipping.
00:18:29.839 --> 00:18:35.119
Most of produce is grown in either California or Mexico or South America in the off season.
00:18:35.119 --> 00:18:42.880
To me, it's a question of how we can reduce the carbon by reducing the distance it has to travel to get from farm to market table.
00:18:43.279 --> 00:18:47.440
What you're trying to do, but also is to work on water quality improvement.
00:18:47.440 --> 00:18:56.000
And I understand that the government now is seeking to reduce the amount of phosphorus that's going into our watersheds.
00:18:56.000 --> 00:18:57.359
Talk to us about that.
00:18:57.359 --> 00:18:59.119
Tell us what we need to know about that.
00:18:59.759 --> 00:18:59.920
Sure.
00:18:59.920 --> 00:19:17.039
Specifically, the non-point source issue is what's referred to as non-point source pollution, is a again a product of farmers getting away from the conservation practices that were adopted in the 40s and 50s and getting back into pre-conservation practices in terms of heavy tillage.
00:19:17.039 --> 00:19:31.119
And back in the 30s and 40s, riperion buffer strips were planted, which are strips of shrubs and trees that are between fields to help cut down on wind intensity, as well as harvestable buffer strips, which are there's drainage ditches that are at the edge of most fields.
00:19:31.119 --> 00:19:40.000
And when it rains, that water will run off into those drainage ditches, which then will typically run off into river streams and other water systems as part of a larger watershed.
00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:52.480
My organization, the Michigan Association of Conservation Districts, is partnering with the Herb Family Foundation based out of Detroit, and they're really dedicated to improving water quality in the Western Lake Erie Basin specifically.
00:19:52.480 --> 00:19:59.680
As part of our grant process, we're actually at the end of a three year grant cycle, but we have a farmer led group, which is an entirely organized by farmer.
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