Sustainable Iowa Land Trust

Land protection: silt representatives work with landowners inspired by our mission to document the agricultural resources on their Land, answer questions, and further explore the potential for permanent protection within the landowner's stated goals. Protection then includes performing further due diligence regarding title, environmental hazards, suitability to silt's mission, and capacity. Silt staff also perform the closing and record the deed or easement. This program's reach has extended into informally helping landowners find beginning farmers for their Land if they've protected it with silt.

Landowner outreach: silt educates landowners across Iowa of their option to permanently protect their Land to grow healthy food. Silt hosts field days on silt or silt-like farms. These "showcase days'' include a farm tour and presentations on the legal options for permanently protecting Land. In 2021, we received a $175,000 usda farmers market promotion program grant to support small farm summer open houses on silt farms for the next 3 years. These are designed to increase a farm's retail sales to neighbors and friends with farm events, including live music, cooking demonstrations, and our landowner seminars.

General outreach: general outreach includes exhibiting at conferences likely to draw our intended audience, publishing and mailing an annual report, hosting gatherings to update community members on silt's progress, sending monthly email updates, maintaining a vibrant user-friendly website and active social media and pitching news articles to niche and mass publications. We also initiated a corporate partners campaign to allow local businesses to co-brand with our mission and expand our reach.