Green Lands, Blue Waters

Go to this group's website

Purpose

Green Lands, Blue Waters is a long-term comprehensive effort whose mission is to support development of and transition to a new generation of agricultural systems in the Mississippi River Basin that integrate more perennial plants and other continuous living cover into the agricultural landscape.

Iowa State University is hosting the group's 2012 partnership meeting. Details here!

The goals of Green Lands, Blue Waters:

• Research, develop, implement, and promote profitable enterprises based on the products of perennials and other continuous living cover systems.
• Build the capacity of stakeholders, including scientists and farmers, farm advisors, extension educators, input suppliers, bankers, processors, NGO personnel, civic leaders, faith leaders, and others.
• Significantly expand the knowledge base regarding perennial crops and the use of cover crops in annual systems and their environmental, economic, and health impacts
• Coordinate and build on related new and existing research, education, and implementation activities in the Mississippi River Basin
• Heighten the public awareness, visibility, and focus upon continuous living cover systems
• Develop an integrative approach to, and methods for, ecological and qualitative assessment of our work and outcomes that allow for as close to real-time feedback as possible

Working group resources

• Brochure [PDF] that lists major partners and contact information
• Strategic plan [PDF] (June 23, 2009)
• Logic model used to develop the plan [Excel file]

Links we like

• Hypoxia: The Northern Gulf of Mexico, lots of news, publications and resources from the Louisiana Universities Marine  Consortium
• 'Green Lands, Blue Waters' and Nested Activism, article about the GLBW strategy to improve the Mississippi  River Bason, published by WorldChanging.com news organization
• Midwest Cover Crops Council, an effort dedicated to facilitating the adoption of cover crops throughout the Midwest
• The 1Mississippi Campaign, a public campaign of a coalition of 37 nonprofit organizations and businesses working together from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico to protect the land, water and people of the Mississippi River basin