Recognized for their families? longstanding commitment to agriculture, 106 Indiana family farms were presented the Hoosier Homestead Award today at the Indiana State Fair from?Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch?and?Indiana State Department of Agriculture?Director Bruce Kettler.

To be named a Hoosier Homestead, farms must be owned by the same family for more than 100 consecutive years, and consist of 20 acres or more, or produce more than $1,000 in agricultural products per year.

Based on the age of the farm, families are eligible for three different distinctions of the Hoosier Homestead Award. They can receive the Centennial Award for 100 years, Sesquicentennial Award for 150 years or Bicentennial Award for 200 years of ownership.

Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch and the Indiana State Department of Agriculture recently awarded the winners of the 2022 Indiana Agriculture photo contest. The winning photographs will be displayed in the lieutenant governor?s Family of Business offices in Indianapolis.

The winning photos were chosen from hundreds of entries in the following four categories: Agritourism, Conservation, Faces of Agriculture and On the Farm. Two winners were selected from each category, along with two winners overall.

USDA?s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Indiana has announced that it is awarding $7.9 million for the Kankakee Watershed Initiative led by the Indiana State Department of Agriculture and funded by the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP). RCPP is a partner-driven program that leverages resources to advance innovative projects that address climate change, enhance water quality and address other critical challenges on agricultural and forest land.

RCPP allows for partner support that assists with defraying costs not covered by the program. This initiative brings together Indiana, Illinois and 43 partners to work to improve the overall health of the iconic Kankakee and Iroquois watersheds. The project enables the Kankakee River Basin Commission and other key partners to leverage resources to address the watershed's unique, sizable conservation challenges. Through additional partners like Purdue Extension, the Northwest Food Co-op, and the local soil and water conservation districts, this project will impact a diverse agricultural community such as urban producers, traditional agriculture producers and non-conventional producers, all of whom have an interest in initiative watersheds.

The primary objective of this multi-state initiative is to accomplish nutrient reduction goals to address excess water by implementing agricultural and forest land conservation practices and voluntarily establishing wetland easements. The project aims to work with a multitude of landowners including forestland, urban, specialty crop and traditional farmers to install conservation practices that facilitate water storage, build community involvement and improve water quality within the initiative?s focal region.