Delta Institute provided consulting and strategic guidance to Zumwalt Acres, a regenerative agriculture-focused family farm in Sheldon, Illinois. Regenerative practices include agroforestry, biochar, natural soil amendments, and other practices; a robust regenerative agriculture apprenticeship is also a core program.
Delta Institute (Delta) has spent more than three years analyzing the myriad of economic and environmental benefits associated with expanding regenerative grazing and grass-fed production in Illinois to provide a market-driven evolution of farming methodology. Through our work, we have developed a clear picture of grass-fed beef supply and demand in Illinois, establishing a target for additional acres of regenerative grazing needed in the coming years to meet Chicago’s growing grass-fed beef market.
The City of Chicago has the opportunity to implement strategies to tackle waste and materials management that impact our economy, environment, and citizens every day. These strategies offer opportunities to reduce waste; increase diversion through reuse, recycling, and composting; reduce costs; and increase economic and environmental justice opportunities.
Delta Institute (Delta) was hired by the City of Chicago Office of the Mayor to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the entire municipal waste system and its directly related impacts on the community. As a core part of our efforts, Delta developed a holistic, pragmatic roadmap with short-term recommendations for 2021-2022 to re-envision what materials management in Chicago could look like, while ultimately turning waste into resource.
Delta Institute (Delta) created a market and performance-based agricultural incentive program to reduce phosphorus loading in the Kalamazoo River Watershed associated with agricultural sources. Participating farmers entered bids to achieve phosphorus loading reductions at the lowest cost by implementing conservation practices. Farmers whose bids are accepted are paid to achieve those reductions.
Through a robust partnership between the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization and Delta Institute (Delta), our efforts included a comprehensive mapping project of numerous brownfield sites in the neighborhood and the creation of sustainable redevelopment strategy. These efforts helped lead to a Chicago Prize Finalist (2020) project.
Delta Institute (Delta) has worked within Gary for years—decades even—with dozens of local community partners who are essential to our collaborative efforts’ success. Many of our supporters are familiar with Delta’s efforts to create Steel City Salvage, our deconstruction project that saves reclaimed materials from vacant buildings going to landfill—instead selling them to spur economic development within the City of Gary. We are committed to ensuring that materials from Gary benefit Gary, and that operations remain within the City to provide another route for ongoing economic development.
Delta Institute created the StoryWood Toolkit as a guide for designers to identify, evaluate, and share the most interesting parts of a certain type of wood’s back story, and, more specifically, it will help to align material choices to achieve certifications, such as LEED or Living Building Challenge.
Stormwater runoff from parking lots, roadways, buildings, and other impervious surfaces carries oils, grease, pesticides, sediment, and excess nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen into groundwater and nearby natural bodies of water–including to Lake Michigan through watershed tributaries. Delta Institute and our partners planted more than 700 trees in Oceana County, Michigan along the Hart Montague Trail, and on roadways within five adjacent communities.
Traditionally, conservation land trusts have protected land, often restored it, and later transferred it to government entities for long-term ownership, which effectively transfers the responsibility of land stewardship to those governmental entities. The project consisted of three phases, each aimed at considering the new approaches to conservation finance and building capacity to enable and enhance land stewardship.
Delta Institute released Soil Wealth: Investing in Regenerative Agriculture across Asset Classes, the most comprehensive look to date at investment opportunities in regenerative agriculture. The report provides an in-depth analysis not only of investments in farmland, but also of investment opportunities across asset classes that support regenerative agricultural value chains and food systems.
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