For more than a dozen years, Minnesota has put public money into a promise: that if we ask farmers politely and offer them a modest financial incentive, they’ll strengthen conservation efforts to better protect Minnesota’s lakes and rivers from agricultural pollution.

So far, the state has spent $32 million on that promise through the Minnesota Agricultural Water Quality Certification Program (MAWQCP), which was launched by the Legislature in 2013. Producers can tap up to $5,000 a year in financial assistance grants to help implement conservation practices, plus smaller incentive payments and scholarships tied to the program. The program is a national pioneer, employing an innovative approach to the stubborn problem of reducing agricultural runoff, such as nitrate or phosphorus.

That’s what makes MAWQCP’s premise so appealing. It enlists the people closest to the land rather than imposing mandates to tackle this vexing pollution problem.

But no matter how noble a publicly funded program’s intentions, it deserves scrutiny to ensure it’s actually working. A recent report from the respected Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) drilled down into that. The findings raise questions about whether the program is living up to its promise.

Specifically, is the program, which is funded through the Legacy Amendment’s Clean Water Fund, actually delivering cleaner water?

The OLA’s findings aren’t exactly reassuring, and lawmakers should take note. Reforms are in order. It’s also worth having a harder conversation about whether the voluntary approach is working.

First, some background. Minnesota’s water pollution is generally categorized in two ways. “Point sources” are what people mentally picture first, a pipe from a factory or wastewater plant. Discharges tend to be something regulators can monitor and measure with relative ease.

“Nonpoint sources,” such as fertilizer and manure running off from fields, are harder to pin down. Minnesota and the rest of the nation have spent decades tightening regulation of point sources, but nonpoint sources have mostly been left to voluntary programs.

MAWQCP is one of them. Farmers choose to participate. They can adopt conservation practices and get certified through the program. In return, they get recognition, technical help and a modest sum. Another benefit, even for those who don’t volunteer: The existence of programs like this keeps regulation at bay.

The premise is well-founded. But the OLA identified legitimate concerns about how the MAWQCP has been run. Ninety-two percent of producers certified in 2019 had at least one “contingency” attached to their certification. This means they hadn’t actually met the program’s standards yet, just promised to do so later. For example, one producer was certified in 2019 contingent on establishing buffers but still hadn’t done so by their 2023 review. When the producer still hadn’t complied by 2025, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture suspended the producer’s certification — but not before that person had collected six years of program benefits.

Another serious concern: After all this time and money spent, MAWQCP reports only projected pollution-reduction estimates, not measured, real-world water-quality outcomes.

There’s also the question of scale: Certified acres cover roughly 4% of the state’s farmland. Is that enough to make a meaningful difference in water quality?

After reading the report, I reached out to Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul, who co-chairs the Minnesota House Agriculture Finance and Policy Committee.

Hansen isn’t convinced the program’s voluntary certification model still works. When I asked him whether the OLA’s findings settled the question of whether a voluntary approach can address agricultural pollution, he didn’t hesitate: “I think it’s strong evidence that it doesn’t.”

“I think this program probably would have worked in 1990,” he told me. “But I don’t think it’s working in 2026.” His argument: The peer pressure and community trust the certification model leans on made sense in an era of small, owner-operated farms. Today’s consolidated, corporate-scale agriculture doesn’t respond to a neighbor’s opinion the same way.

Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen took a different view. In an interview, he defended the program’s voluntary, trust-based approach as fundamental to its value, not a flaw to be fixed.

“We built a lot of trust in it,” he said, recalling the program’s earliest days when it had just a handful of farmers enrolled. He pushed back on the idea that the lack of measured water-quality outcomes undermines the program’s worth, noting that pollution-reduction figures are projections calculated the same way many state programs measure success. “This isn’t unique to this program, and I’m a little tired of everybody pointing that out,” he said. “It’s hard to measure. What are you going to measure on a farm? What day are you going to measure it?”

As for whether the program should continue, Petersen was unequivocal: “This is an incredible investment.” He pointed to the growth in enrolled acreage, the national recognition for the program and interest from other states as evidence that it is working. “The auditor didn’t say get rid of the program and, you know, don’t fund it anymore,” he said.

To Petersen’s point, the OLA didn’t recommend scrapping MAWQCP. But it did recommend the Department of Agriculture stop certifying producers who haven’t yet met the program’s standards, and it asked the Legislature to clarify what the program is actually supposed to accomplish and how success will be measured. Those are modest, achievable fixes, and lawmakers should adopt them before writing MAWQCP’s next round of checks.

The OLA report notes that limited staffing capacity has contributed to a backlog for enrollment as demand for certification has outpaced the program’s capacity to process it. If the program is to make a meaningful difference in water quality, hurdles like that need to be fixed. I also recommend establishing specific water-quality improvement goals and then determining what percentage of farmers and farmland participating are required to meet them. And how much that would cost.

It’s clear the program has indeed created good will among agricultural stakeholders. The Minnesota Farmers Union and the Minnesota Farm Bureau both told me they continue to support the program. Rep. Steven Jacob, a Republican legislator and a longtime certified farmer himself, put the blame for the audit’s findings on the Agriculture Department’s administration rather than the program’s underlying design. He warned that a stricter, enforcement-based approach would backfire with farmers.

Legislators need to weigh the OLA findings and act on its sensible recommendations. They also need to confront the bigger issue. If the program’s funding is intended to buy cleaner water, then harder evidence, not just goodwill, is imperative.

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