The Keystone Monarch Collaborative’s mission is to enhance coordination across agricultural stakeholders to promote practices that increase habitat and support recovery of monarch butterfly populations in U.S. agricultural landscapes. ASA maintains representation on the Webinar Subgroup, which works to inform and educate farmers, the public, lawmakers, and others about the group’s mission and promote best practices to protect monarchs and other pollinators. And, ASA and ASA farmer-leaders are extremely active with the Collaborative’s Farmers for Monarchs initiative, including its own annual #Beans4Monarchs social media campaign.
Following declines reported in monarch butterfly populations, the Keystone Policy Center brought together a diverse group of committed stakeholders in 2015, including scientists, conservationists, farmers, and the private sector, to find collaborative solutions to strengthen monarch populations and habitat. Those initial conversations have led to ongoing efforts to develop strategies to promote and implement actions supporting monarchs in agricultural landscapes.
The Farmers for Monarchs initiative aims to identify agricultural and conservation practices to support healthy monarch populations, increase awareness of those strategies with the agricultural community and other interested parties, and promote the implementation of practices that will support monarch butterfly populations in agricultural landscapes.
The Keystone Monarch Collaborative and the Honey Bee Health Coalition have jointly submitted recommendations for enhancing honey bee, monarch butterfly, and pollinator habitat and forage to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Farmers for Monarchs offers state-by-state planting resources, including information on incentive and cost share programs, access to commercial seed providers and technical assistance. State soybean affiliates are also involved in the program.
