2026 ILLINOIS LEOPOLD CONSERVATION AWARD WINNER SHARES INNOVATIVE GRAZING TECHNIQUES

Greg Thoren has achieved great success on his farm by combining age-old conservation practices with new technology, such as virtual fencing for his cattle, and he and his wife Janis are now being recognized as the 2026 winner of the Leopold Conservation Award in Illinois. Located in the far southeast corner of Jo Daviess County, Greg farms in

the Driftless Area where the topography differs a great deal from central Illinois, and a variety of soil types can be found.

Greg’s experience with conservation agriculture dates to his teenage years, as he participated in 4H and FFA with crop and livestock projects and learned about rotational grazing from his father. He said, “We have been very conservation minded. My dad did rotational grazing with bigger paddocks like two or three weeks at a time, and now basically today we are moving cattle daily, and we are doing this with virtual fencing.” According to Greg, time saving is one of the biggest benefits of this system. He explains, “If I had to move my cattle daily the way I move them with the virtual fence, it would take me at minimum four hours per day, and I can move them in 15 to 20 minutes virtually.”

Over the past 50 years, he has rented various farms within a 10-mile radius of where he grew up, but he has been farming in his current location for about 25 years. Although he does not farm any of the ground that his father or grandfather farmed, he is farming in the same area- just south of Stockton, IL. Greg purchased his first Hereford heifer calf in 1969 or 1970 and believes he paid $225 for it, claiming with a laugh that it would probably cost 15 times more than that today.

Greg’s herd is now up to 150 cows, primarily black angus, and they plan to slowly continue growing it. A few years ago, they started keeping their own bulls and using a natural line breeding method. Greg said, “We’ve been very successful because of the epigenetic effect of the animals that we raise that get accustomed to the way that we handle them, the forages they were in… We’re into some grass finishing animals here, and they seem to do very well on the cover crops, the diversity of forages.” Greg said he can clearly see the difference that his recent practices have made in the health of his cattle, who gain weight and put marbling on much better than they did 10 to 15 years ago when they were just in larger fenced paddocks and being moved every two to three weeks.

In October 2024, he began using eShepherd, Gallagher’s virtual fencing system, which uses solar-powered, GPS-enabled livestock neckbands and an app that allows users to track their cattle any time of day. Greg explained, “You put neckbands on the animals, and everything is done on the cellphone. There’s nothing in the ground whatsoever. It’s all done by GPS location…. Everything is above the ground, and you can move the paddocks very easily. It will not let the animal go from the old paddock to the new paddock until that group has all been communicated with, so you don’t have one going through and the others can’t get through.”

When cattle get close to the fence line, the neckband will beep at them. According to Greg, over 99 percent of the time, the cattle will turn around once they hear the beep. If they continue to cross the line, it will beep three times, shock them three times, and then turn off. However, they can return to the herd without being shocked, and since cattle are mob animals, they tend to stay together.

These grazing practices have led to visible improvements, including blacker, softer soil with improved water infiltration and less erosion. The cattle work their manure into the soil with their hooves, and he relies on dung beetles and natural soil biology to do the rest of the work. He leaves quite a bit of forage in his pasture, along with residue, to keep the soil moist and healthy.

Greg has also implemented solar corridors by interseeding cover crops into 60-inch row corn. He grows a variety of different species with varying heights, each species making its own unique contribution to the health of the soil. When asked if this practice has affected his yields, Greg responded, “We’ve had some very good yields off 60-inch corn, and we’ve had some disasters through the years. This year everything looked relatively reasonable. I actually had up to 200 acres of 60-inch row corn this year out of 1,400 acres total corn, and we will be grazing 60-inch row corn on fields that don’t have fences around them this fall. I don’t recommend that to everybody, but I feel comfortable doing that as of now. And we’ve been successful last year doing that last winter, and we’re going to expand that so we can get more livestock, get that manure, get that biology from the livestock back on the land.”

Greg is also happy to share the knowledge that he has gained from these conservation practices with fellow farmers and agriculture professionals, hosting a variety of different events on his farm, including Nutrient Stewardship Field Days. These are coordinated by Bena Pegg, Environmental Program Manager with the Illinois Farm Bureau. Describing Greg’s solar corridors, she said, “The corn may lose a bit in production because of spacing, but the loss is more than made up in cattle health and production. Between the 60-inch rows, Thoren plants cover crops that grow all spring and summer long. By harvest the cover crops have grown to large stands of forage—effectively producing winter feed for his cattle. Not to mention when the cattle graze—they are fertilizing the field and cycling nutrients. The program integrates cover crops, animals, and broad scale agriculture—providing an example of what is possible and a transition point to a more diverse and resilient agricultural system.