2025 Impact Awards: Todd Feenstra

TODD FEENSTRA

Executive director, Midwest Water Stewards

Hometown: Elkhart, Indiana

Water is of essential importance to the potato industry, and the crucial resource is what solidified Todd Feenstra’s connection to the crop.

Feenstra, executive director of environmental organization Midwest Water Stewards and a licensed and certified professional geologist, delved into potatoes in 2008, when new Michigan legislation brought crop irrigation front and center in water use and rights discussions.

“Essentially, a simplified model was created that predicted enormous amounts of streamflow depletion due to pumping high-capacity irrigation wells,” Feenstra said. “The model predictions did not match the growers’ personal observations in their fields and the streams near their farms. We were asked to step in to help verify the impacts of pumping on the aquifers and the surface waters.”

Through work funded by growers, Midwest Water Stewards established a network of dedicated monitoring wells and surface water measurement sites. The network currently includes 230 monitoring wells and more than 450 stream sites, with the first wells installed now boasting more than 10 years of continuous data to draw from.

“Without question, the growers we get to work with are the greatest thing about my job,” Feenstra said. “It is incredibly rewarding to work with these families who care deeply about the environment and their communities. They are true stewards of the water resources.”

Feenstra also appreciates a job that gets him out from behind a desk for the field work that “gives us sound professional judgement, makes us so effective at analysis and modeling, and gives us great credibility in meetings and discussions. We speak from a place of deep expertise and practical experience.”

Demonstrating that expertise is the best part of his job, Feenstra said. During organizational field days, students, legislators, growers and educators are invited to experience a firsthand glimpse of what Midwest Water Stewards does. 

“We give them our equipment, put them in the streams and in the farm fields with pivots and monitoring wells, and teach them to collect the data,” Feenstra said. “It is incredibly rewarding to watch them light up and learn, and the return on our investment in their education is priceless.”

For the past decade, Feenstra’s organization has worked closely with hydrogeologic experts at Tritium to monitor water resources and ensure their responsible, sustainable use. Feenstra takes pride in that collaboration, which has helped create “a reputation as experts that never compromise the truth or the science,” he said.

Named the Michigan Potato Industry Commission’s Outstanding Industry Partner in 2021, Feenstra strives to follow the best advice he’s ever received: “Work hard, be humble. Find value in everyone.”