WALLACE — The Wallace Project: Year Four, a short documentary about grassland restoration in western Kansas, has won the Water for Prosperity award at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands.
Presented on Sept. 26, the award highlights projects that recognize water-food-energy connections, livelihoods, sustainable development and economic opportunity, according to the World Water Film Festival, which chose the film as an official selection earlier in 2026.
The award was presented by Robert Strand, founder of WWFF, and Lineke Schrijver, associate programme management officer for the United Nations Division for Sustainable Development Goals.
“Our goal is to leverage the power of art to build advocacy,” said Strand, who founded WWFF in 2022. “When people feel water stories, they can act on water futures.”
The film was nominated in two of six United Nations-inspired categories: “Water for Prosperity” and “Investments in Water.” According to WWFF, these categories were inspired by the Interactive Dialogues of the 2026 UN Water Conference, where WWFF is credentialed to participate this December.
The film documents four years of regenerative grazing implementation on 2,740 acres of cropland in Wallace County, which has lost 80% of its aquifer water supply. The water crisis has called into question the sustainability of cropping practices that rely on the aquifer for production.
“Our nomination in these categories, and our win for the Prosperity Award, speaks to the potential for managed grazing to provide a solution to our most pressing agricultural challenges,” said Julie Mettenburg, founder and CEO of The Provenance Co.
“In parts of Kansas, the Ogallala Aquifer is predicted to have as few as 25 years of production left. It will run out in my children’s lifetimes. I dedicated myself to this work to secure a livable future for them. Being selected for a festival like this tells me we’re not alone.”
The Wallace Project: Year Four premiered in New York City on Earth Day 2025 as part of the RegenNYC Film Festival, and has since been selected by multiple festivals including the world-touring Climate Future Film Festival and the Los Alamos Film & Culture Festival in New Mexico. It won Best Kansas Documentary at the 2025 Doc Sunback Film Festival in Mulvane.
The film was produced as part of The Provenance Co.’s mission to share its story and demonstrate the potential for large-scale grassland and water restoration through Holistic Management of livestock. It features a multi-year transformation of marginal dryland cropping acreage back to a perennial grassland system, as a strategy for long-term resilience for a critical ecosystem.
“Bringing grazing livestock back in a way that mimics nature, with behavior simulating the former bison herds, is one way to restore whole-system health while retaining a profitable enterprise,” Mettenburg said. “The challenge is finding the financial pathway through a transition back to perennial production, in a place where the land is marginal without irrigation, so that is what this project focused on.”
The transition of cropland at production agriculture scale to grassland solely through grazing was a first-of-its-kind project. With the project concluding in 2026, The Provenance Co. is now engaged with new projects in development to move the concept forward toward broad-scale feasibility and adoption.
The film was produced by Bull Skull Productions of Lawrence.
“It means so much to have our work acknowledged,” said Chloe Burns, founder of Bull Skull and communications manager for The Provenance Co. Burns is the daughter of Mettenburg. They are sixth- and seventh-generation members of a Kansas farm family based at Princeton, who transitioned to Holistic Management in 2014.
For Burns, the work is personal: “I made this film because I’ve done the work of regenerative ranching. I know how hard it is and how isolating it can feel. I wanted to give recognition to the people on the ground making real change.”
Burns accepted the award on behalf of the project team working at Wallace, who captured much of the footage during daily work on the land. “Winning this award, from a festival focused on environmental solutions like the World Water Film Festival, is a tremendous honor. Our work is just beginning.”
Runtime for the director’s cut of the film is 17:29. The film is available for public viewing at www.theprovenanceco.com/oursolution#film.
View trailer at: https://www.youtube.com/ch?v=q6YpjxJPcj0&t=2s.
In addition to land restoration projects, The Provenance Co. partners with landowners, operators, and financing groups and provides regenerative grazing management consulting, training and education, including providing accreditation-level training in Holistic Management for the Savory Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information, visit: theprovenanceco.com Facebook & Instagram: @theprovenanceco. For more information about the World Water Film Festival, and the full list of nominees and winners, visit: https://www.worldwaterff.org/2026-nominations.
