Avoidable Accidents and Conservation Agriculture Practices
I’ll never forget Dec. 20, 2021. Other than it being the week of Christmas, it was a normal start to the week. My wife and I rushed to get kids on the school bus, I checked and fed our small herd of Angus cattle, and then settled behind the desk for a busy day of work for America’s Conservation Ag Movement.
Fast forward two hours and I’m in the emergency room as a result of a fire alarm, an extension ladder and a poor decision. As I write this two months later, I’m thankfully on the mend from surgery to fix a broken heel. I’ve also celebrated the removal of a cast on my previously broken wrist.
A MINDSET SHIFT
What does this have to do with America’s Conservation Ag Movement and supporting farmers on their journeys of adopting conservation ag practices? The short answer is that sometimes change stems from major events in our life and our farm that fundamentally shift your mindset.
Our farm, just like yours, has its own story and its own challenges to adapt new practices in the battle of yield, profit and conservation. However as different as our farms might be, ultimately our love of the land creates a common theme in the universal family farm book, “Striving to Leave it Better for the Next Generation.”
I’m proud of the conservation practices we’ve adopted on our farm, which arguably started with my dad parking the moldboard plow in the trees in the 1980s. Our story is far from complete, and each change deserves its own chapter as it is being incrementally written over decades.
The chapter most relevant to an emergency room visit started on April 25, 2019. The skies opened and closed our planting window. Those initial drops began a streak of measurable precipitation for 27 out of the next 35 days totaling over 15".
That July, the first cover crop seed was sown on our farm in my lifetime. Reflecting over the past three years, the reality is our tabletop flat fields lost untold, and if I’m being honest, unacceptable tons of soil and pounds of nutrients from fall applied anhydrous. They were too bare when 35% of our annual precipitation fell in just over a month.
The now obvious realization is had the cover crops been seeded the previous fall, our soil would have been covered and we would have been ready for whatever Mother Nature threw at us.
THE NEXT CHAPTER
Here’s my advice from many lessons learned the hard way: Commit to crafting that next chapter in your book each winter when you have time to reflect. Seek out trusted sources. Imagine what your book and farm will look like after 40 seasons when you pass both to the next generation.
Is your farm ready for the next flood or drought? The Natural Resources Conservation Service is announcing several new and expanded opportunities for climate smart agriculture in 2022. Learn more.
Ryan Heiniger is Trust In Food’s director of America’s Conservation Ag Movement and leads its state and local projects. Ryan and his wife, Nikki, are raising their son and daughter as fifth-generation farmers along the banks of the Mississippi River in southeast Iowa.
