In a Twitter exchange with some younger farmers about farm innovations like cover crops, row widths, and rotations, my comments must have seemed skeptical. The first hint was an “Ok, Boomer” reply. Touché.
Perhaps I made the transition from curious enthusiast to indifferent cynic and didn’t realize it. But the fact that the overwhelming majority of us are doing our work almost identically does not mean we are set in our ways.
New-To-You Ideas
Many ideas which seem new to innovators are really new to them. On-farm innovation has no written record, so searching the literature to check to see if it has been done before, a standard practice for other pioneering efforts, isn’t possible. With so many of us growing the same things under similar circumstances pressured by intense competition, a truly original idea is rare.
There is wisdom of the crowds at work, to use a phrase I thought originated with author James Surowiecki, but actually was first espoused by Aristotle (which illustrates my first point). We are not stuck in production habit ruts so much as embracing similar methods after millions of man-acre-years of trial and error.
In the same way, ag practices are minutely tuned to every micro-climate and agronomic environment on each farm by this iterative process. Few new ideas survive in many of these unique circumstances. To expect one methodology to apply universally is what makes ag policy ineffective and usually renders on-farm ideas narrowly applicable.
However, “Same Guys Grow Same Stuff Same Way” is not the headline editors are looking for, nor entices readers. Consequently, our magazines and websites are filled with one-off stories hinting disruption, with rare follow-up.
In a low margin, brutally competitive environment, the one year your new idea fails can be the end of not just a dream, but a career. Looking at famers as a group is looking at survivors. Disrutions need enormous rewards to offset the odds. With the number of variables in agriculture, staying in the middle of the bell curve of accepted practice is prudent in this multi-generation marathon.
Much of the farm-level innovation centers around environmental and social rewards – sustainability, regenerative, local, etc. – for which there is no market payback. This is unfortunate, shortsighted, and irrefutable. Our obstinate opposition to any regulations to curb the external costs (erosion, nutrient loss, weed propagation, etc.) which could allocate a cost to bad practices, simultaneously smothers new ideas in the crib. While hopes for premiums spring eternal, there is no evidence more than a corner of ag will ever see such paybacks.
We experience few ground-level game-changers because our game has always been straightforward. Ancient farmers would be able to grasp intuitively our planting and harvest even while dumbfounded by our tools. Farming is more like soccer than football, with no vast body of arbitrary rules to tweak to create new game plans.
Home-Grown Game-Changer
In my 50-year career exactly one home-grown production practice – no-till – ever came close to a game-changer. But forty years on it has never been adopted on most acres and may be fading as long term complications pile up. The reasons may be illogical (landowner disapproval) or financial (undercapitalization for a long test period) or even unfair resistance to the new, but they are not baseless.
Innovators in the trenches are often unprepared for the advantages of intellectual property, after a lifetime of disrespect. Trade secrets are not something we have, it something we do. Thirst for recognition often gives any economic returns away, handing established ag suppliers easily acquired originality. Meanwhile, our industry’s extensive use of mechanical and chemical tools limits potential for new practices. Similarly, ag policy like crop insurance limits the boundaries of experimentation.
However, one thing has changed about on-farm innovation. The desired product may not be just an advancement of our craft. It could be content. Innovators now can find a payoff in advertiser dollars from video streams, appearances, endorsements, field days, blogs, and other communications. Crusaders for new methodology need not reshape how we farm, just create a salable New Thing. I applaud these dual goals even if I doubt any enduring impact.
Nonetheless, this pattern of young professionals out to teach the olds new ideas and persevering despite withering criticism is as crucial as to our industry as it is enduring. Agriculture may appear unimaginative, even unambitious, but it is not unconsidered. And as for us Boomers, we are OK – thanks for asking.
John Phipps, a farmer from Chrisman, Ill., is the on-farm “U.S. Farm Report” commentator.
