Americas Conservation Ag Movement

Cashing in on Conservation: How Local Retailers Can Connect Agronomy With Market Opportunity

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 14:16:18 GMT

Recent research from Trust In Food places ag retailers as a trusted source of conservation information for the average farmer because a majority of them (55%) have farm experience themselves.

It’s something Nutrien Ag Solutions sees play out in their business each day. With more than 1,900 retail locations globally, Nutrien Ag Solutions is a leading provider of both inputs and advice for farmers who are battling constant challenges, both from agronomic and external pressures.

“The trust in the relationships our crop consultants have with growers is key to implementing the best agronomic practices over time,” says Sally Flis, director, Sustainable Ag Programs, Nutrien Ag Solutions. “As the trusted adviser, they are working with our growers 365 days a year to find solutions, evaluate problems and look for new opportunities to drive their businesses.”

Nutrien Ag Solutions has been capitalizing on that trust by rolling out conservation programs that can net farmers added income in exchange for continued conservation agronomy practices and data-capture, specifically around nitrogen management. The retail leader is hoping the programs will leverage agronomic practices and data into bottom line incentives for farmers.

“Good agronomy is the base of all sustainability programs, making sure we have the best tools, practices and products selected at a field level to drive production efficiency and return to the grower is what drives the metrics we look at for sustainability programs,” Flis says. “Our programs are focused on nitrogen management, an agronomic fundamental that growers and our crop consultants are working on every season to optimize return.”

Conservation programs through Nutrien Ag Solutions can help farmers secure added income in exchange for conservation agronomy practices and data-capture.

(Nutrien Ag Solutions)

According to Flis, the programs are paying off at the farm gate in a variety of ways, including:

Improved data collection
Access to sustainable ag reports with compiled field-level and operational data
Education about new tools, technologies and products to drive efficiency on the acre

Program enrollees begin the enrollment process with a registration into Nutrien Ag Solutions’ proprietary digital platform, Agrible . The company says the software uses predictive agronomic forecasts and sustainability metrics generated from in-field data. Through a variety of value chain connections, such as Ardent Mills and Bunge, Flis says the company is using that data to shape downstream sustainability goals within the industry.

But, Nutrien Ag Solutions is backing up this technology by doing what they do best, Flis says.

“We have the Sustainable Ag Field team, our crop consultants on the ground and Waypoint Analytical as resources to help growers select practices, collect data and analyze progress,” she says. “The level of support we provide means that the majority of growers that enroll in our programs make it to completion and receive payments.”

Payments vary and are based on outcomes, specifically a reduction in applied nitrogen by a minimum of 5%. The program has a minimum payment of $2 per acre but can rise as much as $4.89 per acre for long-term, no-till corn and $4.47 per acre for conventional tillage corn. Cotton producers, on average, receive $3.84 per acre for long-term, no-till practices. The program is applicable for winter wheat, barley and sorghum as well.

Nutrien Ag Solutions provides support for growers enrolled in conservation programs to help ensure success in the partnership.

(Nutrien Ag Solutions)

For Nutrien Ag Solutions, conservation programs sprang from enhanced market opportunities available through the carbon space and a desire to ensure those opportunities were optimized for the farm gate. Flis says Nutrien Ag Solutions, with their trusted grower relationship, was the natural fit to make that connection stronger, and they are consistently looking for more programs that align with that mission.

“The programs were designed after a few years of experimenting in the carbon space and getting feedback from growers and our crop consultants,” Flis says. “We blended those findings into the Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes Program in the U.S. and Canada — shorter term agreements, carbon and other sustainable ag metrics calculated to meet grower and CPG needs, provide tools and products available to allow for continuous improvement, and pay growers for the outcomes from changes.”

America’s Conservation Ag Movement is a public/private collaborative that meets growers across the country where they are on their conservation journey and empowers their next step with technical assistance from USDA-NRCS and innovation solutions and resources from agriculture’s leading providers. Learn more at americasconservationagmovement.com .

Hurricane Helene: One Year Later

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 17:35:22 GMT

Chris White is 46 years old. For more than half of that time, he’s been a blueberry farmer in his hometown of Baxley, Ga. He’s seen a lot, both as a farmer and also as a resident in southeast Georgia, an area of the country that’s not quite hurricane ground zero but that can certainly find itself adjacent to the many tropical storms and hurricanes that make landfall each year.

But he’d never seen anything like what happened to his community the night of Sept. 26, 2024.

Located in the southeastern part of the state, Baxley was one of the many towns that took a direct hit from Hurricane Helene. Overnight, the hurricane pummeled the area with 100-plus mph wind gusts and rainfall that triggered flooding, resulting in 37 deaths in the state.

When White and his fellow farmers awoke the next morning, they were unprepared for what they saw.

One of the farms that makes up Appling Blueberry Farms had sat ripe with mature blueberry bushes just the day before. Now, it was decimated – the entire blueberry canopy flattened to the ground. Surrounded by debris, he recalls having to walk 3 miles on foot to get to his equipment shed.

“I drove the tractor back here to the field and when I pulled to the road and saw it, I just turned around and didn’t come back for six days,” White says.

“Just imagine the entire thing on the ground. “It was devastating,” he adds.

Down the road in the neighboring city of Alma, Randy Miller spent the morning with the same ache in his gut. Looking out on his family’s timber operation, Miller saw his 1,400 acres of timberland in shambles.

“We lost 300 acres of timber in the 30 to 40-year range,” he says.

Miller thought of his timber acres largely as his 401k — a savings he could grow to maturity and then harvest as a security blanket for retirement.

“I’m 64 years old, and that was basically my lifetime’s marketable timber that was gone,” he says.

Randy Miller had invested time and energy in growing a pinewood plantation that he hoped to market at maturity. Hurricane Helene’s 100-plus mph winds decimated 300 acres of his trees.

(Randy Miller)

The Clean-Up

While White remained in denial about his crop’s demise, Miller didn’t have the time. Even felled timber has a window where harvest remains possible, but time is critical. He started calling his timber cutting contacts, but he was already behind. Other landowners had called before him.

“It took months before they could get to us,” Miller says.

“Before the Hurricane, we sold 60 acres of timber worth roughly $4,000 per acre,” he says. “After it, we picked up 150 acres and got a check for $47,000.

“Some people got nothing, so we were lucky that we’d gotten $4 a ton for ours, which is basically nothing,” he adds.

In Baxley, White finally started ripping out his destroyed blueberry bushes. In order to plant more, he had to start from scratch and rebuild the field infrastructure, such as bark mounds and drip lines.

But then he couldn’t find plants.

“We called all over the U.S. to find plants,” he recalls. “We had plants come from Oregon and Florida. We really had to struggle to get them.”

Appling Blueberry Farms planted the last of its replacement bushes in February, which means that the new crop could not yield fruit this year. Grower Chris White will be able to harvest berries from the farm in the 2026 growing year.

(America’s Conservation Ag Movement)

White’s last new plant went into the ground in February. He says he’s not sure that any of that quick rebuild would have been possible without emergency assistance from USDA.

“The FSA Tree Assistance Program (TAP) was a very big blessing to put them back,” he says. “They paid an amount for the soil preparation and then so much per plant for the replant.

“It definitely wasn’t something that would bring you debt-free on it, but it was something that wouldn’t put you in a real financial bind,” he adds.

Planning for the Future

The devastation left in Helene’s wake wasn’t just plant loss for many farmers. The rushing water from torrential rain combined with the hurricane-force winds blew critical topsoil, sending it into nearby fields, ditches and roadways.

Part of the recovery for growers like White was moving and replacing dirt.

“We hauled in about 60 dump truck loads of dirt and put the soil back where it had eroded,” he recalls.

He wasn’t the only one. Neal Boatright, a fourth-generation farmer who grows more than 6,000 acres of cotton, peanuts and blueberries at scale, also had to get to work relocating soil on his farm. He noticed a difference in erosion in his no-till acreage and the areas where he harvest-tills crops such as peanuts.

“We brought it back from the lower side of the fields and put back and leveled and tried to fix it,” he says. “We have conventional tillage areas that wash worse.”

Growers such as White, Miller and Boatright have seen the weather changing around them. While they say they’d never seen a hurricane or tropical storm hit their region with such devastation as Helene did, they aren’t sure it is going to be the last one.

Their rebuilding plans are a combination of put-back and pre-planning for mitigation of future potential weather catastrophes.

In his rebuild, White worked to secure grants that would allow him to experiment with cover crops in between his blueberry rows. The farm that was lost totally last year now has a diverse cover crop mixture locking his soil in place.

Appling Blueberry Farms uses a diverse mixture of cover crops in between blueberry rows to protect soil from erosion. After the first year, grower Chris White says he sees a reduction in nematode and weed pressure due to the cover crop.

(America’s Conservation Ag Movement)

At one point in the growing season, his cover crop mixture stood 6 feet tall, towering above his blueberry bushes. In addition to protecting the soil, White says the cover crop is yielding other benefits as well.

“It dries the middle out a lot quicker because you have so much sucking the rain and that helps a bunch,” he says. “Because we planted several different plants, our nematode pressure has been way down and the weed pressure too.

“We’ll keep a cover crop here twice a year now, one in the summer and one in the winter,” he adds.

Boatright has been cover cropping his land and sees the benefits in preventing erosion as well as building organic matter in the soil.

“It not only saves erosion by that cover crop growing, it helps retain some nutrients for the next year, builds up organic matter and helps with suppressing weed pressure,” he says. “All that added together makes a good cover crop worthwhile.”

Lasting Impact

While growers and landowners have spent this past year cleaning up and putting their land and assets back together, many worry that the devastation of Hurricane Helen may have generational impact.

Kevin Eason didn’t have to destroy many of his blueberry plants, but even though they survived, the yields this year seem to be suffering.

“What we’ve come to realize is some fields that we didn’t think were damaged, production was down significantly,” he says. “What’s going to happen a year from now, two years from now, three years from now?

“What are going to be the lingering effects of what happened with the Hurricane?”

As he drives down the road on his land and in his community, Boatright can still see areas that harken back to the immediate aftermath of the storm a year ago.

“There was probably more wind damage from that one storm than all the wind damage I’ve ever seen in my whole life added together in this area,” he says. “This was devastating to the timber industry and will have years of effects.”

Miller is keenly aware of the generational impact that his timber losses will have for his family.

“It’s just a sickening feeling because you have totally lost your hearts, not just in the pocketbook,” he says. “I have a kid, and he has two kids that are coming up, and we want to turn it over to them in good shape.

“It’s not a one-year quick fix.

“This is going to take years,” he says. “Probably five years from now, we’ll still be able to ride through and see where this Hurricane hit us.”

One Montana Farmer's Fight to Break the Generational Cycle of Failure

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 13:43:16 GMT

Ryan Lankford hasn’t just seen failure. He’s lived it.

“My father definitely tried to discourage me from farming, because it wasn’t good,” he says. “I mean, we went broke.”

“We grew up relatively poor,” he says. “We leased all of our land.”

The Lankford family had an allotment on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, the 1,014 square mile land shared by the A’aninin and Nakoda Tribes in north-central Montana.

Lankford compares the arrangement to the Homestead Act. But, it was designed for failure.

“The hard part for us as Indians is that the title was held in trust by the federal government, meaning that we really couldn’t borrow off of that title,” he says. “We had no leverage for capital, no leverage to expand and so it really limited us on resources and what we could do with our land.”

But as an Army veteran, Lankford knows how to launch an offensive. When he came back to the farm to make it his life, he did so with a mission – use every tool at his disposal to protect his farm, his Tribe and his family’s future.

Fighting for Land Ownership

As a member of the Tribe’s Agricultural Expert Committee, Ryan has helped to chip away at the generational curse of Tribal land ownership.

“Now, our Tribe owns the land, and our ground goes out to bid first to the primary members of the tribe,” he says. “As a member I live here on my allotment, and I have the first right to go bid and negotiate with my Tribe without competition from the outside.”

Under the new arrangement, Lankford and his father have brokered nearly 10,000 acres.

“I was the first generation in my family to buy land,” he says. “That’s something I’m really proud of.”

He’s also tackling another land issue – how to manage absentee land ownership.

“There’s a lot of farm ground that’s being abandoned on our reservation, because it’s too hard financially to farm here,” he says. “We don’t have a lot of the same tools you do on the other side.”

His goal is to recover some of that abandoned and neglected land and seed it in native pasture ground in an effort to restore prairie lands to the region.

Fighting for Land Stewardship

He’s already managing diversified production on 10,000 acres, where he has a Red Angus herd of cattle and grows year-round wheat, canola, peas, lentils, chickpeas, flax and barley. He’s transitioned some of his acreage to Certified Organic to capitalize on the premium market.

His relationship with conservation on the land is intensely pragmatic. Lankford views it as another tool in his arsenal – one that helps him de-risk innovation and protect his bottom line.

“On the conservation side, what we try to do is make sure that we’re doing the best economically we can, because if we run out of money, we don’t get to play the game,” he says. “We can’t do a lot of the big experiences and trials, so we try practices out one at a time, like we might take a half section and do it and see what it works out.”

“And I think that’s our conservation journey -- seeing what works and what we can utilize on our farm.”

R.L. Lankford Farms manages diversified production including a Red Angus herd of cattle, year-round grain crops including wheat, canola, peas, lentils, chickpeas, flax and barley.

(America’s Conservation Ag Movement )

One lever that he’s used to accomplish that pragmatism is funding and technical assistance from USDA-NRCS .

In states like Montana, USDA-NRCS deploys Tribal Conservationists to tackle the unique land and management issues that tribes face.

Michael Kinsey, one of those tribal conservationists for Lankford’s area, uses his expertise to match a producer’s unique conservation goals to both funding and technical assistance opportunities within the federal agency.

“Like any big goal, there are several small steps that need to be taken to reach planned conservation outcomes,” said Kinsey. “We can help interested producers get started with smaller projects to test technology, different management strategies, incorporate traditional ecological knowledge and new conservation practices while building on what they already do.”

For Lankford, that looked like using the popular Conservation Stewardship Program to gain access to both guidance and funding to innovate use of existing technology. It wasn’t a silver bullet, but it was incentive enough for him to take the leap.

“We did variable rate fertilizer through the CSP, and it didn’t cover my cost of buying the tractor and buying the drill that did variable rate, but it gave me the motivation to expand our existing technology,” he says. “We did that on probably about 15% of our acres, and they helped me write a prescription.”

Fighting for Security

Lankford has seen what happens when there is no safety net for farmers. In 2024, he took national steps to start breaking down the barrier that agriculture’s intense amount of risk poses. His four-year term on the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) Board of Directors puts him at the center of the conversation around federal crop insurance administered by USDA.

“Our margins are so tight, and the risk is so great that we’re putting our whole lives into it,” he says. “I think that’s something other industries don’t understand—that there’s no safety net for us year to year.”

“We need that crop insurance to take as a marketability tool to our bankers and borrow money.”

Lankford has some very specific goals with his work in that space, which include protections for his fellow farmers against shallow losses as much as the catastrophic ones.

“Catastrophic insurance is a one-year fix to get your machinery lined up for the auction,” he says. “That’s not the fix. I think the fix for me is, how do we insure those shallow losses?”

“Because as a producer, I would rather pay a premium every year and not have any help, because that means I’m doing things right.”

Fighting for Family

Lankford is now in his forties, with six children who are into the normal things, such as basketball.

In your 40s, sometimes you take a hard look at your priorities. So, he went looking for a tool to help him tip the work-life scales more in his favor.

Now, when he leaves the farm in the hands of family and employees, oversight is readily available in the palm of his hands, courtesy of tractors with Starlink gauges.

“When I’m coaching junior high girls’ basketball, I can look at my phone and see if they are in the right field, applying the right things and if it’s timely and on-point,” he says.

He’s not the only one that is leveraging tools like precision ag technology to capture efficiency and work-life balance.

“Precision agricultural technologies afford farmers the opportunity to be more efficient through increased insights into their operation that assist and speed up the decision- making process while also bringing that precision into the field through the more precise placement of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides,” says Austin Gellings, senior director of agricultural services at Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), an organization that regularly publishes insights into equipment integration and adoption.

“This leads to less passes, less stops and, overall, more time.”

Lankford uses precision technology and Star Link internet on his equipment to capture efficiency on-farm, which allows him to manage labor even when he is off-farm.

(America’s Conservation Ag Movement )

For Lankford, that extra time in his day is time that he can spend with his family.

“That gives me the ability to live a life off the farm too.”

In his thirties, Lankford says he missed a lot of life. When he was off-farm, he was constantly worried about production. Now, though, he’s able to not only leave the farm for his family, but he can prioritize responsibilities that maximize his skills.

“And that’s one of the things that I see technology doing for me is giving me a way to say I don’t have to be married to the machine.”

Icing on that cake, for Lankford, is the ROI that his technology is unlocking.

“I need to make sure I am maximizing the capabilities of my equipment all the time and I think the technology is doing that,” he says. “It’s taking the operator error out of it so I can more closely pencil and get a better baseline of ROI.”

Gellings believes that the benefits of technology can reach all the way to the bottom line.

“In total, the increased efficiencies that an operation can realize through the use of precision ag technologies can often lead to less overall inputs with increased productivity, helping to both reduce cost and increase overall profits.”

Fighting for Legacy

In his tractor is when Lankford really starts to add up his ammunition and consider if it really is enough for him to leave the farm and the industry better for the next generation.

Is he doing enough?

He has a son and daughters coming up behind him, quicker than he’d like, and the work that he is doing today has stakes higher than they ever have before.

“There are times where I’m running this machine and we’re cutting 200-bushel and I think, ‘Man, it don’t get any better than this,’” he says. “But I’ve also ran this machine and cut seven bushel and thought, ‘Oh man, are my kids going to have what they need?’”

The stress is real. And Lankford knows that he’s not the only one who feels the tightness in the chest sometimes. He works with the Veterans Farmer Coalition to help ensure that his peers have the support they need.

But, that starts at home, so he’s working on taking care of his own mental health. He’s getting out of the sprayer more. He built a heated shop with an office that, critically, has a door. When things get tough, he shuts the door, leaves the building, leans on his kids, his wife or his church.

Because his kids need him to create an operation that they can take over someday. But, they also need a dad.

“It’s no better reward than working with your dad, I’ll tell you that right now,” he says. “There’s, not a person in your life that wants you to succeed more than your father.”

“I have that same feeling for my son -- that I want him to succeed.”

“If he wants to come back, he can come back,” he says. “But I want him to have the ability to say ‘I’m marketable--I can do anything I want to do, and if it happens to be farming, I’m going to be excellent.’”

America’s Conservation Ag Movement is a public/private collaborative that meets growers across the country where they are on their conservation journey and empowers their next step with technical assistance from USDA-NRCS and innovation solutions and resources from agriculture’s leading providers. Learn more at americasconservationagmovement.com .

America’s Conservation Ag Movement Adds Nutrien Ag Solutions to Coalition Strengthening American Agriculture

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 13:40:13 GMT

This article is published as part of America’s Conservation Ag Movement , which supports farmers and ranchers in building profitable, resilient futures for their operations.

Since its beginning in 2018, America’s Conservation Ag Movement (ACAM) has been dedicated to preserving the American farm family’s access to the tools, resources and education needed to grow the products that feed, clothe and power the world.

Today, ACAM welcomes Nutrien Ag Solutions , the world’s largest provider of crop inputs and services through a nationwide network of trusted retail locations, as the newest contributor in that coalition.

ACAM is a public-private partnership that brings together leading technical assistance and innovation through a farmer-led experience aimed at bridging the gap between the industry and farm-gate. Nutrien Ag Solutions joins other supporters in the coalition including Ducks Unlimited, American Farmland Trust, Syngenta, National Association of Conservation Districts, and Valent U.S.A.

“Nutrien is a strong on-the-ground resource to farmers nationwide,” says Andrew Lyon, America’s Conservation Ag Movement. “Their comprehensive agronomic expertise and commitment to sustainability through their industry-leading conservation programs will be a vital asset as we work to secure the future of America’s working farmlands.”

Nutrien Ag Solutions works side by side with farmers through its global retail network of local crop consultants, delivering agronomic expertise, digital tools and programs that help strengthen on-farm operations. By joining America’s Conservation Ag Movement, Nutrien Ag Solutions is expanding its efforts to share practical know-how and farmer-tested practices with a broader community. The company is dedicated to supporting strong yields today while safeguarding the land for future generations.

“We are proud to join ACAM and bring our deep retail network and agronomic expertise to this important coalition,” said Dr. Sally Flis, Senior Director of Agronomy, Environmental Health and Safety, Nutrien Ag Solutions. “Our goal is to help farmers adopt practices that improve soil health, protect water quality and strengthen long-term productivity, while demonstrating the positive role agriculture plays in addressing food security challenges. Joining ACAM strengthens our shared mission of advancing solutions that work for both growers and the environment.”

Each year, ACAM connects farmers and ranchers through on-the-ground farmer-led education and online community building bolstered by Farm Journal, Inc., the leader in outreach, business information and media for the agriculture market.

To learn more about America’s Conservation Ag Movement™ and its partners, visit www.americasconservationagmovement.com .

The Unique Relationship Between Sorghum and Conservation

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 13:13:51 GMT

This article is published as part of America’s Conservation Ag Movement , which supports farmers and ranchers in building profitable, resilient futures for their operations.

Grain farmers are facing uphill challenges from all sides. Every day they battle economic uncertainty, rising costs and weather pressures, prompting some to search for diversification opportunities at the farm gate.

As farmers think outside the box, United Sorghum Checkoff Program is urging them to give sorghum a shot.

The Resource Conserving Crop

The organization has gone so far as to officially trademark sorghum as “The Resource Conserving Crop,” highlighting the heritage crop’s ability to weather droughts and sustain people and livestock.

“With deep roots that anchor the land, sorghum reflects the enduring values of American farmers: strength, hard work and self-reliance,” says Norma Ritz Johnson, executive director. “From feeding draft animals of the past to advancing food security and resource-smart farming today, sorghum remains a vital part of agriculture’s future.”

Ritz Johnson highlights these two benefits as sorghum’s foundation for resource conservation:

1. Sorghum thrives with one-third less water.
According to the Checkoff, sorghum can grow with less water use than comparable grains and it can endure extreme heat, giving it an economic advantage both in areas facing mounting weather pressures and in regions where other crops simply cannot be productive.

“Water scarcity is one of the biggest challenges facing agriculture today, and it’s where sorghum shines brightest,” Ritz Johnson says. “Its natural drought tolerance and efficient water use are unmatched, enabling it to produce high yields with significantly less water than other grains.”

The Checkoff notes, according to studies, 91% of sorghum acres are rain-fed, resulting in 1.5 trillion gallons of irrigation water savings per year.

2. Sorghum is a workhorse of sustainability.
Ritz Johnson says sorghum delivers value to farmers through reduced input needs and greater stability. Of note, the Checkoff highlights low seed costs ($6 - $19 per acre depending on seeding rate and seed treatments) as a standout economic benefit of crop adoption.

Sorghum’s benefits as a resource-saving crop extend to its growers as well, with surveys finding greater adoption of conservation tillage and other conservation practices amongst growers.

(United Sorghum Checkoff Program )

Interestingly, the sorghum moniker seems to extend beyond the crop and its conservation attributes and into the farmers who grow it and the agronomic practices they use to do so. The Checkoff has polled its producers and found they are adopting conservation practices, like conservation tillage, at a higher rate than their counterparts.

“Sorghum farmers are natural conservationists because they have to be,” Ritz Johnson says. “In many regions where sorghum is grown, resource constraints — especially water — make conservation tillage not just a choice but a necessity. Farmers understand that by leaving crop residues on the surface, they can protect their soils, retain moisture and reduce the need for inputs like herbicides and fertilizers.”

Ritz Johnson says the conservation leading edge doesn’t end with tillage practices, noting sorghum producers are using precision irrigation techniques like drip and pivot irrigation to optimize water use, cover crops to protect soils and creative crop rotation systems to enhance soil moisture retention and reduce evaporation. That intense water management can add up to a recipe for success even in the driest growing seasons.

In all, for United Sorghum Checkoff Program, this presents an opportunity for sorghum as a crop and sorghum producers to step into a gap that is widening for an ever-evolving production agriculture system in the U.S.

“What’s impressive is how seamlessly sorghum aligns with broader conservation agriculture goals,” Ritz Johnson says. “U.S. sorghum farmers are leading the way in proving that profitability and stewardship can go hand-in-hand, many of which are motivated by the long-term benefits: healthier soils, reduced input costs and greater strength in the face of extreme weather.

“As conservation programs and incentives here and abroad expand, sorghum farmers are well-positioned to lead the charge in sustainable production,” she adds.

Expanding Opportunity

Ritz Johnson now leads an organization that is tasked with ensuring this position for sorghum growers is not squandered. To accomplish that, they are tackling downstream demand by engaging with consumer-packaged goods (CPG) companies who are targeting sustainability in their supply chains.

“Sorghum offers them a natural, proven way to advance those goals — and we’re working hard to help them see the opportunity,” she says.

That vision has USCP doubling down on farm-level data as a means to more fully tell sorghum’s sustainability story, specifically with companies who are looking to meet rigorous industry or organization goals.

They are also expanding conversations beyond traditional markets, Ritz Johnson says, to include gluten-free and ancient grain-based foods as well as exploring alternative sectors such as pet foods and biofuels.

Courting the Consumer

In the vein of direct-to-consumer marketing that other agriculture sectors have pioneered, the United Sorghum Checkoff Program is eyeing opportunities to market the crop to consumers as well as CPGs.

Using targeted outreach through influencers, social media and education, specifically in the food space, the organization is sharing what they believe is a “clear and compelling” message on product labels and in conversations with major food brands.

United Sorghum Checkoff Program is reaching all the way to consumers to tout the crop’s benefits through social media and education in the food space.

(United Sorghum Checkoff Program )

“Consumer awareness is the engine that drives demand for sustainable products, and we’re seeing a growing interest in crops like sorghum that offer real natural resource benefits,” Ritz Johnson says. “The challenge — and the opportunity — is to make sure consumers understand why sorghum stands out.”

“Ultimately, the more consumers recognize the value of sorghum, the more demand we’ll create — not just for the crop itself but for the sustainable practices that farmers are using to grow it.”

America’s Conservation Ag Movement is a public/private collaborative that meets growers across the country where they are on their conservation journey and empowers their next step with technical assistance from USDA-NRCS and innovation solutions and resources from agriculture’s leading providers. Learn more at americasconservationagmovement.com .

Aligning Inputs with People, Planet and Productivity

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 22:30:41 GMT

This article is published as part of America’s Conservation Ag Movement , which supports farmers and ranchers in building profitable, resilient futures for their operations.

As the challenges facing agriculture grow more complex – from climate variability to shifting market dynamics – growers are increasingly looking for crop inputs that help produce abundant, healthy crops while safeguarding the land they steward.

Valent U.S.A. recently unveiled a new tool to help growers ensure that the inputs they are using to protect their crops act like silver bullets rather than shotguns. Through the Sustainable Solutions Portfolio, Valent has centered 47 broad-spectrum products that make up convention biorational and botanical products that cover both conventional and organic agriculture.

Validated by a third-party, the Sustainable Solutions Criteria aligns the company’s products with Sustainable Development Goals laid out by the United Nations in 2000, specifically around impacts to people, planet and productivity.

“Our parent company, Sumitomo Chemical, was one of the first companies globally to partner with the UN to support the SDGs and we have embraced five of those for our businesses in the U.S.,” says Matt Plitt, President & CEO.

Doubling Down on Sustainability

In January, Tiffany Dean joined Valent as vice-president of sustainable solutions, a move aimed at further threading this focus throughout the business.

While Dean has a large focus for the organization, for her, it all begins on the farm, where she says the organization is hyper-focused.

“Growers want to do right by their farms, by their soil and by their ecosystem,” she says. “They also want to make sure they’re maximizing profitability and productivity at the end of the day.”

Listening to growers and the organization’s channel partners in the retail space is how the company keeps that focus.

Tiffany Dean leads Valent U.S.A.'s Sustainable Solutions Team, which focuses on grower support in driving their Sustainable Solutions portfolio innovation and implementation at the farm-gate.

(Provided by Valent U.S.A.)

“We are hyper-engaged with growers because we know that they have a lot of challenges and opportunities to address,” Dean says. “We want to make sure that the solutions that we have today and the solutions that we have tomorrow are going to bring them value, so they can maximize inputs and ensure that that soil is going to be productive today and tomorrow.”

Innovation Through Sustainability

Over the next decade, Dean expects that the company will roll 20 new products into the market, the result of an arduous decades-long process to develop and gain registration for new agriculture inputs.

She says that the company’s “North Star” in that process is also the same one they use for their entire business – sustainability.

“We want to bring products into the market that are going to be the most beneficial to the grower and to the environment,” she says, adding that the majority of those new products are going be around the company’s plant growth regulator platform, but will also include seed treatments and herbicides.

“We have much innovation, investment and excitement around the Sustainable Solutions Portfolio,” she says. “But we need to make sure that we are using the grower as the voice of how we drive our business moving forward.”

Betting On Sustainable Productivity

Valent’s Sustainable Solutions Criteria ends with productivity and Dean says it is not lost on her how critical it is right now for America’s working lands to be working both at peak capacity and peak efficiency. The team is working to ensure that products in the Portfolio are optimized as well.

“Input costs are under an extreme amount of pressure right now, and so we want to make sure that growers are maximizing those input costs and gaining the benefit of everything that they are purchasing,” she says. “Through our biorational, our biological and our conventional portfolio we’re able to bring products that allows the grower to maximize their productivity while also not sacrificing the environmental aspects as well.”

In the short term, Dean says she is focused on listening so that she can build strategy for innovation that takes all of these factors into account for conservation at the farm-gate.

“We need to continue engaging with our customers and our partners to understand what is needed from growers, what’s needed from the value chain, and what’s needed at the end of the day to make sure that producers are continuing to maximize their productivity and profitability and are able to use our products to benefit them in many ways possible,” she says.

America’s Conservation Ag Movement is a public/private collaborative that meets growers across the country where they are on their conservation journey and empowers their next step with technical assistance from USDA-NRCS and innovation solutions and resources from agriculture’s leading providers. Learn more at americasconservationagmovement.com .

How to Grow the Next Generation of Agriculture: Start Small

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 17:46:38 GMT

Growing up in the Mississippi River Delta, Willis Nelson says his family’s 800 acres was the biggest farm he’d ever seen. When he and his brothers took over the operation, he dreamed of growing the operation to 1,000 acres, but he didn’t know how to start.

“I went to a field day hosted by Harper Armstrong and he had 2,500 acres and he was a black guy,” Nelson says. “Then I got involved with the National Black Growers Council and saw all the big growers and I thought 1,000 was not enough. It gave us a role model we hadn’t seen before.”

Today, Nelson, alongside his three brothers, farms 4,000 acres of corn, cotton, soybeans, rice and milo that spans over 100 miles in Louisiana.

(America’s Conservation Ag Movement )

Recently, Nelson and Sons Farm hosted a Model Farm Field Day for the National Black Growers Council that catered to the next generation with in-field experience and customized youth programming.

“We want to make sure these young kids understand where their food comes from,” says PJ Haynie, chairman of the National Black Growers Council and owner of Haynie Farms in Virginia. “When we look over our shoulders, we want these young kids to be coming up the field behind us. We know every one of these young kids might not be a farmer, but we want them to understand the value of agriculture and the opportunities that lie in agriculture.”

(America’s Conservation Ag Movement )

The next generations of Nelson and Sons Farm is filled with “too many cousins to count.” Most days, those kids are on the farm right alongside their family, lending a hand. Wil’Laddyn Nelson, Joel’Quavion Steward and Wil’Zaylan Nelson all like to drive tractors and help out where they can, but when they go to school, their peers don’t understand the lifestyle.

“They don’t know where their food comes from or what we do,” Joel’Quavion says. “They play video games on their phones a lot.”

The boys admit they play video games, too, but only when it rains or is too muddy to work outside. As soon as it is dry, they have to get back to work.

(America’s Conservation Ag Movement )

Nelson and his brothers have settled into their own niches and management roles on the farm. He says he wouldn’t trade his family operation, and he is cultivating that attitude with the next generation.

“I just started Nelson Next-Generation Farm where I am starting all the nieces and nephews farming,” he says. They are beginning with chickens, sheep, a cow and with their own muscadine crop.

Wil’Laddyn is already reaping the benefits: “I clean my eggs and sell them cheaper than the stores and I make money.”

“I want them to see another side of farming other than just big ag,” Nelson says. “I want them to come take over big ag, but first I want them to grow up into farming.”

“I’m glad to be in this family,” Joel’Quavion adds. “It’s a blessing. If it weren’t for my uncles, my aunties and my cousins, I don’t know what I’d be doing right now.”

(America’s Conservation Ag Movement )

Nelson says being part of the National Black Growers Council gave him role models to look up to as well as a sense of community within an industry that can sometimes foster competition and isolation.

Breaking down those walls between farms was precisely how National Black Growers Council cultivates the next generation across the nation, Haynie says.

“We are a non-profit whose mission is to improve the efficiency, productivity and sustainability of black row crop farmers, period,” he explains. “Black row crop farmers are the smallest herd of all black farmers in the country, and we figured if we could protect this small herd and create opportunities, the herd can grow.”

America’s Conservation Ag Movement joined the National Black Growers Council field day to learn how Willis Nelson is working with the organization to grow the next generation of row crop farmers. America’s Conservation Ag Movement is a public/private collaborative that meets growers where they are on their conservation journey and empowers their next step with technical assistance from USDA-NRCS and innovation solutions and resources from agriculture’s leading providers.

Choose Your Own Adventure: Online Tool Makes It Easier To Find Conservation Programs

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 15:40:53 GMT

Due to the growing number of climate-smart programs that are available to growers, it can be hard to navigate. That’s just what the Conservation Connector was intended to change.

Developed by The Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC) and its partners (The Nature Conservancy, Houston Engineering and OpenTeam), the Conservation Connector is an online directory that allows users to easily view and sort through the programs relevant to them in one place.

“There’s a huge growth in the number of program offerings out there to help farmers put conservation practices to work on the ground. It’s a little bit confusing for folks, because people don’t necessarily have any single place where they can go to find out what’s really available to them - other than just a generic Google search,” says Dave Gustafson, CTIC conservation connector project director. “The Connector is intended to be a very quick and easy-to-use tool right now that focuses on farmers to find all the programs and providers that are relevant for their location, for their commodities of interest, and for the practices and incentive types that are of interest to them.”

When using the Conservation Connector, growers and their advisers can filter the database by state, county, commodity, practice and incentive type.

(Conservation Technology Information Center)

The Conservation Connector can be found at connector.ag . Gustafson says the programs on the platform have been preloaded by CTIC staff, but there are plans to shift that in the future toward a self-registry process.

“We did our best to get very accurate information, and in many cases, the data resulted from a one-on-one interview between our intern and the program administrator. However, our process going forward is to request that all of those program administrators and service providers do regular quarterly updates to their information.”

And while the majority of programs currently on the platform are located in the upper Midwest, each U.S. state is represented - as well as Puerto Rico. That list will be expanding in the months ahead to also include more livestock offerings.

“We have been in conversation with a number of different partners, such as dairy and other commodity groups, to help make sure our directories are as accurate as possible,” Gustafson says. “The kinds of different conservation offerings that will be available in the connector will broaden significantly over time.”

The team plans to officially launch the farmer-facing side of The Connector sometime toward the end of August. For more detailed information on how to use the directory, check out the CTIC YouTube page .

Practical Tips to Help Finance Regenerative Ag Projects

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 20:28:45 GMT

For generations, Long Dairy Farms Inc. of Rising Sun, Maryland has farmed the same piece of land since 1759. Today, they milk 150 cows and raise all of their heifers on-site, ensuring the continuity of their farming legacy. However, the journey to keep the family farm in operation has not always been easy.

In 2015, Alice Crothers and her husband, Caleb, were asked to return to the family farm after learning that her father-in-law was ill.

“We were asked to return to the farm, and it was sort of a shock to us,” Alice recalls. “At the time, we had very different careers in Tennessee, but my husband’s family was looking for the eighth generation to carry the farm on. So, we packed up the car and made the decision to return home.”

Returning to the farm brought both significant challenges and unexpected opportunities. The shift from their previous careers to full-time farming required Alice and her husband to quickly adapt to a new lifestyle and steep learning curve. Operational inefficiencies, financial constraints, and the pressure of maintaining a multi-generational legacy added to the complexities they faced.

“Things were different than we expected, both operationally and financially,” Alice says. “Within the first year, we realized pretty quickly that we needed a game plan and a strategy if we were going to be the eighth generation. And of course, there was a tremendous amount of pressure on our shoulders to not fail.”

Realizing that change was essential for the family business to survive, Alice and her husband concluded that focusing on regenerative agriculture could be a long-term solution.

“We decided that one of our business plans would be to diversify our farm through conservation, preservation, and sustainable projects,” Alice explains. “We laid out a plan on what we hoped to pursue, and a lot of that plan has come to fruition, but not without some hardships.”

Finding the Dollars

Incorporating new sustainability projects, like installing a methane digester, brought significant financial challenges to the operation. The upfront costs were daunting.

“We knew these projects were critical for the farm’s future, but the financial pressure was immense,” Alice admits. “We had to get creative, make sacrifices, and seek every possible resource.”

Securing grants was a major hurdle.

“The application process is extensive and time-consuming,” Alice says. “Even when we were eligible, competition for funds was fierce, and timelines didn’t always match our needs.”

But with time and creativity, Long Dairy Farms was able to find a solution and pencil out a financial plan that fit their farm’s needs.

Alice offers practical tips for farmers looking to finance regenerative agriculture projects, emphasizing the importance of careful planning, exploring diverse funding sources, and building partnerships.

Assess Costs and Benefits

Before pursuing sustainability initiatives, it’s vital to evaluate their costs and benefits. Consider projects like energy-efficient equipment, manure management systems, renewable energy installations, or water conservation measures. Assess short-term expenses and long-term savings or revenue potential.

Additionally, consider intangible benefits like improved public perception, compliance with future environmental regulations, and better herd health. A detailed cost-benefit analysis can guide decision-making and strengthen your case for funding.

“Sustainability has to fit your farm,” Alice says. “For us, it wasn’t just about financial returns. As eighth-generation farmers raising the ninth, these projects secure our family’s legacy.”

Leverage Government Grants and Incentives

Government programs can ease the financial burden of sustainability projects. Tax credits for renewable energy, rebates for energy-efficient equipment, and USDA grants like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) are valuable resources.

“Staying informed about available incentives is crucial,” Alice says. “These programs can provide the boost needed to get projects off the ground.”

Learn From Others

Alice highlights the importance of learning from other farmers. “Before starting any project, we visited other farms to see what worked and what didn’t,” she says.

Sharing success stories within the farming community can also open doors. “Farmers talk, and having a few successes builds credibility,” Alice explains. “We’ve learned who to partner with, what to avoid, and how to navigate financial challenges by connecting with others.”

A Clearer Path to Sustainability

Financing sustainability projects for your dairy farm may seem daunting, but with the right approach, it’s achievable. Start with a clear plan, explore diverse funding sources, and build partnerships.

“Sustainability isn’t just an investment in our farm,” Alice says. “It’s an investment in the future of agriculture and our planet.”

By embracing regenerative practices, Alice and her family are ensuring their farm’s legacy continues for generations to come.

Digging into Soil Health

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 20:07:21 GMT

One hundred years after the Dust Bowl blew away topsoil from nearly 200 million acres of American farmland, farmers and ranchers are slowly entering into a new relationship with the soils beneath their boots.

But is change happening quickly enough to make an impact on the future of our soil? Some experts are concerned.

Certainly the nomenclature “soil health” is more commonplace now across farm management plans and in everyday farm-gate conversations.

“In the early 2000s ‘soil health’ was a term hotly debated among scientists as a replacement for ‘soil quality’,” says Dr. Bianca Moebius-Clune, climate and soil health director of American Farmland Trust’s Climate and Soil Health Initiative.

More than 20 years later, Moebius-Clune says that “significant strides” have been made in normalizing the concept of soil health across the research and agricultural community.

But that normalization may not be translating to soil health practices on the ground fast enough.

“We need to scale up the drivers of adoption, because we don’t, as of yet, have a New Conventional Agriculture where soil health management systems are the new normal,” she says.

“Depending on which data we look at, no-till or reduced-till are in use on about half the acres at this point, and possibly still slowly growing, while cover crops increased from 10M acres in 2012 to about 15M acres in 2017 to about 18M acres in 2022 per the Ag Census, that’s 6% of today’s about 300M cropland acres,” she says.

“That’s progress, but not enough progress!”

(America’s Conservation Ag Movement)

Soil Health Principles

Moebius-Clune says that principles that promote healthy soil ecosystems are broadly applicable, but they need to be carefully adapted for success in a production system.

She points to four globally accepted principles that, together, can achieve an optimal soil health system:

- Maximize biodiversity
- Maximize living roots
- Maximize soil cover
- Minimize disturbance

Putting these into place on farms and ranches is to commit to stewarding what Moebius-Clune calls an “underground herd of livestock” or living organisms that contribute to a vibrant soil ecosystem and, therefore, high-functioning soils.

Beyond well-known practices like reduced tillage and cover cropping, those baseline principles can yield additional opportunities for farmers to invest in the health of their soil, including diversification of crop rotations, integrating livestock into cropping systems and precisely managing inputs. One innovative soil health tactic— biochar --has recently been included by USDA-NRCS through Soil Carbon Amendment Conservation Practice Standard 336, meaning financial and technical assistance is now available to help growers with implementation.

Soil Health Drivers

If the baseline principles are basic enough, why aren’t more farmers and ranchers jumping ahead in implementation?

Moebius-Clune says that adoption thus far has largely been driven by innovators, early adopters, researchers, NRCS and organizations like American Farmland Trust that have put time and effort into education, outreach and training. But, that work, she says, is not sufficient to take soil health adoption to the next level.

“We need to address the still significant social, financial and technical barriers to adoption,” she says.

American Farmland Trust is working in collaboration with partners across the value chain, including America’s Conservation Ag Movement , to break down those barriers through initiatives that develop farmer networks, science-and-practice grounded technical resources, decision-support tools and policy solutions to improve farmer access to resources.

Soil Health Benefits

Those soil health early adopters are seeing tangible benefits on farms and ranches, especially as climate extremes are becoming more prevalent.

“Healthier soils provide more resilience in extreme conditions,” says Moebius-Clune.

Moebius-Clune credits the “stable aggregates” of healthy soils for keeping pores open during periods of heavy rainfall events, allowing rainfall to infiltrate into the soil and store rather than washing topsoil downstream.

“This prepares systems to be more resilient during droughts when stored water in a deeper root zone remains available for longer,” she says, adding that diverse production systems are more likely to produce some crops that maintain yield when others fail.

The diversity of ecosystems in healthy soils can protect crops from pests and pathogens as well.

“There is even evidence in social science literature that farmers who manage for healthy soils may experience less stress and more inspiration, autonomy, confidence, freedom, flexibility and happiness,” she says.

Soil Health + Bottom Line

While soil health practices could lead to enhanced opportunities for farmers and ranchers looking to cash in on the carbon marketplace , Moebius-Clune cautions that there is still confusion and uncertainty holding many back.

But, even without that opportunity, American Farmland Trust has been putting soil health to the economic test by highlighting case studies where soil health penciled out in the bottom line.

“Our case studies show potential for return on investment through increased yields, decreased input costs, decreased long-term production system risk during extreme weather events and decreased maintenance needs and also quantify environmental benefits such as decreased erosion, nutrient and sediment pollution and increased carbon sequestration,” Moebius-Clune says.

“We know that farmers who successfully adopt these systems experience real economic returns on their soil health investments that can be quantified.”

America’s Conservation Ag Movement is a public/private collaborative that meets growers across the country where they are on their conservation journey and empowers their next step with technical assistance from USDA-NRCS and innovation solutions and resources from agriculture’s leading providers. Learn more at americasconservationagmovement.com .

Your Next Read

From The Ground-Up: Syngenta Updates ESG Goals To Support Farmers

Optimize Your Smart Farming Decisions for Maximum Efficiency Gains

Ducks Unlimited and National Sorghum Producers Pair Up to Promote Water-Smart Agriculture

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 18:29:01 GMT

Ducks Unlimited (DU) and National Sorghum Producers (NSP) have announced a partnership to focus efforts on water savings and market innovation. The goal is to support growers and rural communities in water efficiency efforts that:

expand waterfowl habitat
recharge below-ground aquifers
support new value-added opportunities around ‘water-smart’ commodities

“If there’s one thing that ducks and agriculture both need it’s water,” says Adam Putnam, DU CEO. “DU and NSP have a shared interest in conserving America’s precious water resources, and our collaboration will enable us to achieve success that wouldn’t be possible alone. Together, we’ll promote voluntary, water-smart agriculture practices, and we look forward to finding new, innovative methods of leveraging our natural resources for the benefit of waterfowl, other wildlife, producers, and communities.”

“National Sorghum Producers has long championed innovative, sustainable practices that enhance agricultural productivity while preserving our vital natural resources,” says Tim Lust, NSP CEO. “Sorghum, known as The Resource Conserving Crop, serves as a water-sipping alternative to more thirsty crops, making it indispensable in water-stressed regions. This partnership with Ducks Unlimited further solidifies our dedication to foster water-efficient solutions that enhance both crop productivity and the protection of precious water resources.”

“In many regions like the Great Plains, water resources are becoming more finite and presenting challenges to wildlife, agriculture, and the industries they support,” says Billy Gascoigne, DU director of agriculture and strategic partnerships. “The need to leverage resources, expertise, and market innovation is greater now than ever. This partnership looks to do just that.”

“We recognize the importance of proactive water management to maintain sustainable farming landscapes,” says Matt Durler, NSP managing director of climate-smart sorghum. “This collaboration is a commitment to balance water-wise farming with environmental stewardship and ensure communities that rely on agriculture and waterfowl habitats will flourish for generations to come.”

Optimize Your Smart Farming Decisions for Maximum Efficiency Gains

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:39:00 GMT

From auto-guidance, section control, variable rate and precision irrigation, there exists a myriad of precision agriculture technologies that can help capture efficiency on-farm. Exponentially, those efficiencies grow into environmental benefits in reducing overlaps with equipment, decreasing water and input use, limiting fuel costs and reducing operator stress.

Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) recently studied the environmental benefits of precision agriculture , putting to the test technology that enables precision agriculture, including remote sensing, GPS tracking, yield monitors, weather stations and field prescriptions. The study found both direct and indirect benefits when precision agriculture technology was used on areas such as productivity, water use, inputs use and fossil fuel use.

As a member of AEM’s Ag Tech Leadership Group and Precision Farming & Systems Engineer with CLAAS , Seth Zentner’s job is to promote smart farming technologies and work to remove barriers that farmers face in implementation.

“Every product we develop, we have the farmers in mind,” Zentner says. “We work hard to design new tools that not only help solve issues farmers are currently facing but help make their operation as efficient as it can be in the ever-changing agriculture landscape.”

(Photo courtesy of CLAAS)

“More time is not something we can give to farmers, so it’s our job to give them machines and tools that they can use to make the most of their time,” he adds.

Zentner shares the following tips to optimize smart farming on your operation for maximum efficiency gains:

Begin With the End in Mind

“Always start with a goal you want to achieve and try to find a technology or farming practice to achieve it,” Zentner says. “That way you have a benchmark to know if the newly adopted technology or practice is really benefiting you or not.”

Those benefits might not have immediate turnaround, so Zentner says to be patient. He also recommends tweaking to ensure you are finding the optimal benefit for your unique operation and agronomic practices.

Allow Tech to Open New Doors

“It’s been well-proven that technologies like autosteer and section control reduce operator fatigue, but semi-autonomous technologies such as our CEMOS Automatic system allow less-experienced operators to run our combines at maximum efficiency with little direction,” he says.

With these technologies, it could be possible to grow your fleet of equipment operators beyond the core crew, which could impact the legacy of your farm or operation.

“The integration of technology in agriculture has helped hold the interest of the next generation of on-farm workers and attracts talent from areas outside of ag,” Zentner says.

Watch for Emerging Tech Trends to Hone Data Capture and Analysis

Zentner sees increasing potential in agriculture technology and says he is watching trends in remote monitoring, data analytics and machine automation. Using this technology, he says, can help analyze years of data to create operational efficiency, like knowing what inputs to use, when to apply them and at what rate.

Understand Your Equipment’s Full Capabilities

Technology adoption can be a risky investment now as farm margins get tighter, but Zenter says that your equipment might be sitting on advancements that do not require significant investments.

“Your equipment might already be fitted with hardware needed for a feature you’re not currently using and only an unlock fee is required,” he says. “There might also be services or features offered by your equipment manufacture, equipment dealer or ag retailer which you’re not currently taking advantage of and many times these can be free of charge.”

America’s Conservation Ag Movement is a public/private collaborative that meets growers across the country where they are on their conservation journey and empowers their next step with technical assistance from USDA-NRCS and innovation solutions and resources from agriculture’s leading providers. Learn more at americasconservationagmovement.com .

Your Next Read:

From The Ground-Up: Syngenta Updates ESG Goals To Support Farmers

Making the Most of Land Stewardship Incentives

4 Strategies One Oklahoma Family Farm Uses to Thrive

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 20:35:30 GMT

With the average age of U.S. farmers clocking in at over 58 years old, successful multigenerational farms led by fresh, young talent turn heads. While there’s not one silver bullet approach to encouraging new leaders and passing a farm business to the next generation, Crows Vegetable Farm has recently shared four strategies that work on their small, diversified specialty crop operation in Shawnee, Okla.

This spring, America’s Conservation Ag Movement visited to learn more about how Crows Vegetable Farm sustains both ecological and economic resilience and is now passing the torch to the next generation.

Small but Mighty Family Farms

“Farms like Crows Family Farms are very small but are very important to American agriculture,” said Jimmy Emmons, senior vice president of conservation programs at Farm Journal and Oklahoma rancher. “I hear this all the time, that ‘my children can’t come back to the farm because there’s not enough profitability,’ and yet you see that here [at Crows Vegetable Farm]. The children have been able to come back and be very successful here on just a few acres.”

Claudia and Ricky Crow purchased 40 acres of land from Ricky’s grandparents in 1897, which they grew into Crows Vegetable Farm. Today, Claudia and Ricky work with their son Brandon and are mapping out a transition for him to run the farm operation when they retire.

“It has been a journey filled with a lot of happy moments and a lot of hard work,” Claudia Crow told America’s Conservation Ag Movement.

4 Keys to Running a Thriving Small Farm

What is this 40 acre family farm doing that has helped their business succeed and grow? For the Crow Family, the secret to running a successful, small scale farm boils down to four key ingredients: diversification, labor, partnerships and succession planning.

Build in Diversity
While Crows Vegetable Farm is about 40 acres, it boasts a wide variety of crops as well as a wide variety of distribution channels. Investing in crop and revenue stream diversity are intentional, according to the Crow family. What’s more, diversity has been the cornerstone and driver of economic resilience over the past several decades.

“The key for us to be able to stay in business is diversification,” Crow said . “You cannot put all your eggs in one basket.”

Operationally, in addition to direct sales and farmers markets, a commercial kitchen and two Shawnee-area storefronts have been essential to marketing Crows Vegetable Farm vegetables and driving revenue.

“Approximately 85% of what we raise we sell retail or direct to our customers,” Crow said.

Running a commercial kitchen that produces value-added goods not only stocks shelves in their two busy storefronts, but the kitchen also has an added benefit of creatively using everything the farm grows. Any surplus or blemished produce from the farm can be used in baked goods and premade meals that are popular with busy, Shawnee-area customers looking for wholesome, grab-and-go food products.

In addition to direct sales and farmers markets, a commercial kitchen and two Shawnee-area storefronts have been essential to marketing Crows Vegetable Farm vegetables and driving revenue.

(Jon Reynolds)

The benefits of building in diversity are not limited to the revenue streams — cultivating a wide variety of crops supports both economic and environmental sustainability.

Growing a variety of specialty crops has helped Crows Vegetable Farm’s bottom line economically, offering unique seasonal offerings while also providing fresh produce mainstays. Additionally, this approach to growing food fosters genetic diversity as well as resilience against pest, diseases and extreme weather.

Leverage Strategic Partnerships for Growth
Razor thin margins, long-term planning and labor intensive production are challenges that require the business savvy of skilled entrepreneurs to grow food profitably. In order to grow, expand and improve — both economically and ecologically — Crows Vegetable Farm has leveraged strategic partnerships to gain access to critical financial and technical support from government programs and services.

In recent years, the farm has installed high tunnels with technical and financial support from Natural Resource Conservation Services (NRCS) grants.

“NRCS has provided us a tremendous boost here at the farm,” Brandon Crow said. “It has really helped us grow over the years. We’ve been able to put in high tunnels and really expand our growing season.”

Mary Fisher, NRCS Urban Conservationist who has worked with Oklahoma urban farms like Crows Vegetable Farms echoed Brandon, noting that financial investments from NRCS conservation programs can free up capital to invest in other areas of the farm business.

“Our cost-share agreements really help [growers] offset a lot of their production costs,” Fisher said. “Instead of them spending $10,000 on a high tunnel structure, they’re able to take that money and put it elsewhere in their operation.”

Similarly, NRCS’s conservation stewardship contracts available to small farms like Crows Vegetable Farm, allow growers to receive financial support in the form of an annual payment “that allows them to improve in other parts of their operation, which really helps their bottom line and profitability,” Fisher added.

Investing in Your Team is Critical
At the heart of a profitable family farm are human hands. Getting labor right is critical for any grower who is looking to build a sustainable business in the long run.

Crows Family Farm employs H-2A farmworkers, investing in seasonal employees who return to their farm year after year. The H-2A visa program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign nationals to work in temporary or seasonal agricultural jobs.

“This year we have 6 guys, they’re all related,” Claudia Crow said. “They make huge sacrifices to work on this farm — they don’t get to bring their children or their wives. We would not exist without them.”

Grow the Next Generation
Through strategic planning and a lot of hard work, commitment and passion, Claudia and Ricky Crow have worked hard to build a flourishing farm business in Shawnee, Okla., and have begun the multiyear process of passing on Crows Vegetable Farm to their son.

“To me, it’s really important that we, the older farmers, encourage and help these kids because we need them,” Crow said. “We don’t need to just grow crops; we need to grow a new generation of farmers.”

Thoughtful succession planning is not lost on Brandon, and he sees his leadership as the extension of his parents’ legacy.

“Taking over here at the farm means a great deal to me,” Brandon said. “To take that torch that was passed to me and honor their legacy. I’m most excited going forward to see where this next generation can take things, how far they can grow it.”

“I’m hoping that my children will see the value in what we do here and will want to grow this,” he added, smiling.

From The Ground-Up: Syngenta Updates ESG Goals To Support Farmers

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 15:28:47 GMT

Syngenta is charting a new path forward for its global environmental goals, starting from the ground-up, both metaphorically and pragmatically for the organization. The path is outlined in the release of new Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance Data (“ ESG”) achievements and sustainability strategy .

Reporting significant gains in their current ESG programs, Syngenta’s 2023 report highlights $244 million USD invested in sustainable agriculture breakthroughs, putting them 78% of the way toward their cumulative $2 billion target by 2025.

Soil Health As A Springboard

Going forward, the company is betting on a new soil health focus to help them reach the milestone goal.

“In the face of climate change, prioritizing soil health is the first line of defense,” says Matt Wallenstein, chief soil scientist at Syngenta Group.

According to Wallenstein, leveraging soil health has benefits that cut across crop sectors and regions.

“On a global scale, we know a warming climate accelerates soil decomposition, and the release of carbon into the atmosphere, and more frequent droughts and floods can cause soil erosion, leading to reduced productivity and land value over time.”

“A principle I often share is that healthy soil with good water infiltration and retention can make the difference between a failed or healthy crop,” he says.

Therefore, he says that farmers who focus on soil health can reap those benefits and avoid the consequences.

Wallenstein believes that soil health is “more important than ever for productivity, profitability, and sustainability” for farmers. To that end, Syngenta is rolling out new partnerships, collaborations, and programs aimed at:

· providing tools to the retail system

· informing their R&D platform

· bringing new opportunities for soil health to farmers for on-the-ground implementation

Pragmatically, Wallenstein says these goals look like equipping the company’s agronomists with cutting-edge practical soil health knowledge so that they can bridge the gap with customers. In turn, that feedback will help inform the company’s future innovation pipeline.

“Using a robust system for feeding those farmer insights directly into our R&D pipeline, we can accelerate the delivery of impactful and novel solutions to those on the front line of production,” says Wallenstein.

Seed and Soil

The soil health focus is permeating through all aspects of Syngenta’s operations, including its seed production, which Wallenstein says has its own target of 85% produced through regenerative practices by 2030.

“We are walking the talk by supporting our contract seed producers in adopting these practices through technical assistance and access to our cutting-edge enabling technology, such as biostimulants, and implementing these practices across our own seed production farms,” he says. “Not only is this transition good for the planet, but it will help us ensure our ability to deliver consistently high-quality seeds to farmers for years to come.”

Data-Driven Decisions

Research projects, such as one with Michigan State University at their W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, are already underway, developing tools that can help growers understand, test, monitor, and measure long-term soil health benefits, bringing data that can help influence conservation adoption and operational management decisions.

“In this project, we are quantifying robust, causal linkages between soil health indicators and agronomic and environmental outcomes,” Wallenstein says. “We are testing soil health indicators across a range of soil types and climatic conditions using long-term trials across the Midwest.”

“In the future, we want to offer farmers data that will help them reach both long-term soil health goals and short-term commercial success.”

Longer-Lens For Potential Return On Investment

While the reporting goals and plans paint an aggressive soil health goal for Syngenta, Wallenstein says soil health adoption is not without challenges. But, he says, the company is committed to partnering with growers to find solutions for those hurdles.

“There is ample scientific evidence that adopting practices like conservation tillage, cover crops, and diverse rotations can lead to potential increased yields, yield stability, and better efficiency in most places, and adoption may lead to a strong potential return on investment for growers and landowners over the long run,” Wallenstein says. “But many technical and financial barriers stand in the way, making it easier said than done.”

“In some situations, there can be a transition period of yield drag before realizing the benefits–a tough pill to swallow,” he adds. “On the research side, we are seeking to unravel the mechanisms that drive this delayed response so that we can develop solutions to avoid it. This research is in close collaboration with leading growers, where we both learn from each other.”

With its march toward a more resilient future, Syngenta is aiming to equip farmers with the tools they need.

“As we develop solutions that will enable farmers to adopt and sustain soil health practices, we’re working closely with them to help achieve the best outcomes by building long-term partnerships, trust, and transparency.”

Playing the Long Game: What Works at G Bar C Ranch

Fri, 24 May 2024 15:30:55 GMT

By mid-morning you can already feel the sun’s heat on your skin, a reminder that the searing Texas sun looms large at G Bar C Ranch north of Dallas, even in early May. On this unassuming Thursday, several dozen ranchers, conservationists and ag retailers have gathered in the shade amidst the verdant green pasture and limestone outcroppings to learn from G Bar C’s second-generation rancher, Meredith Ellis, at the kickoff of Trust In Beef’s Sustainable Ranchers Tour.

The tour is moving across the U.S. this summer, spotlighting regenerative ranches and hosting field days where producers can meet and learn from each other.

“We’re showing what can be done at G Bar C Ranch today, what resources are available and the steps that they have taken to get to this point,” said Jimmy Emmons, Oklahoma rancher and SVP of Climate-Smart Programs at Farm Journal.

According to Emmons, in- person field days like the Sustainable Ranchers Tour are crucial to helping ranchers improve their livestock, land and profitability.

“It’s all about the journey—it’s not a quarter-mile race, it’s a marathon,” Emmons said. “We improve one step at a time, one practice at a time.”

Learn more about the Trust In Beef’s Sustainable Ranchers Tour

This morning, as the crowd of producers gather and sip their coffee, ready to glean insights to take back home, most eyes are watching the sky, observing gathering storm clouds on the horizon. Even if rain would dampen an otherwise sunny day at G Bar C Ranch, in Texas—a state plagued with persistent drought—rain is always a welcome sight.

Ellis, a seasoned rancher in her early forties, gathers in front of the crowd, ready to share the ins and outs of her ranch operation. Unlike most days where she works in relative solitude, today she is flanked by soil scientists, researchers and technical experts, ready to share their perspective and insights in a day of boots-on- the-ground demonstration and learning – rain or shine.

Flipping the Script: No Longer About Pounds of Beef

“It looks like a pollinators paradise out here with all the wildflowers,” AgriTalk host, Chip Flory, told Ellis at the Sustainable Ranchers Tour. “The combination of the native grasses and the grazing grasses you’ve got…it’s part of the plan, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely, it’s part of the plan and we’ve documented over 660 species that call our ranch home. On top of that, about 110 species of birds that call our ranch home,” Ellis replied, eying the horizon. “Managing that landscape with ruminant animals as they’ve existed for millennia throughout our national grazing lands is something I’m very passionate about.”

Despite multiple degrees and years of experience under her belt, according to Ellis, she will always be the apprentice at G Bar C Ranch. Carrying on the life’s work of her father, GC Ellis, and ranch manager, Michael Knabe, Ellis takes to heart her family’s legacy of caring for the land and the cattle that call it home.

Historically, like many ranches across the U.S., G Bar C Ranch has focused on pounds of beef produced as a measure of profit and success. But, in recent years, Ellis has taken a hard look at what it costs “to get from point A to point B”, discovering that, in the long term, focusing on maternal genetics in her over 200 mother cows are key to both profitability and a healthy herd.

“What’s most important to me is that we keep and retain our own replacement females,” Ellis said. “We’re looking at making females that fit our program, that fit our landscape. Our interest right now is in efficiency and maternal aspects—having some happy mamas that are real happy be here [on our land].”

While Ellis currently participates in the conventional beef supply chain, selling her black Angus calves at the sale barn in El Reno, Oklahoma, managing her herd amounts to more than just raising meat for market.

Soil Health: At the Root of Everything

According to Ellis, she views her cows as just one of the many species that enjoy the rolling hills, grassy pasture and clear water on her 3,000-acre ranch.

“There’s no aspect of the ecological system that goes overlooked on this ranch,” said Ellis. “We try to adapt our management practices in order to take care of every aspect of ecology that we have.”

I consider our ranch to be a living laboratory, continued Ellis.

“That means that if there’s a researcher, a rancher, whoever it be, anytime that I speak with someone and get interested in what they’re doing, I walk away with a little gold in my pocket,” she said.

Collaborating, learning and improving is critical to adapting ranching practices in the face of extreme weather, natural disasters and drought in North Texas, according to Ellis. Finding new strategies to foster biodiversity and healthy soils through thoughtful, prescribed grazing practices has been a north star guiding ranch management at G Bar C Ranch.

To Ellis, not only do prescribed grazing practices support a heathy, profitable herd, but they also promote soil health – the foundation of a thriving, well-managed, resilient landscape.

Read about G Bar C Ranch’s NCBA’s Environmental Stewardship Award Program recognition

Texas based NRCS soil scientist, John Sackett, takes soil health’s benefits even one step further.

“Soil health, in a sense, drought- proofs our ranches,” said Sackett. “If the soil is healthy, it can take in more water, so we have a higher effective rainfall, and we have healthier plants that are better able to withstand the drought.”

Keeping Working Lands Working

Big picture, it’s not enough to manage a healthy herd and promote thriving ranch lands. The reality for many is that stewardship includes safeguarding ranchland against development and urban sprawl for future generations. For many Texas ranches today, this is not a given.

“In this day, successional planning is one of the biggest hurdles in keeping working lands working,” said Ellis.

In fact, the Lone Star State gains 1,400 people moving to the state daily and the drumbeat of urban sprawl is only getting louder, shared Chad Ellis, CEO of Texas Agricultural Land Trust, echoing Meredith Ellis’ concerns.

Like drought, year after year of urban sprawl continue to threaten open spaces across Texas, with no reprieve on the horizon.

“We’re losing over 1,000 acres a day of working lands,” said Chad Ellis. “Lands [like we see at G Bar C Ranch] that are providing goods and services to the public.”

When Meredith Ellis looks to the future, she envisions leaving an economically and ecologically resilient G Bar C Ranch for the next generation of the Ellis family with ranch lands that boast clear water, rich soil and a healthy, thriving cow calf operation.

“That’s what it’s all about—my nine- year- old boy,” Ellis said.

Follow coverage of G Bar C Ranch and the Sustainable Ranchers Tour on AgDay and U.S. Farm Report:

G Bar C Ranch Takes Texas Ranchers Behind the Farm Gate

Fri, 03 May 2024 17:38:38 GMT

Texas ranchers are battling right now - and if it’s not entirely a battle for their lives, it’s at least a fight for their livelihoods.

From changing weather, natural disasters and encroaching land development, ranchers are facing mounting pressures and for Chad Ellis, CEO of Texas Agricultural Land Trust, it all adds up to a grim picture for the future of the state’s working lands.

“We have 1,400 people moving to our state every day – that’s half a million people a year,” he said. “We are losing over a section of working lands per day, which amounts to 300,000 acres a year that is lost.

“Right now, we are asking ourselves ‘how do we come together, how do we stay in business and how can we be economically sustainable so that we can hand our legacy and our heritage to the next generation.’”

At the nexus of those challenges, Ellis says, is G Bar C Ranch , a multi-generation ranch that began in 1982 under the stewardship of owner, GC Ellis.

Located in Rosston, Texas, G Bar C Ranch sits just outside of the Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex, square in the sights of expansion.

With a future-led approach in mind, daughter Meredith Ellis is applying a next generation scope to management of G Bar C Ranch, rooted in her family’s love of the land.

“For the past 40 years, my dad has been taking care of this land and I feel like that’s the most important thing for us to continue doing now,” Meredith Ellis said.

This guiding principle was enough to garner the ranch the prestigious 2023 National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Environmental Stewardship National Award.

In May, the Ellis family will open up award-winning G Bar C Ranch so that Trust In Beef can highlight their sustainability and bring practical on-ranch education to fellow Texas producers.

“GC, Meredith and the G Bar C Ranch team are on the leading edge of using regenerative practices, technology and top-tier animal health to accomplish the resilience they need to ensure their legacy into the next generation,” said Jimmy Emmons, Oklahoma rancher and SVP of Climate-Smart Programs, who oversees the value-chain collaborative program Trust In Beef.

“It was a natural fit for us to kick off the 2024 Sustainable Ranchers Tour at G Bar C,” continued Jimmy, “Other ranchers who are facing the same challenges can see what solutions are working well at G Bar C Ranch, both for the environment and for the bottom line.”

For Trust In Beef, these tour stops will allow rancher-led knowledge sharing and networking while also providing innovation and resources from value chain leaders.

Among the Trust In Beef Partners joining the first stop of the 2024 Sustainable Rancher Tour is Merck Animal Health . For Merck, the values that G Bar C Ranch place on animal welfare on their ranch represent key pillars of sustainability.

“Healthy animals help to sustain our industry and the environment as healthy animals are more productive and use fewer resources,” said Kevin Mobley, Merck’s executive director of sales and marketing. “Merck Animal Health is committed to shaping the future of animal health by partnering with ranchers to assist them with their herd health needs and in their sustainability journey.”

To that end, the animal health company will be on-hand to provide ranchers with education on land management, animal management and animal welfare, including

technologies such as Vence, a virtual fencing tool that can help facilitate rotational grazing, according to Mobley.

While the 2024 Sustainable Ranchers Tour begins in Texas this May, it’s making monthly stops across the U.S. throughout the summer and early fall, providing not only in-field learning and education, but also the chance to continue the conversation through a virtual peer network of likeminded producers, providing ranchers ongoing support in their conservation journey.

Registration is still open for this free tour. Learn more and make plans to join the Texas stop or another closer to you by visiting Trust In Beef .

Want to Avoid Leaving Climate-Smart Money On the Table? There's An App for That

Fri, 29 Dec 2023 23:02:47 GMT

In 2023, USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities turned on the spigot to fund 141 projects, totaling $3 billion. Understanding the projects — each run by a different organization with its own unique offerings and structure — begs the question: Is it possible to have too much of a good thing?

“Producers are always interested in looking at opportunities, but we can’t review 141 grants,” says Jimmy Emmons, western Oklahoma rancher and Trust In Food vice president.

To cut out the time-consuming task of wading through the climate-smart projects, a new app pilot, the Climate-Smart Opportunity Navigator , seeks to remove the paperwork clutter and match farms and ranches with the right Climate-Smart Commodity grant project in minutes.

“Quicker and more efficient means to evaluate opportunities will increase participation, offer simple communication avenues, and, ultimately, get funding into the hands of growers so they can quickly turn those dollars into applied practices,” says Joelle Mosso, Western Growers Association associate vice president of science.

How Does the Climate-Smart Opportunity Navigator Work?

The app pilot, created by Farm Journal’s Trust In Food and AgWeb, is powered by USDA data on the 141 projects, most of which are focused on major commodities such as corn, soybeans and livestock. Harnessing this data in an app, producers can input their operation basics – such as location, commodities produced, and production practices and interests – and be matched with one or more of the Climate-Smart Commodities projects that fit their individual specs.

The app provides a basic description of each program match along with contact information so it’s easy to compare options and take the next step to participate.

For example, an Indiana corn grower interested in adopting no-till and cover crop practices would input their data to the Climate-Smart Commodities Opportunity Navigator. In four questions, the tool matches the farm’s profile and interests with 11 possible grant projects, such as:

Field to Market’s “Climate-Smart Agriculture Innovative Finance Initiative”
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s “Farmers for Soil Health Climate-Smart Commodities Partnership”

In contrast, a Colorado beef and bison producer looking to adopt prescribed grazing and soil health improvement practices on pasture would input their information to the Navigator tool and it matches the farm’s profile and interests with 9 grant projects that includes:

American Sustainable Business Institute Inc.’s “The Growing GRASS Project”
Sustainable Northwest’s “Building a Regenerative Ranching Economy in the West”

A Pennsylvania dairy producer interested in adopting nutrient management and cover crop practices matches with 9 grants, such as:

Truterra LLC’s “Climate SMART (Scaling Mechanisms for Ag’s Regenerative Transformation)”
Dairy Farmers of America, Inc.’s “Scaling Methane Emissions Reductions and Soil Carbon Sequestration – A Value-Added Commodities Approach for U.S. Dairy”

And an Indiana pork producer who practices feed management and integrates cover crops matches with 2 grant projects:

Fischer Farms Natural Foods LLC’s “Fischer Farm Ultimate Beef and Pork Strategy”
Farm Journal’s “The Connected Ag Project”

Big Picture: The Perfect Climate-Smart Project Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All

“It’s great there are lots of opportunity for producers with USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, but with so much opportunity it can be very overwhelming,” says Andrew Lyon, Trust In Food’s director of technical assistance and Kansas rancher. “By putting in specific information about your operation, the Navigator tool allows you to whittle down grant opportunities to the handful that are most applicable to you and provides you contact information so that you could follow up with those few opportunities that best suit you.”

While Farm Journal is excited about its own $40 million Climate-Smart Commodity grant, The Connected Ag Project , it wants producers to get in touch with the opportunity that best suits them, Lyon adds.

Test Drive the Climate-Smart Opportunity Navigator Tool

Farm Journal’s AgWeb and Trust In Food look forward to hearing from producers about their experience using the beta version. Take the Climate-Smart Opportunity Navigator for a test run, and let us know what worked and what didn’t.

USDA’s Climate-Smart Commodities, Explained

In 2021, USDA announced a historic investment in farmers, ranchers and private forest landowners through a program dubbed the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities . The goal? To scale climate-smart agricultural production practices across the U.S. and to promote and market climate-smart commodities in thriving markets.

To do this, over the next 5 years USDA is financing 141 pilot projects to support the production, tracking and marketing of these climate-smart commodities.

While the specific Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant projects vary widely, each boil down to putting financial incentives or technical support directly into the hands of U.S. farmers, ranchers and landowners to produce and market climate-smart agricultural commodities.

While the term, “climate-smart commodity” is relatively new, the farming and ranching practices it describes have, largely, been around for much longer. Incorporating cover crops, grazing and rangeland management, prairie restoration and nutrient management are just some of the practices that fall under the climate-smart umbrella.

For many producers, participating in a CSC grant translates to getting credit and even cash payment for practices already in place on farm. What’s more, for producers seeking funding sources or simply a push to try something, new these grants are an opportunity to make a change with support along the way.

Growers Who Rely Upon Cover Crops Say Diversity is Key to Maximum Soil Health Benefit

Fri, 25 Aug 2023 16:57:22 GMT

This article was written by Jamie Sears Rawlings with Trust In Food.

Eighty percent of U.S. growers who participated in the 2022-23 National Cover Crop Survey report that they used cover crops on their farms. That number overwhelms the national average (only 7.5 percent of U.S. farms in the 2017 Census), but it’s enough to signal that adoption of cover crops is rising.

For these new adopters, however, the learning curve is coming with some challenges along the way.

What if one cover crop works one year and not the next? How do you know when to terminate? Does planting green make sense?

Cover Crop Options Available For Every Farm

According to Indiana producers who shared their practices at a Aug. 17 field day: cover diversity and experimentation are essential to cater mixes to each unique operation.

Indiana farmer Aaron Krueger told the almost 80 people in attendance that his soil health and organic material has grown as his cover crop diversity has grown. (Left: Aaron and Ronald Krueger of Krueger Farms in Owensville, Ind.)

“Wheat is a good starter program for a cover crop, but it likes to put on roots when it flowers, which is problematic,” Krueger said. “My advice is to look beyond just wheat into rye and a mixture.”

Like most growers, Krueger says he experiments with his cover crop mix, but mostly chooses to stay with a grass, legume, and brassica trident. His preferred mix ahead of corn includes four total legumes because they are easy to plant into, making it easy to plant into green, which is important on his farm.

Peas as his main legume, Krueger says, work well because peas produce a lot of biomass that is easily digestible.

Slow-Release Nutrients Feed Soil

Krueger was joined by fellow Indiana grower Cameron Mills, owner of Mills Family Farms. His cover crop mixture, he told the group, is designed intentionally to release nutrients that feed his soil throughout the growing season.

“Our cover crops have different carbon/nitrogen ratios and I want to make sure I have a slow-release of those nutrients over time,” Mills said. Using this method, he said, has allowed him to reduce his nitrogen use for the year to only 120 units. “Our goal with cover crops is to feed our biology,” he added.

Travis Gogel, Southwest Indiana Soil Scientist with USDA-NRCS, was on-hand at the event and shared that cover crops are integral, no matter the time in the growing season.

“Soil cover begins at harvest time,” said Gogel. “One of the things we are looking for as an NRCS planner is that we don’t want to see any bare soil in the fields at any point in the season.”

This consistent cover cropping is the method that Krueger uses, and he said it has provided him many benefits.

“Since we’ve started using more peas and vetch in our cover crop mix, we’ve been weaning our nitrogen use back,” he says. “And we aren’t using as many herbicides and fungicides because keeping your soil covered helps to suppress disease.”

Be Open To Experimentation

Mills cautioned that experimentation is equally as critical when cover cropping.

“Every year it’s different,” he said. “If you are waiting for your cover crops to get to the same biomass every year, you might be in trouble.”

After several years of consistent cover cropping, both Mills and Krueger believe in the practice’s benefits for soil health, building resilience and boosting profitability.

“Everyone can do it,” Mills said. “You just have to figure out your program.”

Krueger Farms hosted the field day in partnership with America’s Conservation Ag Movement, which works with innovative producers to share real-field results of agronomic practices that optimize soil health, improve water infiltration and storage, reduce inputs and other benefits that boost yields and ROI. Learn more by visiting www.americasconservationagmovement.com.

Feed Your Soil With Cover Crops

Real-World Cover Crop Decisions

How Planting Cover Crops Today Helps

Rain Check: How One Arkansas Farmer Banks Moisture

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 19:48:44 GMT

By Jamie Sears Rawlings

As drought sets in and crop conditions continue to deteriorate across the U.S., Adam Chappell says his crop has a leg up. No, he hasn’t had an abundance of rain on his Cotton Plant, Ark., farm. Instead,he says he’s been able to make the most of what little rain he’s received because of his focus on soil health.

It’s the same advantage Jimmy Emmons, a regenerative farmer and senior vice president for Trust In Food, has seen on his Oklahoma farm.

“Once I started improving my soil, I stopped getting just a quarter inch of rain [infiltration] or a tenth like my neighbors,” he says. “Now, when they ask how much rain I got, I can say I got all of it.”

During a recent Soil Regen Farm Hard Field Day in Cotton Plant, Ark., hosted by soil health scientists Rick and Liz Haney, Chappell and Emmons were joined by Keith Scoggins, a USDA-NRCS district conservationist. Each shared best practices to put regenerative systems to work for the sake of yield, profitability and sustainability.

Here are some key takeaways:

Cover crops are key. In fact, Scoggins says they are so critical to soil health he’d rank them higher in priority than no-till.

“I’d rather see someone use covers and till than no-till without covers,” he says.

According to Liz, growers should think of soil as a bank account, with the top layer being a checking account and the bottom layers a savings account.

By using cover crops, Chappell and other regenerative growers are adding to the nutrients (or investments) in their savings accounts at a much higher rate than their checking accounts are diminishing, she explains. Liz calls cover crops a multi-generational wealth of nutrients that consistently add to the soil savings account.

The investments into the soil pay dividends by providing nutrients that conventional growers have to pay to supplement, Emmons adds.

“There’s just no sense in buying nutrients when the soil can give them to you for free,” he says.

Cover crops are a science. Chappell plants soybeans into a dense cover crop. He carefully considers which cover crops will provide the most benefit to his soil underground and aboveground.

Don’t negate plant architecture in the equation, Chappell says, both for the cash crop and the cover crop, always ensuring one plant in a cover crop mixture is large enough to shield the canopy well. The plants that act as a shield will keep both plants and soil biology from drying out. When he measured his soil temperature, Chappell noted a seven-degree difference in his soil and the ambient air temperature.

Know your numbers. Perhaps the most crucial number to know when considering soil health is water infiltration rate, Emmons says. That’s why a simple water infiltration test is important.

Soil health is critical to regenerative practices for farmers, and full-scale adoption of proper soil health practices requires a thoughtful approach and a phased plan.

As Scoggins mentioned to kick off the field day: “When you get your mind right, you start farming with the soil and not against it.”

America’s Conservation Ag Movement can help by providing resources and connections to USDA-NRCS support and funding opportunities for soil health improvements.

As part of Farm Journal’s Trust In Food team, Jamie Sears Rawlings focuses on providing more of the information needed to bridge the gap between consumers and the farm-gate and help propel conservation agriculture to the forefront of all conversations.

Act Now to Access Conservation Funding Through the Inflation Reduction Act

Tue, 13 Jun 2023 20:20:22 GMT

Even though its name doesn’t reflect it, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is the most significant climate legislation ever enacted.

The overall $770-billion package includes more than $19 billion to support USDA conservation programs through the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Starting in 2023 and extending through 2026, the IRA provides:

• $8.45 billion for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program

• $4.95 billion for the Regional Conservation Partnership Program

• $3.25 billion for the Conservation Stewardship Program

• $1.4 billion for the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program

• $1 billion for the Conservation Technical Assistance Program

If you’ve been thinking about making the transition to climate-smart agriculture, the IRA’s financial assistance for on-farm conservation practices could be just the boost you need. But the money won’t last forever. Most of the IRA’s conservation funding drops sharply after 2026.

That means you should act sooner rather than later if you’re interested in accessing these conservation funds, says Quint Shambaugh, a Pinion principal and leader in water management and land services. He urges these steps to get started:

1. Identify the resource concerns on your farm. Take an inventory and think through your operation’s conservation issues. Possible NRCS projects can address soil health, erosion, nitrogen runoff, water quality, animal quality and health, proper facilities and energy and irrigation efficiency.

2. Engage with your local NRCS. Share your findings and discuss with NRCS personnel how to address your resource concerns or what programs fit your needs.

3. Collaborate. Listen to NRCS suggestions. See if they have other ideas. Don’t forget to share with them your production practices and your goals for your farm.

4. Analyze what NRCS recommends and whether you can execute it. Can you perform a recommended conservation practice for the length of time prescribed? If you can’t commit to a project that will extend for years, even decades, don’t sign up for it because you will have to return the money if you don’t follow through. Also analyze whether you can afford implementing that conservation practice. Remember, this funding works under a cost-share model. You’ll have out-of-pocket costs to implement the project. NRSC will estimate expenses and fund you the money, but you will have to pay a contractor or vendor to put the practice or program into action.

5. Make sure you can implement your plan by 2026. NRCS offers a big pool of funds. With cost-share, additional projects will get funded. There could be hundreds of projects submitted, which means there could be a wait. But remember, IRA funding to NRCS rises sharply over the next three years. If your project doesn’t get funded this year, it could get accepted in 2024, 2025 or 2026. After 2026, conservation funding will return to former levels. So, if you have a conservation project that could benefit from NCRS funding, now’s the time to submit it.

Kala Jenkins’s insights have helped position agribusinesses for both survival and success – from agricultural lending, cash flow strategies and debt optimization to grain marketing, risk management and legacy building. A manager with Pinion (formerly KCoe), she is a proactive catalyst for agribusiness success – enabling growth, optimization and expansion.

Drought Mitigation Strategies For Operational Resilience

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 17:06:20 GMT

Throughout the Midwest drought conditions are putting strain on yield potential early this year. From stories of rootless corn on the Western plains to stands in the Eastern plains that are slow to take or emerging unevenly, widespread concern is driving commodity prices up in anticipation of a down year. And it doesn’t look like there’s much relief in sight.

But some stands are thriving. The difference is locking in subsoil moisture using a slate of practices that include continuous covers and no-till planting, for starters.

I just represented America’s Conservation Ag Movement at the TopSoil Summit near Riverside, Iowa, and while the eastern part of the state hasn’t had the prolonged drought as they’re seeing in the western half, there is still considerable dryness, and it’s on everyone’s mind.

Continuum Ag Regenerative System
The conference was hosted by 7th-generation farmer Mitchell Hora, founder and CEO of Continuum Ag, and his father, Brian, who has been no-tilling since 1978 and using cover crops since 2013. What we saw in the soil pit on their farm should be confirmation for farmers: Once we dug about 3 to 4 inches, we found wet, dark soil, and corn roots reached down 2-3 feet. That kind of performance is the result of years of incremental changes that built a regenerative system that preserves the soil’s natural microbiology and activity. The proof of how it works is in the numbers.

Mitchell Hora, founder and CEO of Continuum Ag, uses regenerative soil health practices on Hora Farm to achieve consistent yields.
Data from Hora’s farm show that the yields on his farm are higher than the county averages, but more importantly, they fluctuate very little compared to average county fluctuations. The regenerative practices he’s built into his operation have made his soil less susceptible to weather extremes and provided more resilience to wind, rain, drought and pest pressures.

The ability to hold and store water has never been more important for the American producer as weather becomes more unpredictable and severe. And as plants stress under the extremes, they’ll be more prone to disease and insect pests. Healthy plants keep input costs low on Hora’s farm and others that invest in healthy soils.

It’s not too late to start building resilience into operations. It starts with a plan. This year’s TopSoil Summit focused on how producers can monetize soil health in a data-connected supply chain. As demand for sustainable produce grows, farmers who are out front with their practices will reap the biggest rewards, and there’s money to be made beyond bigger and more stable yields.

About the Author: Jimmy Emmons leads Trust In Food’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Connected Ag Project, America’s Conservation Ag Movement and Trust In Beef, coalition-driven conservation programs developed to accelerate the adoption of conservation agriculture at scale.

Planting Green Drives Bold Changes for Indiana Farmers Focused on Soil Health and Conservation

Five Reasons Why I Started Using Conservation Practices On My Farm

Pollinator Habitat Fits Farmer’s Sandy Soils And Delivers A ROI

Dust Storms Shouldn’t Happen in the Corn Belt

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 15:38:41 GMT

By Don Reicosky, David Brandt, Randall Reeder and Rattan Lal

Could the catastrophic dust storm along I-55 in Illinois have been prevented? Yes! If the farmland had been in continuous no-till with cover crops there would have been no dust. No wrecks. No deaths. No injuries. No drivers upset because the main highway from Chicago to St. Louis was shut down for almost 24 hours. The tragedy of the infamous Dust Bowl era of 1930s was repeated on I-55 in the heart of the U.S. Corn Belt.

Dust storms are major problems in the Great Plains and Southwest where annual rainfall is 5 to 20 inches. A catastrophic dust storm does not need to happen in the nation’s highly productive Corn Belt where 40 inches of annual rainfall is common.

Unfortunately, a rare and intense dust storm caused a 90-vehicle pileup on May 1, 2023, in Montgomery County in central Illinois on Interstate 55, about 30 miles south of Springfield. Seven people died and 30 people were hospitalized. The accident involved 30 commercial trucks and more than 50 passenger vehicles. Visibility was near zero after 55-mph winds carried soil dust from newly tilled fields across both lanes of the highway.

The unintended consequences of intensive tillage (usually one pass in the fall and one or two more passes before planting in the spring) include soil erosion by water and wind; decreased soil, water and air quality; and the loss of soil organic matter/carbon, which is the heart and soul of soil health. Soil dust from both tilled and bare fallow farmland poses severe risks to public health and transportation safety as illustrated in this recent catastrophe.

Dust storms are not a minor inconvenience. They can have a major impact on our environmental quality and the health and well-being of humans and animals. A research article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society recently reported a total of 232 deaths from windblown dust events from 2007 to 2017, with dust fatalities most frequent in the southwest Great Plains. Minimizing dust storms will require widespread adoption of new and improved agricultural practices that preserve, protect and regenerate our soil, and hence, our welfare along with the environmental and food security.

Is Dust Soil?

Dust particles are very small soil particles. Dust storms are primarily the result of turbulent wind systems lifting and carrying small soil particles into the air. Those “soil particles” are valuable. The dust is usually our best topsoil and contains nutrients necessary for plant growth. When combined with dry weather and windy conditions, tillage disturbance can create chaos on our fields and adjacent highways. Tillage not only sets the soil up for erosion and degradation, it causes carbon and water loss and decreases the quality of soil, water and air, leading to environmental degradation and food insecurity. In addition, tillage-induced dust storms damage crops, delay transportation, disrupt commerce and reduce the recreational value of all landscapes. Is this the way we want to treat our beloved soils that we depend on for food and other essential ecosystem services?

Slow to Learn Conservation Lessons

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s is perhaps the best-known and most often quoted example of large-scale wind erosion and dust-storm activity anywhere in the world. The core of the Dust Bowl area comprised much of the Great Plains when the most severe dust storms (“black blizzards”) occurred between 1933 and 1938, with activity related to the plow and usually at a maximum during the spring. The single worst day of the Dust Bowl was April 14, 1935, known as “Black Sunday.”

These experiences led to the development of the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) in 1935 that evolved into NRCS (Natural Resource Conservation Service) in 1994. No-tillage research began in the 1960s. The development of efficient herbicides initially made no-till a more popular soil conservation practice. Now, both weed and erosion control are being enhanced using cover crops. The economic cost of losing 5 to 10 tons per acre of topsoil per year, with attached nutrients, is shameful when soil erosion can be reduced to a few pounds per acre, not tons, with no-till and other conservation practices.

Cause and Solutions of Soil Dust Storms

The three requirements for severe soil dust storms are “dry” weather, “windy” conditions and bare or tilled soil surfaces. From a farm management perspective, we have little or no control over dry weather and windy conditions. The main management decisions relate to the soil surface and tillage decisions. As a result, it is important to transition from intensive moldboard plow tillage to no-tillage to minimize soil loss and degradation. Adding cover crops to continuous no-till offers many benefits, such as erosion control, increasing organic matter, nitrogen fixation, increasing water infiltration, better soil structure, improving the soil microflora and helping sustain or increase yields through healthier soils.

While no-tillage showed promise with respect to decreasing soil erosion, having living plants and roots as long as biologically possible providing biomass is essential. Some time was required to understand the complexity and interactions of the natural systems and put them in proper context to farm in nature’s image.

No-tillage reduces erosion losses, tends to maintain the level of soil organic carbon, reduces the detrimental effects on soil quality, retains soil moisture and lowers the input costs of fuel, labor and machinery. No-tillage as a single practice was not sufficient to provide economic and environmental benefits with profitable yields. The combination of no-till, cover crops and crop diversity are the three pillars of conservation agriculture systems. Several prominent researchers suggest adopting conservation agriculture systems to control erosion, improve soil and water management outcomes, protect the environment and achieve food security.

The three primary principles of conservation agriculture systems are:

1. Minimize soil disturbance.

2. Provide continuous plant biomass cover.

3. Add more crop biodiversity in rotations and cover crop mixes.

While minimum soil disturbance broadly refers to the physical disturbance of the soil, it can also encompass unnatural forms of chemical and biological disturbance. Conservation agriculture systems tend to decrease agriculture’s carbon footprint.

Education is required for the three principles to be broadly accepted as a sustainable agriculture system. As more innovative ideas and concepts evolve, they must serve as a foundational basis for other types of sustainable agriculture, such as sustainable intensification, regenerative agriculture, soil health farming and carbon farming.

The solution is more education for farmers. The biggest challenge is changing the mindset about the need for tillage. Tillage has been a part of agriculture for 12,000 years. That’s a long tradition, making it difficult to convince farmers to change to a system developed over the past 60 years.

Slowly, the concept of a “living soil system” and the importance of soil biology is being understood and accepted. In addition, the unknown risks can be significant and require enhanced management skills as new technology and equipment evolve that require data collection to make improved management decisions. Another area where farmer education can be enhanced is in developing independent farmer-led networks with farmers as mentors. Conferences, field days and other programs to educate farmers, crop consultants, agricultural business representatives, ag science teachers and professors are essential. Experienced farmers with positive attitudes and credibility with a little passion are effective communicating with and teaching other farmers. They can also provide their fields for on-farm research.

Policy Changes

The current crop insurance policy reinforces poor farming practices. Basing crop insurance on conservation agriculture systems principles would encourage adoption of practices that prevent soil erosion from water and wind. The resulting resilient soils provide a level of insurance (consistent crop yields).

Important policy “decisions” are included in the farm bill. The new farm bill, probably in 2024, should emphasize education and funding to get more conservation agriculture system on farmland. The entire agriculture community needs to understand the three primary principles of conservation agriculture systems for truly sustainable production for future generations. Provisions to enable the development of farmer-led networks should be encouraged to ensure the continuation of effective sustainable production. Organizations, such as the Ohio No-Till Council and Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance and No-till on the Plains, should be funded to organize events to educate farmers on conservation agriculture systems practices. Payments to farmers based on practices and land use for ecosystem services, such as CRP, are needed to promote the adoption of conservation agriculture.

As a former chief of the Soil Conservation Service (1990-1993) and one of several farmers who started developing no-till in the 1950s, Bill Richards says we have the technology to help address the blowing dust problems. He believes producers have the duty and responsibility to use the best technology available to protect our land, soil and water while producing food, feed, fiber and fuel for the world. However, farmers should not be asked or required to go beyond what’s scientifically sound and economic. That’s where public policy dedicated to soil conservation practices must be addressed in the next farm bill, he says.

Summary

The recent soil dust cloud catastrophe in central Illinois is just another alarm bell and a wake-up call from mother nature suggesting all of agriculture needs to implement more sustainable production practices. The loss of human life with this and other verified dust storm incidents, should justify the need to apply conservation agriculture systems widely. Farm bill programs that promote further conservation innovation through payments for ecosystem services, training and new ideas along with farmer and consumer education programs are essential. We owe it to future generations.

About the Authors

Don Reicosky is a retired soil scientist for USDA-ARS, North Central Soil Conservation Research Laboratory, Morris, Minn., and adjunct professor in the soil science department, University of Minnesota.

Randall Reeder, P.E., worked as an Extension ag engineer at Ohio State University from 1979-2011. Since 2011 he has served as executive director of the Ohio No-till Council and coordinated programs for the annual Conservation Tillage & Technology Conference in Ada, Ohio.

Rattan Lal, a distinguished professor of soil science at Ohio State University, has researched soil for five decades on five continents.

David Brandt was known as the “Godfather of Soil Health.” He died on May 21 from injuries suffered in a traffic accident at age 76. He was recognized internationally as a leader in no-till, cover crops, soil health and regenerative agriculture.

Biden Administration Announces $11 Billion for Rural Clean Energy Projects

Tue, 16 May 2023 18:58:55 GMT

Rural electric cooperatives, utilities and other energy providers will soon be able to apply for nearly $11 billion in grants and loans for clean energy projects, the Biden administration said on Tuesday. The funding comes from the $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act signed into law last August.

Expanding clean energy to rural communities is critical to meeting the administration’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, officials told reporters on a Monday press call.

“This is an exciting and an historic day and continues an ongoing effort to ensure that rural America is a full participant in the clean energy economy,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on the call.

Rural electric cooperatives will be eligible to apply beginning July 31 for $9.7 billion in grants for deploying renewable energy, zero-emission and carbon capture systems, USDA said.

Renewable energy developers and electric service providers like municipal and Tribal utilities will be eligible to apply beginning June 30 for another $1 billion in partially forgivable loans for financing wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and other renewable energy projects, USDA said.

On the call with reporters, White House advisor John Podesta said the money would bring good-paying jobs to rural communities and National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi said the investment would be a “game-changer.”

The new funds will help rural electric cooperatives reach parity with private utility companies who have already begun significant investment in clean energy, Vilsack told reporters.

“We have a climate crisis that requires all of America to participate in reducing emissions to get to the net-zero future,” Vilsack said.

Rural electric cooperatives serve 42 million people and draw about 22% of their energy from renewable sources, according to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

(Reporting by Leah Douglas; Editing by Stephen Coates)

How Habitat Management Plans Drive Healthier Land, Livestock and Forages

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 16:00:39 GMT

David Frabotta is the Director of Climate-Smart Content for Trust In Food, a Farm Journal initiative. Learn more at www.trustinfood.com

Funding for habitat management is squarely under the microscope as legislators and lobbyists evaluate how farm bill programs will be administered in their next iteration. Among the voluminous calls for change, many legislators, agriculture companies and conservation organizations are lobbying for programs like the Conservation Reserve Program, as an example, to be more flexible so farmers and ranchers can continue to conserve or regenerate habitats on private, working lands.

The farm bill negotiations are part of a global movement to address biodiversity loss. In December, the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) yielded a landmark global biodiversity framework that identified 23 goals to achieve by 2030, including restoration of 30% of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, halving global food waste and reducing the loss of high biodiversity importance to near zero.

Global biodiversity has become critical as “the planet is experiencing a dangerous decline in nature as a result of human activity,” according to the UN, which says 1 million plant and animal species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades.

As with climate change and greenhouse gas emissions reductions, there is an emphasis for greater private-sector action and investment into habitat preservation.

Also, like climate change, agriculture operations can be seen as both contributors to biodiversity loss as well as a solution to restoring and connecting ecosystems that have significant benefits to farming operations and the communities and wildlife around them. Farmers understand this connection.

In a recent Trust In Food survey of 500 farmers in 5 states, more than two-thirds of farmers say the top benefit of conservation agriculture is better protected wildlife and wildlife habitats. Ecological diversity provides farmers with healthier soils, improved forage potential and a greater number of beneficial insects that can mitigate input costs, among other benefits.

Corteva Agriscience is helping farmers and ranchers advance biodiversity through partnerships with organizations including the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Pheasants Forever. Corteva and its partners are helping to establish habitat management plans that provide action-based tools that control invasive species, improve the use and value of their land, protect valuable grassland birds and strengthen the related biodiversity of the ecosystem.

Biodiversity is a core focus area in the company’s sustainability commitments . It is where the company sees one of its biggest opportunities to leverage the breadth of capabilities and touch points with farmers and ranchers to affect meaningful and measurable change, says Corteva Biodiversity Partnerships Lead Aly Wells.

One example of Corteva’s biodiversity partnerships is the company’s engagement with Dakota Audubon’s Conservation Forage Initiative that works with ranchers to establish management plans addressing grazing practices, grassland establishment and conservation as ways to increase productivity by reducing erosion and improving soil health while improving habitat for rangeland birds.

Corteva is also working with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in the Audubon Conservation Ranching Initiative in the Rockies, where the partners are working to restore and improve management and biodiversity habitat on more than 30,000 acres of grasslands.

Additionally, Corteva provides resources through its LandVisor platform, a vegetation management platform that uses field data and GIS imaging to help manage forage productivity and to help control invasive species and provide actionable insights for land management and encourage native grasses and forbs to thrive.

“As an industry, we need to do more to measure and communicate biodiversity impacts as they relate to improving productivity while limiting the impact to wildlife, beneficial organisms and soil health,” Wells says. “We know that productivity is critically important for farmers and ranchers, so if we can communicate the return on investment of these biodiversity practices, that could encourage more participation.”

In late 2022, Corteva announced a 3-year partnership with Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever to enhance habitat in non-crop areas as part of the Rights-of-Way & Energy (ROWE) Habitat Program , which assesses and measures habitat, biodiversity and conservation on transportation, railway, oil and gas, electric and solar corridors across the country.

The partnership will pair the knowledge of conservation experts and wildlife biologists with solutions and strategies recommended by Corteva Agriscience Vegetation Management Specialists. This approach is expected to help industry practitioners create sustainable, integrated habitat management plans with the potential to improve up to 5 million acres of the estimated 35 million acres of rights-of-way and energy corridors in the United States. This would be a 14% improvement in total rights-of-way and energy acres.

“Corteva understands the unique challenges facing farmers, ranchers and the ecosystems in which they operate,” Wells says. “We’re committed to supporting biodiversity through a combined approach focusing on our products, productivity impact using Corteva’s technologies, partnerships with organizations that share our vision and improvements to our own Corteva operations.”

Can the $20-Billion Inflation Reduction Act Get Rolled Out Quickly Enough?

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 21:33:08 GMT

In the pecking order of priorities on the farm, conservation practices have often ranked relatively low on the list – not from a lack of farmer interest so much as the result of limited dollars and cents.

That’s certainly been the case with federal resources available through USDA. Contracts for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), for instance, were awarded to only 31% of farmer applicants between 2010 and 2020, according to a report issued by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) last year. Likewise, only 42% of Conservation Stewardship Program applications were funded during that decade.

But conservation funding opportunities are getting an unprecedented financial boost with implementation of the legislative package dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. The package was signed into law by President Joe Biden last August.

“How often have we said regarding conservation, ‘if only we had the money to do that?’ Well, now we have the money to do that; it’s a generational opportunity,” said John Larson, senior vice president of the American Farmland Trust.

“The thing that we need to focus on is implementing that funding in a way that meets the needs of farmers and ranchers in the field to accomplish their desired conservation outcomes, because that’s going to be key,” he added.

Larson weighed in on the new legislative package during a panel discussion on the topic of farm policy and funding at the 2023 Trust In Food Symposium in Nashville, Tenn. The panel, pictured here, was narrated by Jay Vroom, chair of America’s Conservation Ag Movement and an advisor to Trust In Food.

IRA Funding Allocation Specifics Outlined

The IRA totals approximately $740 billion, including nearly $40 billion earmarked for agriculture, forestry and rural development. Of that latter amount, roughly $20 billion is funding earmarked for agriculture conservation.

Specific funding allocated by the IRA includes:
• $8.45 billion for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program
• $4.95 billion for the Regional Conservation Partnership Program
• $3.25 billion for the Conservation Stewardship Program
• $1.4 billion for the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program
• $1 billion for conservation technical assistance
• $300 million to measure, evaluate, quantify carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emission reductions from conservation investments

Conservation Projects Need Funding This Season

The challenge now is whether the agriculture industry will be able to move quickly enough to implement the IRA program and harvest the benefits in a timely manner.

“If the conservation community doesn’t get all those billions of dollars invested – not spent but invested – in the next 24 months there’s not going to be additional resources made available (in the future),” said Bruce Knight, principal and founder of Strategic Conservation Solutions and former head of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), during the Trust In Food panel discussion.

The conservation community must move quickly to get funding into the hands of farmers and ranchers and demonstrate it values and respects “the taxpayer trust that they have been handed,” Knight added.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced initial implementation plans for the IRA funding in mid-February. As of last week (March 17), a press release from Vilsack’s office said applications for the first IRA funding cycle had closed for the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, Agricultural Land Easements and Wetland Reserve Easements.

While NRCS accepts applications for its conservation programs year-round, farmers and livestock producers interested in EQIP or CSP financial assistance through IRA should apply by their state’s ranking deadline to be considered for funding in the current cycle, Vilsack said in a release. Farmers can click here to learn more about state application ranking dates .

If farmers apply after the program ranking date specified, NRCS said it will automatically consider their application during the next cycle.

‘A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats’

While Democrats backed passing the IRA unanimously last summer, Congressional Republicans voiced unanimous opposition to the legislative package.

Love it or hate it, the IRA represents an opportunity to benefit a variety of people and organizations, said Randy Russell, president of The Russell Group, during the Trust In Food panel discussion.

He referenced benefits he observed from the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program. USDA invested up to $2.8 billion in 70 selected projects in the first pool of funding in 2022.

The agency said the climate-smart commodities program provided positive outcomes for up to 60,000 farms, representing more than 25 million acres of working land.

“The real strength of that program is that it forged relationships up and down the food chain between land grant universities, nonprofits, the conservation community, the environmental community, and ag produce organizations,” Russell said. “It really leveraged using private sector dollars to build these partnerships.”

Russell’s hope is that the Inflation Reduction Act will provide similar outcomes.

Vilsack said in a press release the IRA funding will provide direct climate mitigation benefits and expand access to financial and technical assistance for growers and livestock producers to advance conservation on their farm, ranch or forest land through practices like cover cropping, conservation tillage, wetland restoration, prescribed grazing, nutrient management, tree planting and more.

Crop Insurance, Production Costs, ERP Among Key Topics at Senate Ag Farm Bill Hearing

Soil Health a Priority in Latest USDA Climate Funding

Come On In: The Ocean Temperatures Are Hot

Take Credit for Sustainability with ESG Reporting

Mon, 06 Feb 2023 14:56:31 GMT

Building trust in food begins with empowering farmers through one of the largest and most diverse conservation - and sustainability-focused public-private partnerships in our nation’s history: America’s Conservation Ag Movement. To find the latest news and resources related to the Movement, visit AgWeb.com/ACAM .

Here’s why you need to track environmental, social and governance outcomes

Just talking the talk about sustainability on your farm may not pass the test in the future. Instead, you must prove the practices on your farm align with environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards.

Why is this trend picking up speed? Kenny Fahey, interim director for Leading Harvest , an organization focused on providing standards for sustainable agriculture, points to two sources:

Nontraditional investors are becoming more involved in financing farms and want ESG reporting included in the management of the asset.
The value supply chain continues to have higher degrees of expectations of its raw ingredients to make claims to consumers that products are sustainable.

“Right now, most ESG is not backed by third-party verification,” Fahey says. “But I don’t know how long the non-verified option will last. This is not a subtle trend; it is only accelerating.”

Proof in the Data

ESG reporting is a way to verify how a business integrates various sustainability factors into the operation. For a farm, this could mean documenting conservation practices, air- and water-quality improvements or fertilizer use, says Rod Snyder, president of Field to Market , an alliance of groups partnering to define, measure and advance sustainable food production.

The social and governance factors could include your labor practices, data security, team diversity or business ethics.

“Many companies are asking farmers to document this information in a more comprehensive and regular way,” Snyder says. “It is not enough to just say, ‘Trust us.’ The good news is through tracking this type of information, producers may find insights to make their operation more efficient.”

Look at sustainability reporting as a way to protect your investment and grow for the future, adds Matt Armstrong, sustainability and assurance lead with K·Coe Isom .

“Now is not the time to wait and see,” Armstrong says. “The best action is to be proactive, identify what your organization’s environmental impacts and climate risks are, and stay ahead of changes.”

Navigate the ESG Reporting Process

Non-mandated sustainability reporting can be complex and unfamiliar. To start the process, K·Coe Isom’s Matt Armstrong and Field to Market’s Rod Snyder share this advice.

Contact your grain buyers to see if they are receiving ESG questions from customers.
Identify the topics most critical to your operation (chemical or fertilizer use, pollinator habitats, etc.). Determine which data/record program you’ll use to generate reports and do analysis.
Establish procedures so you can document the good work you’re doing. That will include identifying all aspects of your business that produce greenhouse gas emissions. Set baselines for measuring changes over time.
Report accurate, reliable information in a meaningful way to your stakeholders, whether they’re customers, landlords or bankers.
Arm yourself with third-party data that allows you to stand behind what you’re reporting.

To find the latest on sustainable food systems and conservation ag, visit AgWeb.com/ACAM

Preparing for the Future: Cost-share practices help Frank Rademacher look to tomorrow

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 20:25:17 GMT

Frank Rademacher wonders what the world will be like in 10, 20, even 30 years. With his farm legacy always top of mind, the third-generation Illinois corn and soybean grower realizes an understanding of and experience with conservation practices is key to preparing the family farming operation for the future.

“What agronomic, market and consumer, environmental and regulatory concerns will we face?” Rademacher says. “Our bet is that the future will only be increasingly focused on conservation in agriculture, and we see that by the groundwork being laid now in legislation, specialty premiums and grant opportunities.”

Rademacher and his father operate Rademacher Farms in east central Illinois, growing specialty corn and soybeans. Today the entire operation is no-till, and cover crops are planted on all acres. His grandparents purchased the family operation in the 1970s and slowly added acres over the years.

Rademacher and his father both maintain off-farm jobs while working to continue the family legacy. Although he never intended to farm, Rademacher says he fell in love with the work while in college and eventually switched his major to agriculture. When he joined the operation full-time after graduation in 2018, Rademacher and his dad expanded conservation practices to the entire operation.

Today, the farm is 100% no-till and cover crops. Using a planter-mounted crimper allows Rademacher to establish cover crops in a weed suppressing mat. Rademacher says their management regime has saved on labor, helped eliminate the need for insecticides and allowed them to reduce fertilizer and herbicide use.

“Environmental benefits have been huge as well, whether it be tile water test comparisons with neighbors or the amount of habitat we provide, we’ve built a system that has an incredible impact on what is otherwise a flat, disturbed, barren landscape for most of the year,” Rademacher says.

While every farmer has his or her own unique reasoning for using conservation practices — from labor savings and boosting soil quality to reducing erosion and weed control, Rademacher says some choose to
step up their stewardship efforts simply for environmental benefits.

Rademacher is a firm believer in cost-share programs. He credits these programs with helping shift his family’s farm operation to one that’s more conservation conscious.

“We’re strong believers in the system we’ve built and have shown that our profit levels can easily match or succeed those of conventional operations,” Rademacher explains. “Cost-share opportunities are great resources and remove some of the risk, especially for new adopters, that might have a learning curve to overcome.”

Especially true in a soil health system where it might take several years for soils to improve, Rademacher says cost-share resources are key in helping smooth over the time for poor soils to gain nutrients.

Rademacher advises other farmers to get involved and try new things.

“Having a general understanding of and experience with a multitude of conservation practices, especially when funding is available is a great way to keep a farming operation well prepared for the future.”

Americas Conservation Ag Movement

Cashing in on Conservation: How Local Retailers Can Connect Agronomy With Market Opportunity

Hurricane Helene: One Year Later

The Clean-Up

Planning for the Future

Lasting Impact

One Montana Farmer's Fight to Break the Generational Cycle of Failure

America’s Conservation Ag Movement Adds Nutrien Ag Solutions to Coalition Strengthening American Agriculture

The Unique Relationship Between Sorghum and Conservation

Aligning Inputs with People, Planet and Productivity

How to Grow the Next Generation of Agriculture: Start Small

Choose Your Own Adventure: Online Tool Makes It Easier To Find Conservation Programs

Practical Tips to Help Finance Regenerative Ag Projects

Digging into Soil Health

Ducks Unlimited and National Sorghum Producers Pair Up to Promote Water-Smart Agriculture

Optimize Your Smart Farming Decisions for Maximum Efficiency Gains

4 Strategies One Oklahoma Family Farm Uses to Thrive

From The Ground-Up: Syngenta Updates ESG Goals To Support Farmers

Playing the Long Game: What Works at G Bar C Ranch

Learn more about the Trust In Beef’s Sustainable Ranchers Tour

Read about G Bar C Ranch’s NCBA’s Environmental Stewardship Award Program recognition

Follow coverage of G Bar C Ranch and the Sustainable Ranchers Tour on AgDay and U.S. Farm Report:

G Bar C Ranch Takes Texas Ranchers Behind the Farm Gate

Want to Avoid Leaving Climate-Smart Money On the Table? There's An App for That

How Does the Climate-Smart Opportunity Navigator Work?

Big Picture: The Perfect Climate-Smart Project Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All

Test Drive the Climate-Smart Opportunity Navigator Tool

USDA’s Climate-Smart Commodities, Explained

Growers Who Rely Upon Cover Crops Say Diversity is Key to Maximum Soil Health Benefit

Real-World Cover Crop Decisions

How Planting Cover Crops Today Helps

Rain Check: How One Arkansas Farmer Banks Moisture

Act Now to Access Conservation Funding Through the Inflation Reduction Act

Drought Mitigation Strategies For Operational Resilience

Dust Storms Shouldn’t Happen in the Corn Belt

Is Dust Soil?

Slow to Learn Conservation Lessons

Cause and Solutions of Soil Dust Storms

Policy Changes

Summary

Biden Administration Announces $11 Billion for Rural Clean Energy Projects

How Habitat Management Plans Drive Healthier Land, Livestock and Forages

Can the $20-Billion Inflation Reduction Act Get Rolled Out Quickly Enough?

Take Credit for Sustainability with ESG Reporting

Here’s why you need to track environmental, social and governance outcomes

Proof in the Data

Navigate the ESG Reporting Process

Preparing for the Future: Cost-share practices help Frank Rademacher look to tomorrow

Download “Conservation Next Steps That Make Sense -- and Cents”

Sponsored Content