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Agricultural Specialist Aaron Ristow on the Challenges of Conventional Farmers in Transition to Conservation Practices
In 2018, American Farmland Trust established The New York Demonstration Farm Network in the Genessee River Watershed, in partnership with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. The initiative brings together researchers and conservation professionals to offer technical training and peer to peer knowledge-sharing to farmers who are integrating soil conservation practices into their management systems. Aaron Ristow, AFT's New York Agricultural Specialist, has observed the fortitude of these farmers as they experience trials and errors, humbling learning curves, and a myriad of often uncontrollable factors that influence their outcomes. As Ristow reflects, “the bottom line is making a case for a particular practice is difficult. Each farm is unique, every field’s soil is different, every year there’s a different climate or weather event.” Demo farmers must necessarily cultivate creativity, patience, and the ability to accept short-term disappointments for the hope of longer-term rewards. As Network farmer Forrest Watson of Mulligan Farms says: “You can’t give up after
the first little failure.”
Competition for Land
Farmers in this western region of New York face fierce competition for arable land and are often renting land that has been distressed by poor management or absentee ownership. “Regenerative practices can be difficult to introduce on compromised land,” Ristow says. “These farmers have to ease into those practices because the land just isn't ready for it.” Many will start on a small amount of acres “and see how it goes,” Ristow reports.
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Peer Pressure & Inertia
Simple inertia is another natural human obstacle that a farmer is likely to experience before being ready to abandon old methods and try new ones, even when the old ones may no longer be effective. “We're asking for behavior change and that is always hard,” says Ristow. “When somebody wants to lose weight, I don't think they go to one Tony Robbins talk and walk out of there and say, ‘I'm all in on this.’ They go to Tony Robbins, then they see something on Oprah, then they talk to their doctor. They might look up a couple of things online. It takes time. It’s an accumulation of a whole bunch of things that ends up changing behavior.”
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Peer pressure can also mitigate against the adoption of new practices. As Ristow reports: “Farmers definitely check each other’s practice,” and a neighboring farmer may look askance at another who steps outside the farming community’s normative practices.
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Ristow references the late Dave Brant, an Ohio farmer who was an early adopter of cover cropping, no-till and crop rotation. “His story was that when he first started cover cropping, he did it far away from the road where no one could see it,” Ristow relates. It wasn’t until his twentieth year farming regeneratively that one of his neighbors came up to him and asked him how he was able to take a vacation and still stay in business. He later became a mentor to other farmers, sharing his successes and failures.
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Ristow finds Brant’s story both disheartening and instructive because for so many years no one had bothered to approach him for advice. “So that's what we’re trying to do with our Demo Network,” he says. “Encourage and facilitate those conversations, and create some smaller opportunities for farmers to get together.”
Even when farmers are ready to explore regenerative practices, Ristow says, they may face resistance from employees. He cites the experience of one of the farmers in the Demo Network. “ I didn't have to convince the owner/operator but she had to convince the other 30 people that work at her farm that this was a worthwhile endeavor. Farm workers are used to doing something a certain way, and they are now being asked to do it differently and that maybe is going to slow them down.”​
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The Cost of Equipment
Commodity grain farmers typically operate on a large scale and the equipment required to adopt regenerative practices can be prohibitively expensive. Farmers may invest in a costly piece of equipment only to find that it is not suitable to their practices. A large roller crimper –which can cost as much as $80,000--can be out of reach for a farmer unless they go into debt. Equipment sharing is not usually an option because every farmer needs the same equipment at the same time. “Having access to rent or try out equipment before taking the leap to purchase it would be really helpful to these farmers.” Ristow says.
A farmer pulls his roller/crimper through cover crop to prepare for planting corn.
The Elusive Gold Standard:
Chemical-Free Farming
Ristow has also noted that although farmers who adopt practices like no-till, cover cropping, and cash crop rotation may experience considerable upfront costs in their transition from more conventional practices, they can pretty reliably begin to reduce their dependence on synthetic fertilizers and the associated costs, as these practices help build soil tilth and replenish soil nutrients. They also translate into improved water infiltration, time saved that can be devoted to innovative practices, and reduced labor, machinery, and fuel costs. But for farmers who have long depended on herbicides for weed and pest management, the gold standard of soil health practice—chemical-free farming—can be beyond their grasp.
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Ristow explains that farmers typically begin planting green (planting a cash crop directly into a cover-cropped field, which is then terminated) for the many soil health benefits. But the practice requires a carefully timed delay in planting the cash crop, giving the cover crop a chance to reach that optimal stage of growth when it can be terminated to create a layer of mulch sufficient to suppress weeds, build soil organic matter, and retain water. But that wait can be difficult for most farmers who, as Ristow reports, are itching to get out to plant in the spring. Or they can just get the timing wrong, or environmental conditions don’t cooperate for any number of reasons.​It’s no wonder, Ristow reflects, that many farmers may be motivated to adopt no-till and cover cropping but have a much harder time eliminating herbicides. “Many farmers will say ‘I’m spending this much time worrying about this and with marginal and unpredictable results.” Aaron says. “Some years it does work, but some years it doesn't. So most farms just automatically spray the cover crop, because it's easy and they know it is going to work.” ​Ristow says that as farmers continue to build soil health and reduce external inputs, his hope is that it will become clearly and consistently reflective in their bottom lines. “So while they might have lower yields in a given season they might also have offsetting lower input costs,” he says, “plus they are also realizing these other improvements in their soil. And maybe there will actually, over time, be some improvement in yield because the soil is more resilient. That is what we are hoping to demonstrate.”
Close-up of corn planted "green" into a cover crop mix residue.
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