New York Commodity FArmers
RECLAIM A PartneRSHIP With the soil

By now we have all seen the documentaries narrated by celebrity activists, elevating to rock star status once conventional commodity farmers who seem to have followed a clearly marked roadmap to wealth and chemical-free farming by adopting "soil health" practices like no-till, cover-cropping, and "planting green." Conventional farmers in the real world are unfortunately constrained by often harsher reality. When attempting to break out of old agricultural models heavily dependent on synthetic inputs by restoring soil vitality they are likely to experience daunting challenges. Almost certainly they will encounter steep and costly learning curves, and may even experience the disapproval or skepticism of peers, employees, neighbors, and even family members. It’s a special breed of farmer who can persevere through those setbacks, uncertainties, and societal pressures.
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Meanwhile we continue to buy into the simple narratives.  Surely farmers can boost yields and profits all the while smoothly transitioning their land into chemical-free biodiversity paradises, their soil teaming with beneficial microbes. If they can’t, we want to know, why not?  Jay Goldmark, an organic grain farmer in the Hudson Valley who grew up on a large-scale conventional farm, says it’s time to stop categorizing and purity-testing. There is no holy grail to follow and even among so-called "regenerative" farmers there is wide disagreement about the benefits and drawbacks of certain practices: should you till, not till at all, or only occasionally? “It's exhausting to try and continually define ourselves,” he says. “You’re a regenerative farmer here, you're an organic, regenerative farmer there, or you're a conventional farmer over there, what's the point? Feels like you have to have a special credit card to get into a club somewhere." He says the real litmus test is to ask are you farming in such a way that the next generation will be grateful for their inheritance? 
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The truth is no rulebook or formula exists for a farmer who wants to work in partnership with the soil. As American Farmland Trust Agricultural Specialist Aaron Ristow reports, "every farm is unique, every soil is different, every year there's a different weather event."  The stories here of New York commodity farmers like Forrest Watson of Mulligan Farm, John Macauley of Macauley Farm, and Jay Goldmark of Stone House Farm bear this out.

Watson and Macauley are participating in American Farmland Trust’s New York Farm Demonstration Network. Both have adopted no-till, cover-cropping, and planting green practices.  Both continue to use, to varying degrees, synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, and have experienced, from year to year, mixed bottom line results.

As an organic farmer, Jay Goldmark is working to prove that its possible to give the soil "a sabbatical" by no-tilling through a succession of crop rotations and plant greening without any synthetic inputs. He says he hasn't quite cracked the code but is energized by the challenge. 

All three farmers are cultivating a way of farming that stretches their creativity and resourcefulness and they are in it for the long haul. Working increasingly as collaborators with the soil, they are embracing the complexity and the rewards of farming as both an art and a vocation.
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As Bianca Moebius-Clune, Director of AFT’s Climate and Soil Health Initiative says, everyone has a role to play in supporting the efforts of these farmers as they strive to care for their farms, their families and ultimately their communities and the agro-ecological systems upon which we all depend. “It's going to take every single person on this planet to do what is in their power,” to overhaul a system dominated by chemical agriculture, she says. 

Efforts already underway, here in this country and around the world, to support and encourage farmers to transition to chemical-free systems will be the subject of an upcoming Hudson River Flows series.