What motivates farmers to take the first step toward a different kind of farming?
For Rick Clark, who was interviewed for this issue, it was a 1-inch rain event after spring tilling that washed away immense amounts of his rich Indiana topsoil. It hit him “like a Mack truck. I realized I had to do something different.” Cover crops were the first thing he tried.
For our editorial advisor, John Kempf, the change began when a melon crop, sown and managed identically on his family’s land and on a neighbors’ rented field — which hadn’t received herbicides and pesticides — produced radically different results on the different sides of the property line. Thus began his journey to better understand how plants grow and how to produce crops of exceptional quality.
Here’s how Brian Dougherty, this month’s opinion author, describes it: “Something — often an economic or health crisis — has caused their worldview to shift, or they may be new to agriculture and open to different approaches. They started to do their own research and learn things that weren’t taught in agriculture programs. They started looking at the big picture and asking uncomfortable questions about our current food system.”
Becoming a regenerative farmer is not something that happens overnight, nor is it a destination only ever reached by an enlightened few. It’s a spectrum: everyone can improve — even those who’ve been doing it for a long time — and there’s plenty of room for all.
But taking that first step is undoubtedly difficult. The momentum of cultural and economic factors is strong. Conventional growers have a plethora of resources at their disposal to continue in the system — free extension services, consultants, supply salesmen promising bigger yields, etc.
Though the literature on regenerative farming practices is growing, there’s admittedly a lot less of it compared to what’s available for conventional growers. And perhaps more significantly, there are fewer examples of how do it — particularly ones that are close to home, for other farmers to see with their own eyes, in their own climate.
We hope through this issue to provide examples and encouragement to take that first step toward regenerative farming. You’ll find Gary Zimmer’s piece particularly helpful — he discusses his exact thought process on how he plans to convert a corn-on-corn conventional field to organic.
You don’t have to join Rick Clark on “the wacky side of Indiana” (as he puts it). Just plant that first cover crop. Eliminate one burndown pass. Add rotationally grazed cattle for part of the year. As Rick says, “There is all kinds of room on this curve for folks who want to start to implement the six principles of soil health.”
Whatever situation you find yourself in, this issue of Acres U.S.A. will give you the motivation and the knowledge to take that first step into a better way of farming. And that’s the view from the country.
