Farm Progress

Resilient Ag Landscapes: What's holding back adoption of no-till and conservation practices that benefit the land in the long term?

Tyler Harris, Editor

March 3, 2017

4 Min Read
BENEFITS OF CONSERVATION: Some conservation practices have a quicker return on investment than others. However, those practices that require a long-term investment offer rewards that are also long term.

It goes without saying that we live in a society of quick fixes. We tend to take the path of least resistance, but as Keith Glewen, Nebraska Extension educator in southeast Nebraska notes, "Soil and water are two resources you can't replace or improve with a snap of the finger."

In previous Resilient Ag Landscapes articles, we've discussed how much soil has been lost to erosion since the 1862 Homestead Act, and how far we've come in mitigating erosion since no-till and conservation farming practices were heavily adopted after the dirty ’30s.

In some cases, the challenge of soil erosion has increased faster than we've been able to get a handle on it. It takes time to implement practices to mitigate erosion and build healthy, productive soils. The question is: What's holding growers and landowners back from taking the next step and adopting more practices that will benefit their soil over the long term?

Hurdles to adoption
One of the hurdles is just that — it takes time to realize the return from investing in certain conservation practices, and some have a quicker return on investment than others.

Certain conservation structures also add a level of difficulty with new structures to farm around and to maintain. "You've added another level of difficulty by adding the contour strip on the hillside. Now you've got to farm around it. Those are all obstacles that people don't like to deal with," Glewen says. "We know buffer strips at the bottom of the hill are going to catch sediment, nutrients and pesticides. A lot of times bottom ground is the best yielding ground, and you've got to maintain them. It takes effort."

Brad Lubben, UNL Extension policy specialist, adds it can sometimes be difficult for a tenant to propose a new management practice if there isn't a quick return on investment. "It's often the landlord who dictates the terms of the lease," Lubben says. "Sometimes the challenge is convincing the landlord that they can live with some of the perceived costs of implementing good conservation practices."

With high property taxes, that can be an even bigger challenge, adds Glewen. "For a lot of landowners, cash rent is a source of income. They depend on it," he says. "As property taxes go up, that lifestyle is eroded. If the landowner increases the cash rent, the grower has to make sure he generates more return from the land area. And he's not going to take 4 acres out of production for waterways or spend money on tile outlet terraces, because it's money he doesn't have to spend."

In some cases, tools that are otherwise valuable to producers, like crop insurance, can be a hurdle to the adoption of practices, like cover cropping. Especially in Nebraska, crop insurance places specific requirements on termination of cover crops based on moisture use.

Because federal crop insurance takes much of the risk out of crop production, producers also have less need to bring livestock onto the land to diversify their operation and spread out risk, which means there's less financial incentive to use soil-building practices, like cover crops and perennial pasture.

"Introducing cattle brings diversity, which is a risk mitigation tool in and of itself," says Jay Parsons, UNL ag economist. "Federal programs have been set up over the years to take a lot of risk out of crop production. So there's a lot to work with, without having to introduce cattle."

Weigh the benefits
However, there's always a value proposition to factor in when considering soil-building practices. Take cover crops, for example. While many consider cover crops a long-term investment, Dan Gillespie, a Natural Resources Conservation Service no-till specialist, notes growers may realize the benefits of cover crops (i.e., improving organic matter and infiltration) faster than they think, especially by adopting a whole-system approach.

"In a more simple cover crops scenario where you're growing corn and soybeans and a cereal rye cover crop, it may take a few years to see those benefits, as you can add up to a couple tenths percent organic matter per year," Gillespie says. "Compare that to intense systems where producers change [expand] their crop rotation with supercharged multi-species mixes and then graze them. They can boost soil biology quickly, and you can look at cutting back on phosphorus and nitrogen inputs, possibly in a couple years."

In addition, the No. 1 benefit achieved immediately through the use of continuous no-till and cover crops is the elimination of soil loss — and Gillespie adds that you can't start rebuilding soils until you stop losing that soil to erosion.

A big factor is a cultural resistance to change, and in tough economic times, change can be less palatable. That's why it's all the more important to understand the value propositions associated with soil-building practices like cover cropping, and that means economic, as well as environmental sustainability. "If you're going to pass a business on to the next generation, you have to prove there's a mechanism, an opportunity to generate wealth, or the generation is going to be much less interested in jumping in," notes Glewen. "It's going to take financial incentive. We know that works."

In upcoming Resilient Ag Landscapes articles, we'll discuss the costs and benefits associated with soil-building practices and conservation structures.

About the Author(s)

Tyler Harris

Editor, Wallaces Farmer

Tyler Harris is the editor for Wallaces Farmer. He started at Farm Progress as a field editor, covering Missouri, Kansas and Iowa. Before joining Farm Progress, Tyler got his feet wet covering agriculture and rural issues while attending the University of Iowa, taking any chance he could to get outside the city limits and get on to the farm. This included working for Kalona News, south of Iowa City in the town of Kalona, followed by an internship at Wallaces Farmer in Des Moines after graduation.

Coming from a farm family in southwest Iowa, Tyler is largely interested in how issues impact people at the producer level. True to the reason he started reporting, he loves getting out of town and meeting with producers on the farm, which also gives him a firsthand look at how agriculture and urban interact.

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