John Mesko: (00:31)
Welcome back to The People of Soil Health Podcast. Today is an exciting show because we have the opportunity to share some new farm finance research coming out of a partnership between the Soil Health Partnership, the Environmental Defense Fund, and K·Coe Isom.
John Mesko: (00:47)
Joining me to dig into these findings are Maria Bowman, SHP's lead scientist, and Vincent Gauthier, research analyst with EDF. Maria and Vincent, welcome to the show.
Vincent Gauthier: (00:58)
Thanks, John.
Maria Bowman: (00:59)
Thanks, John.
John Mesko: (01:01)
As we were talking a minute ago, I'm looking forward to this conversation for a couple of reasons. First of all, this is the first podcast we've had with multiple guests, so this is exciting for me as something that we're doing for the first time. But even more importantly than that, the need and the interest in our community for economic and financial analysis around conservation practices, as you both know well, is very, very high. People want to know – whether it's farmers or other researchers, or partners in the agriculture community – people want to know what are the value of the conservation practices, what are the expenses incurred when farmers make changes. This is not a simple calculation, as again, you both know very well.
John Mesko: (01:53)
I'm really looking forward to getting into this new report that you both have been working on. But, before I do that, Vincent I know that many in our audience may not be completely familiar with the Environmental Defense Fund. I'm hoping that you can give us a higher level overview of the kinds of things you've been working on around farm economics.
Vincent Gauthier: (02:15)
Great. Yeah, thanks John, and thanks for allowing me to introduce my organization, the Environmental Defense Fund.
Vincent Gauthier: (02:23)
EDF is one of the world's largest environmental organizations. We focus on a few topics, including protecting ecosystems, protecting natural resources, human health, and solving the climate crisis. We do that through strong science. We like to build uncommon partnerships to identify solutions, and use market-based approaches to tackle some of the urgent threats facing our ecosystems. We work very closely with policy makers at all levels, and with business leaders across all of these environmental challenges we're facing.
Vincent Gauthier: (03:03)
I work typically within the working lands program, which focuses on improving agriculture and forestry impacts on the environment. Within our program, we've been focusing specifically on farm economics, since we know that farmers need soil health and water quality solutions to be part of a profitable farming system. We focus on identifying the financial costs of these practices, and the benefits that soil health practices can have on farm financials. We then take the next step, and develop financial solutions that can support farmers in profitably adopting these practices. And then, we work on policy as well, that supports both environmental outcomes while supporting farm livelihoods.
Vincent Gauthier: (03:53)
In this work, focusing on farmer economics as a way to support soil health and environmental outcomes, it's been absolutely amazing to work with Soil Health Partnership, since they have such in-depth knowledge of soil health and agronomics, which partners really well with our focus on farm economics and conservation. In this partnership, we've been able to bring together our economics expertise, in combination with SHP's science team, field staff, and some of the great member farmers in SHP, to dive really deeply into how these practices affect farm profitability.
John Mesko: (04:35)
Well, I think that's great and thank you for that overview, Vincent. I've said this many, many times: the Soil Health Partnership is a partnership. We are not an organization that has a silver bullet, that has the answer to every question, a solution to every problem. But, we have a very effective contribution to those solutions and to those answers, and we rely on partnerships. That's really the essence of this podcast, is to highlight the people – yourself in this case – that are working in our partnerships to bring about understanding and implementation of these practices. It's really exciting, and I appreciate you and the Environmental Defense Fund working with us on this.
John Mesko: (05:22)
Maria, I know that you've been getting a lot of questions lately about the newly released report that we've been working on with EDF, Conservation's Impact on the Farm Bottom Line. I think this is something that a lot of people have been waiting for, for a long time. Can you tell us about this project, and give us a little bit of background on how it got started? And, some of the things that you're learning from the work that we've been doing.
Maria Bowman: (05:48)
Sure, John. Like you said, there's been a lot of interest from SHP farmers, our funders, and our partners to do more work to understand some of these financial challenges and opportunities related to soil health practices and conservation practices.
Maria Bowman: (06:03)
Although we already collect some economic and management data from farmers at SHP, we are still a long way from getting very precise information about farm budgets across all of our farms. I had already had some conversations with Vincent and Maggie Monast about the work that EDF was doing and some of the work EDF was interested in doing. I knew that they shared our take on the need to do, really, a deep dive into the numbers to understand some of these complex systems, and the financial dynamics associated with them.
Maria Bowman: (06:38)
Vincent and I started talking about this last summer, and how we could build on some of the great work that EDF had already done, talking with farmers about their financial health and how this was impacted by their conservation practices. It meshed really nicely with a lot of the work we were considering doing at SHP, around providing information to farmers about how these practices were working, and sharing that information with their financial partners as well. It's been a really fun project. Along with EDF, we also worked with the agricultural accountant firm, K·Coe Isom. Part of the reason we did that is because they have a lot of expertise working with how to gather this type of information from farmers.
Maria Bowman: (07:20)
We recruited a group of seven farmers across five states, and six of those farmers are from within our SHP network. Pretty diverse group, a lot of them working with corn-soy rotations, but there's some wheat and sugar beets. And, they're all working with conservation practices like no-till, reduced tillage, and cover crops. The average operation size of these farmers was around 3,000 acres, but the size ranged from about 640 to 6,000 acres. And, a lot of diversity in management practices that they were using.
Maria Bowman: (07:52)
I think another thing that was really fun and interesting about this project was how we gathered that information. Typically, when you're gathering this type of information from farmers, someone would be going out to the farm, having multiple one- or two-hour sessions with the farmer to gather some of these data, and work through their financial information with them. But in the time of coronavirus, we obviously knew that that wasn't going to be the path we were going to take this year. So, K·Coe Isom actually developed a cool Excel workbook to fit in a framework of virtual data collection. We held a workshop with all of the farmers that had agreed to participate, and then we did a number of one-on-one follow-ups with the SHP field managers and K·Coe Isom, to get some additional information as needed.
John Mesko: (08:39)
Maria, if I could just jump in with a quick question.
Maria Bowman: (08:42)
Sure.
John Mesko: (08:43)
Really, more of a comment. One of the things that, as I've talked about this report with people in our community, one of the common questions is, "Wait, you only have seven farmers here. That's a pretty small sample size." I think what maybe some people might not understand is two things. First of all, we are asking farmers for a lot of detail, and we're asking them for information that they normally don't share with other people. Most farmers don't give this information out. Secondly, this is, as you're describing with the process, the way that we have to collect it in such a way that it is usable across all those data points and we don't give data in the wrong spot, so to speak.
John Mesko: (09:30)
Maybe you could speak to a little bit of the challenges and the opportunities around this sample size. And letting folks know that, yeah, it may be a small sample size, but we have probably more and better detailed information than might be available just randomly, or available publicly in some other format.
Maria Bowman: (09:52)
Sure, John. I'll actually talk a little bit about the level of depth of the information as well, since you mentioned that.
Maria Bowman: (10:00)
When we ask farmers across our network for information about economics, we're often asking for information like how much they spent on cover crop seed, or things that we know are going to be pretty easy for them to answer. That's in contrast to the level of detail we were asking these farmers to provide. We were actually asking them to provide us with accounting on a set of acres that had a particular set of practices associated with them. So how much they were spending on cash crop seed, cover crop seed, equipment, labor, every single category, for the most part, that you would have go into a cost of production for that field. That's a very different level of depth of information, then.
Maria Bowman: (10:44)
What a lot of studies are looking at, if they're looking at the economics of adoption of a conservation practice, where you might just go to a farmer and ask them what has changed on that field, as they've changed that practice. That's a really useful piece of information as well, but this was a pretty deep dive on what was going on on that field. It was harder to do that with a larger number of farmers.
Maria Bowman: (11:07)
But, I think one way we've been able to make sure that the results that we're finding as part of this report do represent findings that might be true across a larger group of farmers is by testing those out over a number of conversations and interviews with these farmers. And also, against the backdrop of some of the data that we're collecting at SHP. The findings that we've chosen to highlight, although they came out of these very detailed numbers that we gathered from seven farmers, they're also telling the stories as we see them, things that are represented in some of the other things we find at SHP.
John Mesko: (11:42)
Yeah, I think that's critical to point out. I appreciate you explaining that, because this isn't meant to be an all-inclusive summary of the entire corn belt and how farmers are operating
Maria Bowman: (11:54)
That's right.
John Mesko: (11:55)
This isn't getting at national average net farm income, or something like that.
John Mesko: (12:00)
Vincent, did you have anything you wanted to add on this topic?
Vincent Gauthier: (12:04)
Yeah. That's a really important question; that's something that we've found not just in our study, but in studies that others we have done where the sample sizes are small. There's somewhat of an asterisk that goes with those studies, because we know we're not representing everybody, we're not representing everybody's farm size, management practices, et cetera.
Vincent Gauthier: (12:30)
But, I do think there is an opportunity for us to get there, and I think that's what's really important. First, as Maria highlighted, in this report we gathered data from all of the direct expenses that the participating farmers had on fields with different conservation practices. We know that that's already being gathered by agricultural extension economists throughout the country, and that that informs farmers through annual crop budgets that you might see on an extension’s website or a specific analysis that they're doing in terms of what costs farmers are seeing, on average, across regions.
Vincent Gauthier: (13:14)
However, the issue is we haven't yet gotten to the point, John, where the data on cover crops, for example – which is a relatively ... it's not adopted by that many farmers across the country – We don't have, in those budgets, the detailed information on what that cost looks like, and we're not disaggregating the data in a way that allows us to compare the budgets of farmers using cover crops versus farmers that aren't. And, therefore, identifying potentially some of the cost savings that those farmers are finding.
Vincent Gauthier: (13:49)
Therefore, I think it is a really big opportunity for us, going forward, is for groups like ours to work with those land grant universities, and work with those agricultural economists, to build into the data systems that they already have a little bit more specificity around cover crops, for example, so that we can better represent with a bigger sample size what it looks like for those practices to be implemented on farm budgets. And therefore, provide that information through the extensions back out to farmers, at a more regionally specific level.
John Mesko: (14:27)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense Vincent, and I appreciate that.
John Mesko: (14:33)
Maria, you were talking about how the data was collected. My understanding is that this was designed to evaluate the finances for the 2019 growing season. Tell us more about that, and then highlight some of the important findings from the work that we've been doing.
Maria Bowman: (14:52)
Right. We focused the data collection efforts around the 2019 growing season with these farmers, like you said. We also asked them to give us some information on the assessment of how their bottom line had changed as they adopted new practices like cover crops. We tried to get a little bit of both, a very detailed breakdown of 2019, and then some of their assessment of changes. And then, we broke farmers into different comparison groups, to be able to evaluate some of those differences in costs and revenues across farmers. We looked specifically at conservation tillage, and then conservation tillage plus cover crops, and then compared that to more conventional practices.
Maria Bowman: (15:29)
We found a few really interesting things, that I'm excited that we're going to be able to talk a little bit about. One is that reducing tillage frequency or intensity reduced operating costs, and made farmers more profitable. This is something that a number of other folks have also shown, and it was exciting to see that confirmed within our sample. Also, I think in the context of the fact that these farmers are trying to save time and money by reducing tillage intensity, that's a pretty exciting top-level finding.
Maria Bowman: (16:01)
[The] second finding that we highlight in the report is that cover crops can be a component of a profitable soil health management system. That being said, there are some really key upfront costs associated with cover crops that we just can't ignore, and there's some risk associated with that practice. We did some exploration to look at the role that farmer experience working with cover crops played in that profitability equation, and we found that more than five years of experience working with cover crops, those farmers had greater long-term profitability when compared to a number of the other farmers.
Maria Bowman: (16:36)
And then, the third thing we talk about in the report is ... I know this might sound obvious, but we talked about how important the approach that the farmer takes to working with conservation management is to the outcome. Farmers had a lot of diverse goals, but they also had some really key things that they were looking for as they went about adopting these practices, and we found some patterns there that we're excited to talk about. Because I think it's important to remember that farmers have really diverse operations, and something that works on one acre might not work on another acre, or another farm. So understanding what those long- and short-term goals are for that farmer helps us understand what's driving the profitability of their operations, also.
John Mesko: (17:21)
Well, I think those are really important findings. Let's take a look at some of these things. I'd like to hear from you both on some of these findings, as we dig into them.
John Mesko: (17:32)
One of the takeaways that you mentioned, Maria, was around cost savings. As a former farmer myself, the yield of a crop is a very important component of total revenue, obviously. It's yield times price, and that gives you your total revenue. And yet, cost savings in many cases are a little more at hand, a little more achievable, a little more under our control as farmers, rather than relying on a perfect weather pattern of a given growing season to max out that yield.
John Mesko: (18:08)
Vincent, I'd like to ask you about this a little bit. This isn't a huge shock to a lot of folks, that reducing tillage or reducing the number of passes, is going to save money and have some financial impact. Tell us a little bit about what was unique in this, and why it's important to reinforce this.
Vincent Gauthier: (18:29)
Yeah, thanks John. You're right, it has been documented, and most people know that by reducing the intensity or the amount of passes that are done through tillage, there could be cost savings.
Vincent Gauthier: (18:43)
But, it was really important in this case to document it in the full budget the way that we did, in order to show how much of that cost saving, what that looks like in comparison to the full operating budget that farmers are working with. We wanted to be able to share it in this way, so that farmers can go to their lenders and show to them how big of a savings it can be, and what kind of financing they can get in order to make the transition to conservation tillage practices.
Vincent Gauthier: (19:14)
As you said, the yield is really important, it has a big impact on the farm bottom line. In this case, we didn't really see yields as having a substantial impact on, between our groups that were using conservation tillage and cover crops, and those fields that were under conventional practices. We really focused in on the cost savings, and how substantial they were in comparison to the full direct costs that farmers had for corn and soy.
Vincent Gauthier: (19:49)
First, the savings, as I said, were pretty substantial. Fields that were using conservation tillage had more than $50 per acre net profit advantages over conventional tillage fields for corn. $50 is a pretty big piece. And then, for soy it was approximately $45 savings in comparison to conventional tillage. Sorry, that was net profit. Those were net profit number increases, in comparison to the conventional tillage fields.
Vincent Gauthier: (20:24)
In terms of the cost saving attributes to that, conservation tillage fields for corn had total direct costs of $404 per acre, as compared to $448 for conventional, so much lower for conservation tillage fields. We saw similarly for soybeans, that conservation tillage fields had total per acre costs of $217 per acre, compared to 311 for conventional tillage. Both in corn and soy, we saw that reducing the amount of tillage and the amount of passes had a substantial impact on total costs.
Vincent Gauthier: (21:00)
Then, we drilled down to specifically where were those cost savings happening, where were the most substantial cost savings. As you can imagine, those were taking place in fuel costs, repair costs, and equipment. For example, for corn farmers using conservation tillage, saved $14 per acre on fuel compared to conventional fields, and $5 per acre for soybeans. For equipment, they were pretty substantial savings. For conservation tillage, $30 per acre for corn compared to conventional, and $37 per acre for soybeans.
Vincent Gauthier: (21:38)
Another thing that we weren't able to identify very well but we expect is a saving, is in terms of labor costs from conservation tillage. As you're spending less time out on the tractor tilling, you're going to have some labor costs but we had a difficult measuring that appropriately, given that farmers put some different prices on their labor time. But, we expect that that's also a substantial saving, and it's an important savings for farmers to be able to save the amount of time that they're spending out there.
John Mesko: (22:09)
Well, that's a great point regarding cost savings.
John Mesko: (22:14)
Maria, your second finding around the connection between the experience, the amount of experience farmers have with cover crops or other practices, and how that impacts profitability. This is something that is new to a lot of producers. Cover crops are still relatively a low level of adoption, and sometimes we in the community ask ourselves why. We have some positive benefits from cover crops, it's pretty widely accepted. Even by folks who don't use cover crops, a lot of them will say, "Yeah, it makes sense to me. I can see how that would work." And yet, a lot of times we don't see widespread adoption.
John Mesko: (22:55)
I think it has a little bit to do with this maybe inherent understanding that people have that just starting a new practice, or adding a new crop to the rotation, is not that simple. Tell us a little bit more about the differences you've found between the experience levels of the farmers that were in this study.
Maria Bowman: (23:14)
Yeah, it's really not simple like you said, John. There are so many different types of cover crops and cover crop mixes to try. Figuring out timing of planting, how to plant, termination, herbicide and nutrient management programs that work with cover crops, it's a really complicated change to make.
Maria Bowman: (23:32)
So one thing I get really impassioned about when I hear people saying, "Well, it's not that hard. It's just a change at the margin. You're just adding some more stuff into the rotation." Well, it can actually be really complicated and risky, especially if a farmer doesn't have the financial or the technical support that they need through the process. That's one place where, at SHP, I think we do a really good job of just providing that conversation with the farmer around how they could be managing a cover crop, and what's a good fit for them.
Maria Bowman: (24:04)
When we talked with farmers in this study, and looked at their numbers around average costs of cover cropped acres, we saw that overall, when we bucketed all the farmers together, the costs were higher than the no-till and reduced till acres. There are some upfront costs associated with cover crops. You're spending money on seed, you have to go out there and put it in. Especially if you're not combining, or doing joint field operations with some other kind of fall operation, maybe that's an extra pass in and of itself just to seed that cover crop. It can be costly, there can be additional costs associated with burndown and herbicide application, depending on what your cover crop mix is as well. Again, upfront costs that are pretty clear, and maybe some undetermined benefits and a lot of uncertainty about what those impacts might be on yield as well, in early years.
Maria Bowman: (24:54)
However, when we thought a little bit about how to dig in around this question of experience, we remembered that these farmers that we were working with in the study, they had different amounts of experience working with cover crops. We took a look at what the costs and the returns looked like for the four farmers with up to five years of experience working with cover crops. And then, we compared that to the three farmers that had more than five years of experience working with cover crops. We did see some interesting preliminary findings here.
Maria Bowman: (25:24)
Especially for soybeans, those experienced adopters of cover crops had some of the highest net returns in our study, across all categories. That was driven primarily by lower input costs. Those experienced cover croppers, for example, had a net return of around $251 an acre for soybeans, which was about the same as those reduced tillage acres. And then, those more recent cover crop adopters had a net return that was much lower, of $123 an acre. So a big difference there, between those experienced cover croppers versus those folks that had just started working with cover crops.
Maria Bowman: (26:00)
And, the categories that we saw differed between those two categories of farmers, just to give you some examples. Those experienced cover croppers spent $9 an acre less on cover crop seed, about $25 an acre less on fertilizer, and combined about $35 an acre less on repairs and equipment. They were spending less across a number of categories. Some of them were directly related, obviously, to figuring out that cover crop system. And some of them could be related to benefits over time from cover crops or nutrient cycling. For example, that difference in fertilizer costs.
Maria Bowman: (26:40)
But, I think the main point I want to make here is that we think those cost differences, on a whole, can be explained by farmers developing more cost-effective strategies over time that work on their operations. So no matter what your system, I think because of this uncertainty around what cover crop to use, and how to manage it, those farmers just inevitably are going to figure out over time what works, in the context of their system. My hope would be that, through SHP and through studies like this, we can learn from the mistakes, and the experience, and the successes that these farmers are having with cover crops, to help reduce the learning time and the learning costs, and give farmers that are thinking about adopting the practice more of a fast-track to profitability over the long run.
John Mesko: (27:25)
Yeah, I think that's great. So often in organizations, and in businesses, in communities, we talk about changing practices, or implementing a new process or a new procedure, whatever the case might be, and we talk about beginning with the end in mind. And again, I put myself in the shoes of a farmer who is maybe not actively using cover crops today, and they've been reading about and hearing about cover crops through the farm press for many, many years now. It's been a very popular topic. Everybody's saying, "Cover crops are great, cover crops are great."
John Mesko: (28:03)
I think for some, the key here is: what is the end game? I'm not going to just start planting cover crops because everybody says they're great. I need to have a reason. I need to have an end to this process. Tell me a little bit about the goals and specific thoughts around why it's important to begin with the end in mind.
Maria Bowman: (28:27)
Yeah. I mentioned earlier, and we talked a little bit about how there's a clear path to profitability with tillage. You're taking out things that cost money from your system. So a lot of farmers that started down that path to reducing tillage, one of their goals was to spend less time on the tractor, and spend less money on repairs and equipment. That was their goal, and that was pretty easily achieved. That also meant that they were able to make that change, in some cases a little quicker, or with more confidence than what we see with cover crops in SHP, and also in this study.
Maria Bowman: (29:01)
For farmers that were interested in working with cover crops, a lot of times their goals had to do with improving soil health, or reducing soil erosion, or just overall improving soil structure and workability on their farm. But, just because they have that goal in mind doesn't make it easy. So something that we saw was true across all of these farmers is that they were taking a step-by-step approach to trialing cover crops. That's part of the reason they're working with SHP; they're doing a trial to try something out on a small number of acres, and look at how that practice works for them before they try it on their whole farm. We see farmers starting out with an SHP field, and then maybe they expand that to their highly erodible land, or some acres they're trying to make some soil health improvements on.
Maria Bowman: (29:51)
As they dial in those species and those seeding methods, they might try a couple different kinds of seeding methods and take the time to get it right before they expand that to more acres. I think this approach is a really important component of reducing risk through those behavioral changes the farmer is making, as they're discovering how those benefits are showing up for them at the same time. And, having realistic expectations about the fact that this could take a few years, I think aligns really nicely with this having the end goal in mind.
Maria Bowman: (30:24)
You might know there are going to be benefits, and part of this is just viewing this as a long-term investment. And having really clear expectations, in the case of cover crops, about the fact that there could be risk and uncertainty in the short term, but that it's likely going to pay off.
John Mesko: (30:37)
Well, I think that's really important for farmers to keep in mind. We're reaching into the audience of farmers now that are not the first to take on new practices. These are the folks who are, "Well, I want to wait and see, I want to wait and see." Well, this is one of the things that I hope this report is being used for by some of those farmers to say, "Okay, here's something that I can use to help make my decision."
John Mesko: (31:06)
Beginning with you Vincent, I'm curious – from you and from the perspective of Environmental Defense Fund – how do you hope this study and this report will be used?
Vincent Gauthier: (31:16)
Yeah, we hope it's going to be used in a few different ways. As you mentioned, I think the findings can help educate those farmers that are maybe in the more wait-and-see category, trying to understand from others what these practices look like from a financial perspective. We also hope that these findings can educate those that are connected to farmers, and those that are in business with farmers. So their closest advisors, their lenders at the bank, the food companies that they're selling their products to, because I think it's all part of the same ecosystem. The financial solutions that can support farmers in adopting these practices can come from all of those actors within the ag sector. We hope that these findings can educate farmers, first of all, but then also their close partners.
Vincent Gauthier: (32:10)
We hope that, by showing it in a full budget form like we have, showing all of the line items like we have in the report, that this will help farmers plan and have a better expectation ahead of time of what the financial outcomes look like. As Maria said, sometimes over years, planning over a few years to get it right. I think this helps level-set the expectations, and inform farmers ahead of time what decisions they can make in making these transitions profitable.
Vincent Gauthier: (32:49)
We also hope that it informs some of these financial solutions, because we know that farmers are operating on tight margins right now. We need financial solutions that shift the burden in terms of figuring out those solutions, from the farmers themselves and their budgets, to how we support them financially in those practices. We know that there are supply chain cover crop initiatives out there; we know that lenders have tight connections in terms of the financing of the agricultural production system. And so, we hope that these findings can help spur some forms of innovation, and some forms of new solutions, that can help reduce the risk of this transition to these conservation practices. And finance it in a way that aligns with these dynamics that we just talked about, in terms of the costs and benefits and when they happen.
Vincent Gauthier: (33:46)
Lastly, as I mentioned before, we really hope that the methods that we used and the way that we've presented this information can be attractive to the organizations and professionals out there that are information providers. So, we can more easily operationalize this form of data and share it at a more regionally specific [level], and with bigger sample sizes. We really encourage those other groups that we already partner with, but others that we don't partner with yet, including land grant universities, farm business management centers, other conservation programs, to look at this data and see whether these are some finite data points that they can be gathering and presenting back to the farmer community, to help reduce that risk. Part of it is an information risk, so by providing the information of how this impacts the farm bottom line can reduce the risk to farmers, and they can have a better expectation of what's in front of them.
Vincent Gauthier: (34:45)
Those are a few ways in which we think this study can be used, and hopefully we can take the next steps in developing the right solutions to help farmers adopt these practices.
John Mesko: (34:55)
Well, thank you Vincent. Maria, you and I have had many, many conversations over the last couple of years about what it takes, what are the pieces of information that farmers need, and what is the data, what is needed for people to make decisions, and to make good decisions about this.
John Mesko: (35:15)
Are there things here, in addition to what Vincent was sharing? Are there things here for the traditional SHP audience to take away, and use at their decision-making level?
Maria Bowman: (35:27)
Yeah, I think Vincent highlighted a lot of really important things about this work. But, another one that I hope comes out of this is just some more research around some of how farmers make decisions about these practices. I just think there's more work that needs to be done understanding how labor constraints, and equipment purchases, and a lot of these different pieces that a farmer's trying to put together when they adopt a new practice, how those interact in order to translate into that profitability outcome that we observe.
Maria Bowman: (36:02)
When we look at a farmer's bottom line, we're seeing the outcome of years of decision making. I think we still have a lot of work to do to understand how each of those pieces of the puzzle fit together to inform the long-term profitability of that operation. So, some of the things I think are really interesting about this report are that we see these trends in profitability over a longer period of time, or more experience working with cover crops.
Maria Bowman: (36:27)
But you'll notice we didn't say anything about whether drilling your cover crop was more profitable, or aerially seeding it, or whether certain cover crops were more profitable. I think we still have a responsibility to farmers to continue to do the basic research around where different species work, and where different types of seeding might be more appropriate, and maybe some operations that are labor constrained might choose to contract it out, and here's the best choice for that. Again, we can take some of that experimentation out of the equation, and reduce risk to farmers that are thinking about starting down this path.
John Mesko: (37:02)
Well, I think you're right, I think that's a good point to bring up. I also think that we may never get to a precise budget for the implementation of cover crops or any other practice. We may get to a close approximation, but the closing loop, or the closing piece of that loop, really is the peer-to-peer networks that farmers have developed. One of them, obviously, is through the Soil Health Partnership, and efforts like this podcast, or our webinars, or our website, our Facebook page. The outreach that we have to bring farmers into this conversation is a real key component of this.
John Mesko: (37:42)
Because both of you have said that every farm's going to implement these things differently, every farm is in a different soil type, in a different weather pattern, in a different cost region for obtaining cover crop seed, and so forth. So I think, from my perspective, it's stay tuned. Stay tuned if you're interested in this topic and you're looking for more information, stay tuned because as you said, Maria, we still owe the farming community to follow through on our responsibilities, to do that basic research to continue to explore some of these nuances, to get more information out there. It makes sense.
John Mesko: (38:18)
Is there anything else from either of you that we want to add here, as we wrap this up? This has been a great conversation, and certainly has set the table for folks who want to dig into this report.
Vincent Gauthier: (38:30)
Yeah, just a few things in closing, John. I think you're right on, in terms of the network. Because a lot of these things that relate to risk, there's a risk to adopting these practices; it's a change in your system; it's something that you haven't done before. By having a network of people and having the staff at SHP gathering the data, you reduce everybody's risk because you have more information when you make a decision than if you were out on your own. So, I think that type of work, we need to see more of that taking place in terms of conservation. We need to see conservation practices and the data that's gathered to be done at a network level, so that the risk to everyone is lower and the benefits are higher.
Vincent Gauthier: (39:18)
I think there's a lot of opportunity there, and I think what SHP is doing is just a great model for those types of networks to be expanded and refined across the country.
Maria Bowman: (39:31)
I just want to give a shout out to everybody that was involved in this work in putting this together. It's been a really fun and collaborative process, from working with the farmers, to working with EDF and K·Coe Isom, and we had a lot of folks involved at SHP, field managers and science staff, and comms staff. From my end, it's been just really fun to see all this come together these couple months, and it's been a pleasure to work with EDF on this.
John Mesko: (40:00)
Well yes, and congratulations to both of you for the work that you've done, and for the result. I was tuning into the webinar that you both put on earlier, and that's very, very helpful information, and certainly some people will want to tune into that and view that recording. That webinar, plus the report Conservation's Impact on the Farm Bottom Line, is available now at our website, and that is the soilhealthpartnership.org/farmfinance – soilhealthpartnership.org/farmfinance. You can see the report, and also on that website you can link to the webinar, where the two of you went into further detail on some of these findings.
John Mesko: (40:48)
Thank you both for the opportunity to talk with you about this information, thank you for doing the work, and appreciate working with both of you to provide the answers and solutions for farmers as we go forward.
Vincent Gauthier: (41:01)
Thanks John.
Maria Bowman: (41:02)
Thank you, John.
