Farmers’ informal networks can drive progress for finance, food and the farming business. The RAI visited pioneers in Iowa in 2018.
Achieving the transition from conventional to regenerative agriculture will require a major shift in the strategy and behaviour of many of America’s two million farmers. For a farmer, farming for healthy soils, ecosystems, communities and climate conflicts at many points with conventional agriculture practice. Wider success comes only from the cumulative impact of individual farmers changing their on-farm practices, and resetting how they keep data, manage expenses, sell, and borrow.
Fortunately, the business case for regenerative farming is gaining clarity. Investors in regenerative agriculture and food companies buying regeneratively produced crops already know the link from farmers to more sustainable and profitable outcomes. In fact, many of the stakeholders the RAI interviewed emphasized the importance of identifying early adopters of regenerative practices (aka “champions”), alongside helping a wider network of farmers transition, as key elements of their funding strategy.
Understanding the psychological, economic, and cultural motivations behind farmer decision-making is a crucial first step in designing future investment and market strategies that are rooted in reality and reflect the on-the-ground needs of the people who will ultimately carry out this transition: farmers themselves.
So what can a training strategy create? What do these farmers have in common? Why are they willing to take a different approach than farming-as-usual? This article will shed light on farmers on the frontlines of the shift towards regenerative agriculture, the on-farm and economic barriers they face to change their practices, and the organizations investing in training and resources to support farmers along the way.
A Hard Row to Hoe? The Cost of Transitioning
Amongst all the barriers to transition to regenerative agriculture, the cost (or perceived cost) remains a commonly cited obstacle amongst farmers and organizations serving farmers. The remaining articles in this series will address additional financial barriers facing regenerative farmers after the farm gate, including the inaccessible expense of farmland, the lack of attractive markets for regeneratively produced products, and the perverse incentives of crop insurance.
On the farm, owners perceive a financial risk in adopting new practices. They grew up with the dominant, conventional narrative that profits are solely tied to yields. But while regenerative farming may well produce lower yields, that does not necessarily equate to lower profits. In fact, a recent study found that farms with regenerative practices were 78% more profitable than those with only conventional practices. Regenerative farmers can give up some yield if it means making more profits, which regenerative agriculture makes possible by growing higher-margin crops and reducing costly inputs. Gabe Brown is a North Dakota farmer who saved his family farm from natural disasters and crop failures with regenerative practices more than 20 years ago. Now a well-known champion of soil health, and the founder of Soil Health Academy and Understanding Ag, he declares “I will take profit over yield any day.”.
Of the hundreds of farms that Brown’s organizations work with to transition to regenerative practices in North America, he says they have been able to improve their bottom line on every farm within the first year. Clearly, building farmer training programs and peer networks with trusted leaders are powerful tools to dispel the profit-yield myth and support farmers in overcoming the perceived financial risk of transitioning to regenerative practices.
Given that risk aversion, the federal government runs cost-sharing programs to lower the bill for adopting conservation practices. These include the USDA National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). However, overall adoption remains low compared to total acreage in agriculture (900 million acres according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture). About 140 million acres, or about 15% of total farmland, are receiving conservation assistance from the federal government.
Yet awareness of the regenerative option remains patchy. The National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC), a farmer-led network dedicated to the success of young farmers, found in their report “Building A Future With Farmers,” that many farmers simply don’t know about these conservation programs. Even among presumably well-informed NYFC members, 30% of survey respondents were unfamiliar with federal conservation programs. And for those who do know about the system, 40% said that the paperwork was too burdensome, and another 28% said that working with their local USDA office was too difficult. Moreover, these types of federal programs are targeted for significant cuts during Farm Bill negotiations every four years. Therefore, if regenerative farming can grow, more informal networks will need to carry its message.
The Early Bird Gets the Worm: Early Adopters of Regenerative Agriculture
From our dozens of interviews with farmers, customers and investors, dozens of strategic approaches came into view. Some got into this from an emotional or philosophical breaking point. For them, Big Food no longer looks like a viable calling. Small farms already face a deficit in economies of scale when they compete with big ones. Now, climate shocks mean they also face unpredictable yields and storms.
Regenerative practices may offer an appealing economic alternative to farmers. Conventional farmers realize “they can’t do it that same way anymore. They’re broke, and they’ve hit the wall,” say Tim LaSalle and Cindy Daley of the new Centre for Regenerative Agriculture (CRA) and Resilient Systems at California State University Chico. “So, they’re willing to take a look at [regenerative].” Pete Nelson of AgLaunch describes this phenomenon for their network of farmers that incubate technologies in Memphis. “Everyone understands that the train we’re on is not a sustainable train, even in terms of pure economics,” says Nelson. Regenerative farmer Gabe Brown described a growing percentage of farmers that are beginning to realize that “they need to do something that’s both better for the environment and their bottom line.” That double return can seem far-off, but emerging norms can define a path.
The academic literature, as well, seeks a new course. As described previously in this CFN article series, the definition of regenerative agriculture is in flux, so academic studies to understand widespread farmer adoption of regenerative practices are currently limited. For this series, the RAI looked at data from sustainable agriculture and conservation practice adoption, which share many of regenerative agriculture’s goals and boast a fuller set of data.
For example, analysing the literature on adoption of agricultural conservation practices in the US from 1982-2017 found a huge variety of variables positively associated with sustainable practices. Some of these variables include farmers self-identifying primarily as stewardship motivated or non-financially motivated, environmental attitudes, a positive attitude towards a particular program or practice, higher levels of income and formal education, engaging in marketing arrangements, and positive yield impact expected. While some of these variables could be targeted for program or policy design to increase adoption, many of them are more intangible human qualities that would be much more challenging for external programs and networks to influence.
The study concludes that practitioners and organizations working with farmers should “share benefits of specific practices and programs and leverage existing practice adoption” as a way to boost farmers’ positive attitudes and awareness of conservation programs and practices. It turns out, that’s exactly what many of the organizations interviewed by the RAI are doing, with their approaches described in this article.