A Bird in the Hand: Leveraging short term profits for long term sustainability

Iowa is an agricultural state in the Midwest United States. Farmland management practices are intensive which lead to nutrient and soil loss from our farm fields. Conservation farming adoption is on the rise in Iowa but is slow compared to other regions of the world. To achieve widespread adoption of more conservation farming practices (CFP) in Iowa, we need to make them economically preferable to the alternative, which is immediate short-term profit.

As I learned while traveling, if the CFP itself generates better short-term profit for farmers (owners or tenants), then the result will likely be widespread adoption. But if the CFP has negligible or negative impact on short-term profit, then the uncertain potential future profitability is not enough of a draw to entice a broad majority of farmers to adopt that practice. In some parts of the world, there are some CFPs like no tillage (NT) that make absolute common sense because they are an agronomic game changer for the farmer. But in Iowa, some of those same CFPs make zero sense because they either do not have enough of a positive agronomic impact and they may even cause a yield loss. And while there are some early adopters and intrepid farmers and landowners who can recognize that long-term sustainability is worth a short-term loss, they are not the norm.

If we want to see widespread adoption of CFPs in Iowa, we need the middle adopters, the average tenant farmers, to be on board. But it seems that middle adopters are more comfortable sticking with the status quo than taking a hit to their profits on a CFP that is, at best, a gamble for them in the long-term. In other words, for many middle adopter farmers, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If we want to preserve the voluntary model that we are currently working with, we need to prioritize making CFPs profitable for tenant farmers in the short term so that we can have long-term farmland sustainability.

This report is not comprehensive, but I attempt to offer several suggestions on this subject. The audience for this report is anyone who works to increase the adoption of conservation agriculture in Iowa, including but by no means limited to farmers, landowners, researchers, public agency staff, policy makers, and ag retailers.