Sustainable Agriculture is Good for the Environment and the Bottom Line | Article

Over 70 percent of rural Americans believe that environmental issues are very important. However, despite strong support for the environment, proposed federal environmental legislation is rarely supported by rural Americans because their needs are often overlooked by federal policymakers. In order to alleviate this issue and create representative environmental policy, rural leaders are calling for collaborative solutions between stakeholders and policymakers in order to accomplish national sustainability goals. But what do these collaborative solutions look like? And how are rural stakeholders involved in mitigating climate change?

To answer these questions, EESI spoke with rural leaders from across the country in an attempt to highlight the important transdisciplinary work being done to address climate change.

----------------------

Farming is what Fred Yoder knows best. As a fourth-generation Ohio farmer with over 40 years of experience, working on the land and producing food for a growing population is his expertise. Yet despite Yoder’s generational history in agriculture, his farming business is not immune to economic hardships.

“Twenty years ago, I was very frustrated and thinking there just wasn't any profit in farming,” Yoder said. “Productivity was not a problem, but I didn't have enough money left to live on afterwards.”

To change his economic position, Yoder researched different farming methods to save money and came across no-till farming, which is an agricultural strategy aimed at growing crops while reducing soil turnover and erosion. He began implementing no-till on parts of his soybean fields and then slowly transitioned his corn and wheat fields until, eventually, his whole farm used the method.

“One of the things I really noticed when I went to no-till was that my soil improved,” Yoder said. “So I was increasing my soil health at the same time as I was cutting costs.”

Fred Yoder on his Ohio Farm
Image Courtesy of Fred Yoder

In addition to reducing fuel and labor costs, no-till farming also retains nutrients in the soil and sequesters carbon, making it a viable conservation technique. Realizing this, Yoder began experimenting with other sustainable farming methods, like cover crops, to further help him cut costs and reduce his farm’s carbon footprint. After implementing cover crops, Yoder was able to cut his farm’s fertilizer use by 20 percent, eliminate weeds, and reduce his use of chemicals, all while saving more money and improving his crop yield.

“When I bought the farm off of my father back in the late ‘80s, my father asked that I leave it in better shape than when I got it,” Yoder said. “And my farm is more productive today, more sustainable today, more resilient today than it's ever been and I've doubled my yields in the last 20 years.”

Despite the proven success of sustainable agriculture techniques, many farmers are hesitant to change their practices, citing perceived financial burdens as one of the main reasons. According to a Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) study, the top reasons farmers hesitate to adopt sustainable agriculture practices is because of a lack of financial resources, economic incentives, and reliable information. In order to get farmers to try sustainable farming practices, Yoder states economic incentives are vital.

“It's really important to understand the way a farmer looks at things,” Yoder said. “You can't start with something like reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A farmer's gonna say, ‘Well there's nothing in it for me.’ You have to show them the economic advantage of doing it. If it pays for itself, then he will consider it.”

Unfortunately, economic issues are not the only ones standing in the way of farmers adopting sustainable practices. According to a report from the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, the politicization of climate change has turned many farmers away from the subject altogether. This politicization often leads to unrepresentative environmental policy. Ernie Shea, president of the nonprofit Solutions from the Land, said that those in the environmental community often focus solely on the problems in the agriculture industry and demand that all farmers make sweeping changes that may not actually work for each region.

“Pointing the finger does not engender participation, ownership, and support,” Shea said. “It builds walls that they then can hide behind and duck, deny, delay, and deflect.”

Participatory Policymaking in Action

Solutions from the Land is working to break down these walls to create integrated solutions that address food production, economic development, and climate change while ensuring that all stakeholders have a part in environmental policy conversations. Shea believes in a collaborative approach to environmental policy and has worked with agricultural leaders across the country—including Yoder—to create environmental policy recommendations that work for farmers.

“Farmers were tired of being only valued and described as producers of commodities and they wanted to be valued for more than that,” Shea said. “They wanted to be valued for everything they do. So we created the 25x’25 Alliance and then worked to develop state chapters that were populated by like-minded farmer leaders, environmental leaders, rural economic development leaders, and defense and national security leaders.”

Solutions from the Land worked with various state chapters to facilitate climate conversations and assist in creating environmental policy recommendations that are appropriate for each state. For example, in North Carolina, Shea worked closely with the state’s agriculture and forestry leaders. The participants agreed that their livelihoods and communities were vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and eventually broke into four working groups. These working groups developed recommendations on how North Carolina could become more resilient to climate change while also delivering climate solutions. The working groups published their results and presented them at a state summit, which garnered widespread support in the state government, state universities, and businesses. This support enabled the formation of climate policy and sustainable agricultural practices fully-backed by farmers. In 2008, Solutions from the Land's state-level work grew into a provision included in the energy portion of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA).

“So that is essentially how it goes for each state, but each state is different,” said Shea. “There are different types of agriculture, different types of climate, and different types of geography, so each state’s needs are a little bit different.”

At the national level, Solutions from the Land works with the North America Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance (NACSAA). According to Shea, dozens of groups in the agriculture sector come together and share knowledge to develop and enable policy recommendations at the national level through NACSAA.

NACSAA regularly submits recommendations to Congress after compiling information from farmer leaders and agriculture organizations across the nation. In 2020 alone, NACSAA has submitted two sets of recommendations to Congress: one to the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis describing the importance of climate smart agriculture in policy development, and another to the Senate Democrats' Special Committee on the Climate Crisis outlining the “critical role agriculture plays in bridging gaps in policy arenas—from food security and nutrition, to energy and national security, to rural development and job creation, to environmental protection and climate mitigation.”

Looking Ahead

Overall, creating environmental policy recommendations with input from agricultural stakeholders is vitally important for the success of environmental policies. Considering that there are over 20,000 types of soil in the United States, a solution that works for one region may not work for another, so adaptive solutions are more likely to gain traction amongst rural stakeholders.

Dr. Lois Wright Morton, a rural sociologist and current farmer, has dedicated her life to understanding how rural communities manage their natural resources, and she believes that adaptable environmental policies are the only option for a carbon-free future.

“Farmers are important to the stewardship and also the keepers of the natural resource base,” Morton said. “I think, from a policy standpoint, we need to invest in farmers so that they can choose the practices that are best for the crop that they are growing and the conditions that they are under, while also understanding that farmers have a really important role to play as we try to protect our ecosystems.”

Yoder, Shea, and Morton all agree that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to address climate change, and that environmental discussions must include the perspectives of agricultural leaders. They believe that a range of approaches must be adopted to combat climate change from all angles to ensure a healthier future.

“Let's figure out ways we can all work together rather than just have a select few decide our direction,” Yoder said. “If we can agree on the outcome and focus on getting there, then we all just need to decide what our contribution can be and work together to get where we need to be.”

Collaborative, incentive-based climate solutions are closer now than ever. The Senate recently introduced the bipartisan Growing Climate Solutions Act, which would enable farmers to get paid for sequestering carbon on their land. With such an economic incentive, farmers may be more willing to adopt sustainable farming practices and transform their livelihoods.

As for Yoder, he continues to work day after day on his land, implementing sustainable solutions and advocating for systemic changes in land-use practices, research, education and policy that are necessary to address climate change.

“I really feel strongly about leaving this land in better shape so my son and his son can go ahead and create food for the rest of the world in years to come,” Yoder said.

Author: Sydney O’Shaughnessy