Dirty Jobs (Wikipedia)
Mike Rowe, host of the popular show Dirty Jobs once said, “Green maybe wasn’t the best color. Seems to me that brown would be better suited. Think about it, everything that’s green starts with something that’s brown, usually dirt. And if you were to scrape the dirt off of the farmers from coast to coast, you’ll find the greenest people on Earth. Not because they’re trying to save the world, but because sustainability is the best way for them to do their job.”
A lot of information you see on the news and especially online may have you thinking farmers are out to do whatever it takes to get the best yields and the most profit without thought of cost to the environment. Depleting the soil, cutting down forests, spraying poisons everywhere.
It’s true I do want to have high yields and profits. What business wouldn’t want to maximize efficiency? One thing I’ve seen over and over again from people who are against so-called “big ag” is that Monsanto and it’s RoundUp herbicide and crops resistant to RoundUp allow farmers to dump more and more chemicals on their crops to kill the super weeds we are creating. Yes, sometimes a higher application rate will have better control for certain species or more mature weeds. There are resistant weeds (I’ve seen them), and I’ll admit glyphosate has likely been overused by some. Herbicides should be rotated just like crops are rotated. But just because I have a herbicide resistant crop doesn’t mean I’m going to spray the highest rate possible. That’s like throwing money down the drain. Rather, I want to use the least amount possible to get a level of economic control. The same can be said of all inputs on the farm. Every pound of fertilizer I put on that isn’t available to crops or is just more than the crop can use is basically a waste of money. It’s all about efficiency.
Here’s a little side note that anti-ag activists might not like. Monsanto isn’t the only company in the world that provides seed and chemicals to farmers, and RoundUp isn’t the only herbicide in the world. It just happens to be the biggest target, and the one activists talk about most. And guess what? Plants can be resistant to herbicide without any breeding or genetic engineering. Every notice if you put weed killer or weed and feed fertilizer on your lawn that the grass doesn’t die? That’s because you’re likely using 2,4-D, and 2,4-D doesn’t kill grass. Guess what else? Corn is a grass and 2,4-D doesn’t kill it. Nature invented resistance long before man started taking advantage of it.
Back to what Mr. Rowe had to say about sustainability being the best way for farmers to do their job. For me it’s simple. What’s good for my checkbook is often good for the environment. So for the sake of argument let’s say I hate the environment and couldn’t care less what happens to our soil, air, water, plants, and animals. Unfortunately for me, as a farmer wanting to stay in business, I’m going to be an environmental steward by default. If I want to protect yield and profit in the long-term, I’m going to do what is most cost-effective for my business. That means being efficient with my inputs and not spending money that doesn’t get me anything in return.
When I received my degree in Soil and Crop Management from Purdue University, I summed up my whole fours years of education as the same basic graph used over all aspects of farming. The graph had two lines, one for yield and one for input cost. No matter what was being taught the same thing was always true. Try to maximize productivity up to the point of diminishing returns where the two lines meet on the graph. Anything beyond that is money spent for no more gain. So profitable farmers are going to be environmentalists whether they want to be or not.
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So true. People don’t get it, we love efficiency and that includes loving the environment. Thanks for explaining it!
It is so good to hear this from a farmer. Until people actually go and farm and see all the factors involved, it isn’t an easy or profitable profession many times. Biotech is just another tool to keep farmers farming and protecting the fertility of their land. The farmers I know have been practicing sustainable methods, if not, how could they not be in business for over 5 decades? We are so distanced from how food gets to our table let alone know how it is produced that it is easy to make bold statements about farming and try to express opinions about how a farmer should do their job, not realizing that they do exactly what they are being criticized of. Leave the growing to the professionals that know what they are doing. Farmers walk the talk.
Thank you for the interesting post. I do appreciate your blog as a good source of learning about a farmers life beyond the local farms I have visited and worked with.
I would like to learn more about what you, and other farmers (such as vegetable farmers), do to reduce environmental impacts of agriculture. I do understand how reducing inputs saves money and reduces impacts on non-target organisms and runoff into ground water but that tends to be the extent of what I read so far on farming blogs. What other actions do you include in beng a steward or environmentalist to be environmentally sustainable?
Thank you.
Precision agriculture technology is another great way to reduce and/or use inputs more effectively. With this technology farmers can save fuel and time by reducing overlap during tillage operations. Almost any input can use what is known as swath control to cut down on application overlap, and variable rate technology helps us put the right amount of product in the right place. For example, we have been having fall fertilizer applied by variable rate according to soil test data for several years now. So instead of putting a flat rate over and entire field we vary the rate by the needs of different areas within the field. In the past we probably would have put a high rate over the whole field to account for low fertility areas. I talk about precision ag often, but you might interested in High Tech Ag is Good for the Earth and the Wallet.
Another question, with precision ag and increased productivity, i.e. more food per acre, how much land is actually preserved as native or close to native habitat for resident species? Does farmland, once farmland, tend to stay farmland or does it ever get restored and how often does it get developed for non ag or non restoration purposes?
And does precision ag apply to non commodity crops? And what are some of the issues with non commodity crops?
Thanks for all the info!
Around here farmland generally remains farmland aside from property right up against a town that wants to expand. Precision ag can be used in other crops, but I’m not that familiar with their use. John Deere has a new forage harvester out that will provide a nutritional analysis of the feed. Irrigation can be run with variable rate technology and turned on and off with a smartphone.