WASHINGTON — Co-ops exist to serve members, often by anticipating and addressing farmer problems before they become overwhelming. In recent years, farmers have been forced to deal with unusually severe weather patterns such as droughts. While a severe, extended drought in California has been much in the news in recent years — until heavy precipitation fell this winter — drought has also impacted growers in other regions.
Nearly half of Ohio suffered some level of drought last summer, while about 17 percent of Michigan had to deal with “peak drought” conditions last year — and this even after the two states received above-average precipitation for all but one month from December 2015 to March 2016. Other areas have had to deal with the opposite problem: too much moisture, including severe flooding.
Increased weather variability and severity has generally fallen short of what many farmers would consider full blown climate change. Nevertheless, prolonged heavy rainfall suggests to 6070 percent of Midwestern farmers that “something is going on,” says Dennis Todey, director of USDA ’s Midwest Climate Hub.
Are these extreme shifts in weather patterns the “new norm,” or a temporary phase? Regardless, farmers must deal with the weather conditions that Mother Nature tosses at them.
Using advanced agriscience and technology to adapt farming practices may be a farmer’s best weapons in this battle. This article examines how one of the nation’s leading farmer co-ops works in tandem with locally owned cooperatives to help members do just that.
Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN program goal: better choices
Land O’ Lakes — the nation’s third largest agricultural co-op, best known for its dairy foods and farm supply/agronomy services — launched the Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN program in 2012 to help producers make better crop and nutrient choices. This national program was developed in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). EDF is a nongovernmental conservation organization with expertise in collaborative solutions to many of today’s sustainability issues.
The Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN platform uses advanced technology, including WinField United R7, a software platform that helps producers identify hybrid crop varieties that tolerate certain growing constraints, such as dampness or drought, and which will grow well in their local area. Winfield United is the crop inputs division of Land O’ Lakes Inc.
“What really matters to farmers is how a specific crop does locally,” says Todey. Even crop varieties that may thrive 40 to 50 miles away may not be suited for a member’s local growing conditions, he notes.
The Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN platform demonstrates co-op readiness to “make things happen.” The platform was designed on the heels of predictions that, to manage weather transitions, farmers will increasingly rely on supplier and manufacturer recommendations for crops, pest management and other management practices. As agriculture shifts to employing more “client-based” research, recommendations need to be more precise and tailored to individual decision makers, according to many ag economists (Reilly, 2011).
Based on these criteria, Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN hits all the bases: it is a locally oriented, decentralized and customized approach to help farmers offset the risk of crop selection and production through the use of state-of-the-art, precision agriculture. Many ecologists now regard “bottom-up, decentralized” approaches to dealing with changing climate patterns as a more promising route to helping farmers and communities adapt, as opposed to globally coordinated actions that increasingly appear to be unattainable.
Moreover, by rectifying the natural imbalances of key soil nutrients, Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN also contributes toward land stewardship and soil health, something valued throughout the food supply chain and by growing numbers of consumers.
How Land O’ Lakes SUSTAIN works
The process can start with using the R7 tool; farmer-owners of a local cooperative begin the agronomic process by dividing their fields into 2.5acre grids, then taking soil samples within each grid. Using geo-spatial software processes, the cooperative analyzes the soil samples to determine the variability of soil nutrient levels.
The cooperative then makes nutrient recommendations for lime (needed to correct soil pH levels), phosphorus and potassium. These recommendations are often less than what a farmer historically will put on a field in a “flat-rate application” management strategy. Using spreaders equipped with site-specific technology, the cooperative can then apply the right amount of nutrients in the right spots. This enables farmers to maintain adequate nutrient levels and to achieve optimum production from each field.
The R7 tool of WinField United combines satellite imagery data that indicate high- and low-yield areas, along with physical measures of biomass variability. Ecologists define biomass as the amount of living matter in a given habitat, expressed as the weight of organisms per unit area.
R7 can also accommodate historical yield data and other managerial variables, such as multi-year field zones. R7 is used to make recommendations for seed populations and nutrients based on potential productivity of each zone within a field. Applying seed and nutrients in the right amount and at the right rate for each area enables each zone to work at its own potential, instead of putting too much or too little seed and fertilizer in the field.
This process gives nature what it needs — the basis of the continuous upkeep required for good stewardship — and farmers optimize their productivity and efficiency through advanced agronomic technology.
Knowing soil potential and requirements is half the equation. The other half is choosing the right seed and using the placement rate derived from grid sampling. This knowledge improves farmer return on investment. After all, why should farmers risk paying for resources that are vulnerable to run-off?
Hybrid performance data used in the R7 tool come from cross-country test plots (called “Answer Plots®”) established by WinField United. Answer Plots represent both widely varying and finely nuanced field conditions for the corn and soybeans integral to Corn Belt agriculture.
Fundamentally, the Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN platform is a farm management program that gives producers information that will help them make better crop and input decisions. Weather trends are a factor in these decisions, but not the primary focus. Rather, incorporating technology like the R7 tool allows producers to practice stewardship in the form of the careful use of limited or costly resources, including money, soil, seed and nutrients.
Moreover, by adding nutrients or chemicals based on scientific diagnosis of soil content, the soil is brought to an optimum state, helping to ensure it will be a resource for future generations.
Engaging producers as problem solvers
In an era of severe and unpredictable weather, ecologists recommend three ways communities and producers can adaptively manage or respond to new weather events: (1) learn by trial and error; (2) build on incremental changes and (3) learn from each other. Getting farmers thinking and talking about the challenges of weather variability can engage them in a creative, problem-solving capacity that can strengthen their skill in decision-making (Arbuckle Jr. et al., 2014). Such skills will be critically important insofar as continued problematic weather fosters further uncertainty, causing farmers to reevaluate past management decisions and seek new information and strategies.
In this context, the term “climate change” may be less helpful in working with farmers than would terminology and narratives that focus on adaptation to severe weather events. Terms such as “weather variability” and “extreme weather” will likely resonate with a greater proportion of farmers (Arbuckle et al., 2014).
Importance of stewardship
Likewise, the term “stewardship” will probably resonate more with producers than “sustainability.” Put simply, “sustainability” does not have the track record of rich, evocative meaning associated with the term “stewardship.” From the time of Thomas Jefferson, the concept of stewardship has been associated with the honorable tasks of producing food and fiber.
In that sense, stewardship represents a long-held, culturally endorsed agrarian value with positive associations for farmers. That positive association presumably makes “stewardship” a more potent, effective term than “sustainability” in helping farmers construct an identity (or the way they see themselves) appropriate to contemporary challenges.
Craig Houin of Sunrise Cooperative, a leading ag and energy cooperative in Ohio, leads the co-op’s Sunrise Data Innovation and R7 program. He observes that retailers need to understand how to handle the concept of stewardship more appropriately (i.e., sensitively) because it impacts livelihoods and community. Stewardship is the core focus and initiative of the Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN program, says Houin.
What does “sustainability” mean? Indications are that, as it is presently used, the term “sustainability” has not yet attained a well-defined, stable meaning.
At the 2011 annual meeting of the Harvard Business School, professors who were looking at everyday language for newly influential terms noted that “sustainability” would probably have a different meaning in the next five years. More recently, Houin notes that farmers attending a meeting of young producers questioned what “sustainability” meant.
The way people in agriculture talk about weather variability — what some call “the discourse of climate change” — has been criticized for over emphasizing the uncertainty and complexity associated with severe weather events (Fleming et al, 2014). Too much uncertainty raises the question of whether people are doing what they should be doing. The alternative to uncertainty might be a check-list or agenda of what should be done.
This approach risks putting farmers into the role of passive recipients rather than being actively engaged, entrepreneurial problem-solvers. On the other hand, too much complexity implies that more science is probably required before individuals can be expected to act.
The term “sustainability” is a relatively new agricultural term which has, to some degree, been associated with climate change implications and meanings, and so may encompass some of the same uncertainty. The terms “sustainability” and “climate change” (or variability) may be problematic insofar as they raise more questions than they answer. Asking farmers how they define sustainability and weather variability — what does it mean to them? — may be useful to ensure that co-op and farmer-member are on the same page.
What is clear is that good stewardship involves making a commitment to soil health. This involves improving managerial practices via improving decision-making and efficiency, etc. Utilizing innovations — such as variable-rate application, lime application, cover crops and reduced tillage — are an important part of this commitment.
Why a cooperative?
Sunrise Cooperative, Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN and Winfield United represent a new, fluid and evolving business relationship to identify what farmers need and how it should be packaged and delivered.
Houin says co-op affiliation matters because agriculture encompasses many deep-rooted relationships. Business relationships can often become personal relationships, with bonds of trust forged between a co-op representative and the farmer-member. A co-op identity signals that the organization is owned by farmers and therefore is motivated to improve performance on their behalf. This has reciprocal benefits: knowing farmer preferences conceivably reduces the cooperative’s cost to serve.
The Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN platform demonstrates how cooperatives are uniquely positioned to help their members adapt and succeed, regardless of whether challenges are environmental or market based.
Selected References • Arbuckle Jr., J.G., Hobbs, A. Loy, Morton, L.W., Prokopy, L.S. and J. Tyndall (2014). “Understanding Corn Belt farmer perspectives on climate change to inform engagement strategies for adaptation and mitigation.” Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, Nov/Dec, 505-515. • Fleming, A., Vanclay, F ., Hiller, C. et al. (2014). “Challenging dominant discourses of climate change.” Climatic Change 127: 407-418. • Reilly, J.M. (2011). “Overview: Climate Change Adaptation in the Agricultural Sector” in Climate Change Adaptation in Developed Nations. Stuttgart: Springer. • Reilly, J. and D. Schimmelpfenning (2000). “Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Learning: Portraits of Adaptation to Long-Term Climate Change.” Climatic Change 45: 253-278.n
–Julie A. Hogeland, Ag Economist USDA Rural Development
Rural Cooperatives Magazine March-April 2017
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