I know what it’s like to be a farmer. The long days and sleepless nights. The unpredictability of Mother Nature and her impact on our crops’ yields, leading to excitement and helplessness, knowing that it is out of our control. A farmer’s job isn’t easy, but we do it because we love it, it’s been in our blood for generations, and the world is depending on us.

I have seen a lot of change over my 25 years in the ag industry and as an active partner on my family’s farm. But nothing has compared to the changes we’ve gone through in the past decade or so. From automated machinery to unpredictable weather, to a changing workforce to rapid evolutions in traits and technology, we’ve been going through a lot. 

My involvement on our family farm informs my day-to-day at Truterra, LLC, the sustainability business of Land O'Lakes, Inc., where I leverage my experience and understanding of farming to encourage and enable farmers to adopt and maintain conservation practices on their farms. Everything we do is with the farmer at the center, backed by the network of ag retailers they trust most for their agronomic decisions on their farm.

So how do we create a cohesive, environmentally conscious, prosperous future for the entire farming ecosystem? In honor of #NationalAgDay and #NationalAgWeek, I have some recommendations that can have year-round impact.

Listen:

Farmers are used to being practically “invisible” entities in our society. A recent survey conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of Land O’Lakes showed that 39% of U.S. adults have never met a farmer, and nearly a quarter have no idea where they would meet one.

If you’re an agriculture retailer working with farmers, you know the key to success is to listen to their concerns to find mutual understanding before you navigate challenges together. If you’re a government official passing laws that affect farmers, start a conversation. If you’re a business leader working on equipment or other goods and products, consider farmers’ needs as well as your own goals.

Truterra sustainability services was recently created and many aspects of the program were inspired by our ongoing conversations with farmers. With these services, Truterra can support farmers at every stage of their sustainability journey with a comprehensive set of resources to support farmers agronomically and financially.

Learn:

One of my daily struggles as someone who farms but also works in the agriculture industry is how little people know about it. The agriculture industry only makes up 1% of the labor force, but feeds 100% of the population.

This work is underpinned by everyday conversations between farmers—I’ve found that farmers talking to other farmers is also hugely helpful. Some farmers have been using no-till, cover crops and other regenerative farming measures for years. They are fonts of wisdom and can help ease those transitions for other farmers looking into conservation practices. At Land O’Lakes, we have a network of nearly 3,000 owners in our cooperative structure. That’s hundreds of years of knowledge, sage advice and encouragement. Spreading that knowledge like scattered seeds is one of my goals to help us all grow.

Leverage Data:

Data is today’s currency. Farms have reams of data points that can be used to achieve better outcomes. On my farm, we have been utilizing data since the late 1990s, and have records of every seed, crop, and nutrient we’ve applied.

Data is power—and it pays. While the full results of our data-driven carbon program will be announced later this spring, I can share that Truterra expects to pay farmers over $4.5 million total in cash payments for nearly 237,000 tonnes of carbon stored in soil.

That makes Truterra the market leader in the carbon program space, but we are not “box checkers” with carbon. We want to use this data to fully understand what drives progress as our program is centered in soil health, but extends to the farm businesses and communities they live in.

You can’t fix what you don’t understand, and you can’t keep improving if you don’t know exactly what is working and why.

Lead:

If I know one thing about farming, it’s that change is risky, often so risky that farmers can be late adopters of new technologies or methods. I want to try to quell fears about change and adopting more sustainable farming practices.

Adopting conservation practices can be a challenge, but having a willingness to learn, take calculated risks and a never give up attitude can yield new opportunities for farmers. I personally implement one or two changes—small or large, expensive or cheap—on our farm annually. That makes failures sting a little less and successes easier to build upon.

Here’s one example: in 2022 we worked with a subset of Winfield United retailers that focused on the addition of a biostimulant and a high-quality adjuvant at pollination that resulted in an estimated 5.25M bushels of incremental yield for participating farmers.

That is nearly $34 million in increased revenue for those farmers. How much of that money flows back into that community, how much enthusiasm do those farmers and retailers gain from a positive result? The beneficial ripples of that outcome are hard to wrap your head around because they’re so far-reaching. Agronomically and environmentally sound practices can bring that change to life. 

There’s a broad misconception that “regenerative = more expensive.” What if the opposite were true, that regenerative practices actually lead to higher profits?

What Does This All Mean?

When I talk about the issues farmers are facing and how to solve those, I use the phrase “the industry has a connection problem.” There are so many disparate parties involved in agriculture that it can be challenging to get everyone singing from the same sheet music. But they all have one thing in common as they care about the work they do and want to improve, for the sake of consumers and the planet.

At Truterra, we sit squarely between all parties and function as a convener through education, information sharing, and putting people in the same room to find mutual understanding. We need to learn and improve together to reach our sustainability goals.

It won’t be easy, but I’ve never met anyone in this industry who’s afraid of a challenge.