Building trust in food begins with empowering farmers through one of the largest and most diverse conservation- and sustainability-focused public-private partnerships in our nation’s history: America’s Conservation Ag Movement. To find the latest news and resources related to the Movement, visit AgWeb.com/ACAM.
The guest editor for this story, Mark K. Lambert, is the communications director for the National Corn Growers Association.
Albert Einstein once said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
Nebraska farmer Brandon Hunnicutt is a lifelong learner who has a curious bent, especially when it comes to pursuing sustainable farming practices. He agrees with Albert Einstein that an inquiring mind can drive positive change, but he has no desire to end up like the infamous cat of curiosity fame
“Our farm tries to stay up on the cutting edge of technology. But we do it after a lot of investigation and talking with others and then doing an evaluation on our farm on a smaller scale,” says Hunnicutt, a fifth-generation farmer, who currently farms with his dad, Daryl, and his brother, Zach. This evolutionary approach has led to incorporating many of the latest technologies while integrating conservation tillage practices and cover crops, on a nearly 100 percent of the family’s irrigated farm.
Moving to water sensors is a great example of how technology can address both sustainability and profitability goals, Hunnicutt says. The sensors allow better management of a critical resource while saving from $8 to $50 an acre depending on the growing season.
Hunnicutt’s exploration into being a better farmer has led him to many leadership roles including vice chairman of the Nebraska Corn Board, a board member of the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), and most recently as the first farmer to be selected as chairman of Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture.
“We have kept within what we know on our conventional acres using the latest, proven technology. But we have expanded what we do to include white corn, popcorn, seed corn, and other specialty markets to get a premium,” he says. “At the same time, we want to use the best, most productive practices on our organic corn, peas and oats. We are gradually blending conventional and organic strategies, and as time goes on, both are moving toward a more sustainable middle.”
Conducting careful, well-researched field trials on smaller acreage is a key to minimizing risk. What those trials look like is formed in large part from aggressive networking from individual farmers to larger, more structured, and proven entities like the Soil Health Partnership (SHP) and Field to Market. Hunnicutt recommends growers investigate SHP and Field to Market because they are supported by farmers’ investments in their state corn checkoff, are science-based, and place an emphasis on growers’ economic success.
Asking questions of the right people is critical to success and managing change, according to Hunnicutt. Extension experts, his local cooperative, and input providers can all add something to a useful pool of knowledge. But at the end of the day, it’s hard to beat a farmer who is succeeding at ground zero.
“There are actually a couple of guys on Twitter, like Gaston, Ind., farmer Jason Mauck, who are willing to try just about anything and talk about it,” Hunnicutt says. “We have approached the sustainability side reading books, too, by guys like Gabe Brown and others who have taken a deep dive into some of these practices.”
However, working with groups like SHP and Field to Market provides scale and measurement capabilities that are hard to beat. For instance, Field to Market’s Fieldprint Platform shines a bright light on each farm’s sustainability story, “and farmers have a significant voice in Field to Market, which is an important part of why it works.”
The Fieldprint Platform is a key resource for farmers to measure the environmental impacts of their operation and identify opportunities for continuous improvement. The Platform can help analyze a farmer’s performance across eight sustainability indicators such as energy use or biodiversity, which can help improve environmental outcomes and an operation’s bottom line.
(Farmers can access the free and confidential Fieldprint Platform tool through the online Fieldprint Calculator or through associated farm-management software that integrates the Platform’s metrics and algorithms.)
The sophisticated program has been 10 years in the making and allows farmers to assess and explore the relationship between management practices and sustainability outcomes. Field to Markets metrics now integrate into leading precision agriculture decision support and farm management software solutions including Agrible, Bunge Centerfield, Syngenta Land.db, MyFarms Software Platform, Precision Conservation Management and Land O’Lakes Truterra Insights Engine.
“The science and technology driving Field to Market is designed to measure environmental outcomes from individual farm fields. These metrics are science-based tools that have been developed or adopted by Field to Market through the multi-stakeholder governance process,” Hunnicutt says. “I think the stakeholder diversity behind Field to Market is one of its core strengths.”
Field to Market’s metrics committee, consisting of four elected members from each of the Alliance’s five membership sectors, review each metric at least once every three years.
“Consumers are increasingly asking questions about where and how their food is produced, and Field to Market offers a broad, credible partnership across the food and value chain to answer these questions and deliver sustainable outcomes,” Hunnicutt says. “I have been able to help encourage others, especially in agriculture, to use social media to help tell the story of agriculture and the exciting things we are doing to help protect the environment while increasing food, feed, fiber and fuel production for Nebraska and the world.”
For more information, farmers can go here and explore active continuous improvement projects.
