From pilot programs, measurement platforms, landscape scale initiatives and even direct-to-grower incentive payments, the investments in regenerative agriculture are trying every tactic to gain traction. But are they working?
New research from Farm Journal’s Trust In Food looks into the reasons why those investments are struggling to reach landscape-level scale and finds that organizations, in large part, are failing to leverage the power of the trusted advisor relationship.
“Farm Journal’s research continually ranks trusted advisors like private and retail agronomists at the top of experts that farmers turn to when making decisions for their farms and operations,” says Andrew Lyon, director of conservation programs for Farm Journal’s Trust In Food. “Agronomists truly are the missing link that drives adoption of conservation programs.”
Those insights were based upon a partnership with Northern Plains Trusted Advisor Partnership and drew from direct participant feedback in a North Dakota workshop that included value chain leaders, agronomists and farmers.
“The Northern Plains Trusted Advisor Partnership is a working model for how organizations can bring advisor-farmer relationships to the forefront of scaling conservation,” says Lyon. “Exploring the farmer-advisor relationship in-depth with this organization allowed us to share insights with the value chain that leverage that power to accelerate conservation adoption across the nation.”
Four Key Findings
Findings from the cohort and outlined in the free report include:
- Yield-first language is drowning out conservation for resilience-building
Programs that continually sell growers in the language of yield are making it difficult for farmers to evaluate conservation practices or factor in conservation at all. - Trusted advisors breaking through legacy decision-making
Legacy cycles can keep farmers engrained in the same decisions year over year. Trusted advisors can break through that by leveraging their trust to share proof of what is working elsewhere in the region. - Technical assistance drives long-term adoption more than financial incentive
The report found that programs cannot rely upon financial incentive alone. Quality technical support through trusted advisors is the primary driver of long-term program retention. - The best advisors consolidate all of the information
At any given time, farmers are receiving information from a variety of different sources, including their crop advisor, the local USDA-NRCS office, their conservation district, their supply chain reps and their lenders. Workshop participants noted that none of these work together and the result of that is confusion rather than clarity. Advisors can be the key that consolidates all of that information for farmers.
The report is available for download through Trust In Food in partnership with Northern Plains Trusted Advisor Partnership.
