Given your firsthand experience, what would you highlight as the key challenges for farmers today?
A primary concern for every generation of farmers is maintaining a business that is financially stable and has prospects for growth, precisely because these are also necessary conditions for successfully implementing and developing more regenerative models of agriculture. So, to replace farming tools like pesticides, herbicides, genetically modified seeds, and fossil fuel driven farming equipment, one must first find a way to replace the productivity that those tools bring to the system.
My company receives 97% of its revenues from the marketplace. This means that we must meet the market’s demands with the resources we have available for growing grain: the regional climate, soil, and infrastructure. My company grows corn (a carbohydrate-rich crop) and soybeans (a protein-rich crop) because these grains are both highly productive and provide a balanced diet. We do not have access to the labor supplies necessary to carry out agro-tourism or to garden vegetable crops like farmers elsewhere in the world where agriculture is heavily subsidized.
How have supply chain disturbances and price hikes in fertilizers brought on by the war in Ukraine affected your business? Are you looking at alternatives like biofertilizers?
Although fertilizer prices tripled in 2022, suppliers have found more economic ways of delivering the nutrients we need. And, yes, we are expectant of biofertilizers, but they are not yet available in sufficient quantities. I should also add that, in terms of our company’s productivity, biofertilizers are not as reliable to us as the fertilizers we currently use, because they do not match the nutrients — nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium — that we have applied to our soils in the past. So, for us, it will be a decade-long experiment to see if we can find ways of maintaining fertility and productivity while replacing conventional fertilizers with biofertilizers.
In terms of your first question, the expected decrease of grain supply in Europe after the war in Ukraine has not only caused prices in grain to go up, but it has also attracted a variety of dishonest actors into the market who try to sell poor quality products.
Have you been integrating any innovations like precision agriculture into your own production model?
I would say that, in general, farmers have always needed to adopt technological innovations to remain competitive within the industry.
By 1997, we had already installed our first “yield monitor” into our combines to geo-spatially document the amount of harvest obtained at any given point in the field. And once our combines could collect both grain and data, we were able to begin assessing which production systems were most efficient. Then, about 15 to 20 years ago, we started documenting what the seeds, fertilizers, and weather conditions were when we planted our crops. Data collection systems such as these, and precision agriculture as a general practice, are not as recent an innovation as people tend to think.
You mentioned that financial incentives for farmers are necessary for a successful transition into a more sustainable agricultural model. What kind of support would you like to see in this regard?
I think that the carbon market has allowed for an alignment between advocates of the environmental, social, governance (ESG) framework and conservation-minded farmers, who are mutually interested in reducing crop inputs, greenhouse gas emissions, and soil erosion. And it has done so by enabling farmers to receive payment for reinventing their production models.
Are you benefiting from clean carbon credits? What expected revenue do you expect to receive by continuing to implement this technology in the future?
Two years ago, I received approximately $3,000 in carbon credits — a relatively insignificant number. Last year I received $13,000 in revenue, and I expect for that number to increase to about $150,000 in 2023. And going forward, I anticipate that 10% of my revenue will derive from the voluntary carbon market. Accordingly, I consider that my role in promoting the growth of this company for the next generation is to teach farmers to work with more regenerative models that can sequester carbon into the soil while improving levels of production and revenue.
What are your key objectives for the next couple of years?
I want to prioritize both financial growth and regenerative agricultural practices that will preserve the quality of soil and water for the next generation of farmers. It will also be a crucial objective of ours to optimize food production levels to combat hunger and meet the needs and varying dietary preferences of our consumers.
