Conservation is the hallmark of farmer's past, present, future

Iowa CSP Tier-III farmer works to spread his enthusiasm for conservation

By Jeff Caldwell

Jim Andrew is accustomed to raised eyebrows and other strong reactions in people who see or learn about his farm.

He's been creating such reactions for quite a while. First, it was when he left a successful career in the U.S. military to return to the farm.

Later, it was in his early conservation practices, which he says dropped the jaws of a lot of neighbors who drove by his farm where grass strips separated fields from road ditches and steep terraces prevented soil from washing away during 25-year rain events.

Years later, similarly strong reactions among friends and neighbors came when he traded 18 implements and pieces of tillage equipment for four new ones--all at once--during his conversion to no-till. Sowing soybeans into standing corn stalks was, in the early 1990s, not the common sight it is today. Andrew says his neighbors were "driving in the road ditches" when they saw him doing just that.

But now, over a year after he was handed a check for $45,000 from National Resources Conservation Service Chief Bruce Knight, Andrew is raising eyebrows for an altogether different reason. Other farmers see the outcome of strong on-farm conservation practices, and now, sentiment has shifted from "shock and awe" to "how can I do that?"

To put it simply, Jim Andrew has gone from radical to innovator.

Andrew's five-figure payment from NRCS came alongside his being named the first Conservation Security Program "Tier III" farmer in the nation. This means, through his long-time emphasis on conservation--and its financial costs and management requirements--on his central Iowa corn and soybean farm, this fifth-generation Greene County, Iowa, farmer has addressed every conservation concern on his farm and more. His watershed, the North Raccoon River, was included as a CSP watershed in 2005, due largely to the fact he is upstream from Des Moines, Iowa, which derives much of its water from the Raccoon River.

Andrew's success in his agricultural and conservation ventures is in many ways predicated on his strict attention to detail and vision for generations well beyond his own. Since receiving the CSP payment last spring, he has taken it upon himself to help spread the word about farm conservation and convince all farmers of its value not only to their own operations, but to the environment of their families' future generations.

"I'm a fifth-generation farmer. I'm a product of a lot of people's hard work and efforts to hold a lot of things together through depression, war, flu epidemics and everything like that. So, I look at things that I'm not in this for the short-term. I'm looking at the long view as far as my kids, grandkids and the generations to come," Andrew says. "With everything I do, the short-term gain doesn't interest me as much as the long term. That's the attitude my family's taken, and I think that's the attitude of a lot of families. Anything I can do to propagate the future, to bring young people along and to provide a sense of responsibility and look at this view of the future, that's all that interests me."

Building on a strong conservation base

Conservation has, for generations, been a central focus on Andrew's family farm. This emphasis on conservation--well before government programs provided incentives to do so--laid the groundwork for how Andrew has been able to transition his farm to what is today a model system.

"One of the keys to our success was 31 years of preparation before CSP in working hand-in-hand with the NRCS, with their engineers and technicians working with us. It has paid off in spades," Andrew says. "It paid off before CSP in how we could see gullies that were developing in some of this gently rolling land that were no longer there."

Today, Andrew's farm spans 1,350 acres on which he raises corn and soybeans. His gently rolling fields are dotted with three ponds--one as large as two acres--that are fed by tile lines from adjoining crop land and framed by grass strips to avoid soil runoff. The area surrounding the largest of the three ponds is a popular place for both man and beast, and more importantly, an integral part of Andrew's success in CSP.

"As a kid, I wouldn't have thought twice about jumping in there on a hot summer day. Now, I have three daughters who all want to build houses right here," Andrew says standing by the pristine pond that is currently the home of a mating pair of Canadian geese. "With Tier III, at least in this area, you had to have some wildlife habitat. With these ponds, and some of the grass strips we've installed to promote wildlife, we were still short in our overall total acreage. I had to seed down 10 acres of brome grass on a ridge to make it all come out so we would have enough wildlife habitat to make it all work."

Conservation practices, like terracing shallow-sloped, gently rolling land, were alone not the driver for Andrew's identification as the nation's top farm conservationist. He made the decision, in 1993, to transition all of his acres to no-till at the same time.

"Once I made the decision to make the move, I took 18 implements and tractors, traded those and bought basically four new pieces of machinery: A 145-horsepower four-wheel-drive tractor, a new 12-row planter, a John Deere 750 no-till drill and a Spra-Coupe. Those four pieces of equipment replaced 18, and 18 paid for the expenses of all the new stuff," Andrew says of his no-till transition. "My thought was I thought this was coming on stronger, and that I was getting ahead of the pack.

"But, you don't do it overnight. I studied going no-till for three years before I made the big move."

Andrew didn't look back once he began no-till production, and he hasn't looked back since.

"I wanted to burn that bridge to tillage. I didn't want to turn around when I stumbled after about three months and say 'Gee, that doesn't look right. I've got to hook up the old four-wheel-drive and the big field cultivator and tear that up,'" he says. "The first couple of years, my neighbors were driving in the road ditches when they'd see me out there pulling that drill through standing corn stalks. But, after a while, they became accustomed, and plus, the fact is I'm still here and haven't gone belly-up, and my crops don't look bad when I get done. I've gone from being the oddity to being the accepted.

"It's just that I'd like a few more of them to jump on board. I'd sure be glad to lend any hand and tell them how or give them any expertise I could, because I believe it does that much good for the soil."

Today's farm conservation needs

The future of U.S. farm policy, many agree, will be in large part shaped by conservation, whether in the expansion of current programs--like CSP--or new ones altogether. Andrew knows well both the motivations for the conservation impulse and what it takes to fully participate in federal programs. In terms of current programs, he says changes must be made in the future to make them more accessible for farmers.

"I think probably this is our first effort, and we're looking at a raw experiment that hopefully will grow into what things are going to be in the future. At the present time, I think it's awfully complicated," he says. "It could be simplified with different layers and structures so that we get initial involvement, then build on that by offering more enhancements or enticements to do so."

International trade negotiations may drive the American shift to conservation-intensive farm policy. But Andrew says it will depend on farmers like himself who, in addition to utilizing a more user-friendly policy framework, begin to view farm conservation with a new emphasis.

"It's going to have to be simplified, and I think people are probably going to have to be pretty well-paid for some practices that some might say aren't that big of a deal--things that we've been expected to do on our own, but now that we're being paid for," Andrew says. "With LDPs, I don't think we're doing a thing, yet we're getting a lot of money. Why can't the government ask for a few things in return on behalf of the U.S. taxpayer and the general public that will preserve the land, water and soil for future generations?"

Yet, in many ways, on-farm conservation should not be something for which farmers feel obligated to receive payment. In Andrew's mind, being "the right thing to do" should be reason enough. Yet, if it takes financial incentives to make conservation the rule rather than the exception--and offset the costs to transition to a more conservation-friendly operation--payments are crucial.

"In our own case, we've been doing this for years. We do it just because it's the right thing to do. We're not looking to get paid for it. We never did. But, when the payment came up, we thought we should go ahead and see if we could get it, then use it as an opportunity to bring along our neighbors and other people in the country."

Spreading the farm conservation word

Jim Andrew has installed his grass filter strips. He's terraced his fields--some that most farmers might not even consider for terraces. He's constructed and cared for his own ponds and fostered corresponding the corresponding wildlife habitat. He's made the transition to no-till. In other words, Andrew knows conservation, and the proof is in his fields. Now, he's ready to help other farmers develop as keen an understanding of conservation as he has.

What does a conventional-tillage farmer of today need to do in order to reach a conservation pinnacle similar to the one Andrew, who testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee about CSP and farm conservation earlier this summer, has reached? It begins with the most basic ways to conserve, he says, and is first manifested in machinery choices and management.

"Instead of thinking about that new piece of chrome and glass machinery you want to buy, think about some new techniques and new ways of farming your ground that will use less fuel and demand less labor," Andrew says. "I've never been a big chrome-and-glass guy. I look at the most economical way to get the job done, and with the least amount of machinery."

Even though no such program exists for farmers today, Andrew says a formal educational process for farmers who wish to implement things like no-till is the best way to help spread the valuable message of conservation's important place in agriculture.

"I was just drilling soybeans today, thinking maybe we need to set up a mentor program. My daughter's in nursing school, and in their preparations, they do a semester internship," he says. "Why couldn't I get an ag student over here to 'intern' with a no-tiller like myself? Teach him the ways, and he can go back and try to change dad's mind maybe better than I could by showing dad that 'I can make this work.' It's really scary, when you start out, to give up everything that your grandfather and father did, and try something new. But, I think if we could do something like that, maybe we could bring people around.

"I don't want to do it for money. I want to do it for the preservation of the land for future generations."

For Andrew, who says he spent around a month of his last year speaking to groups around the nation about his conservation efforts, it's not just a matter of making sure the farmland is sustained for generations. To him, it's more personal.

"If my daughters choose not to marry farmers, I want to take some of the things that I know and pass those along to somebody. I would much rather train my replacement. That's our mission in life--you're always supposed to groom your successor, and I guess in the future, I would be looking for somebody who would want to start," Andrew says. "Even if they don't stay with me. I would like to teach the best I know about conservation and no-till farming, and if somebody takes that knowledge on to another operation and makes it work, the world's a better place. I'll start over again and train another person."

Jeff Caldwell can be reached by phone at 515-280-5405 or by e-mail at jcaldwell@mchsi.com.

Date: 6/22/06

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