What Motivates Farmers to Engage in Whole Farm Planning?
Minnesota Project intern Jean-Luc Jannink set out to explore what farmers desire from whole farm planning by talking with nine very different farmers. The insights he gained provide valuable information about how to attract farmers to the process. The complete report is available upon request from the Minnesota Project.
An important premise of some whole farm planning (WFP) proponents is that the process of developing a whole farm plan will lead the farmer to more nearly sustainable practices, no matter what his or her objectives are. The goal of these WFP advocates is not to change farmer objectives, but to understand those objectives so that WFP programs can be developed to accommodate them. A WFP process that enables farmers to meet their own objectives will more effectively draw farmers into participation, otherwise, participation will be grudging, regardless of financial incentive or regulatory mandate.
Nine interviews with farmers were conducted at their farms to document what each would seek in a WFP program. The number of farmers interviewed was small, but they represented diverse kinds of farm operations. Some have small acreages, some have large farms, and they produce different products including crops, livestock and dairy. The views expressed by the farmers were quite divergent, and may be useful in the effort to craft a more generally attractive WFP policy.
Each farmer represents a unique coming-together of place, personality and experience. Though WFP can be a generally applicable approach, its success will be built one farmer at a time. The sketches given in this report may allow policy-makers to consider how specific aspects of a WFP program might interact with each farmer's aspirations. Such exercises should improve the quality of the WFP tools developed.
Brian Schultz runs a diverse farm, raising cattle, hogs, and even a few bison, along with a rotation that includes pasture, a mix of small grains and legume for hay, and corn and soybeans. Courses in Holistic Management® have led him to capture more added value when he sells, to look for biological efficiencies within his system, and to appreciate his written holistic goal as an anchor for his management. He wants to have a stable overall farm plan, but plenty of flexibility to act upon the unexpected within that plan.
Brian wants government to be more efficiently responsive to his needs, so that he can go on with his business. For example, he has been frustrated by the process of obtaining a meat retail license in which several governmental agencies were involved. Thus, the potential of a WFP program to streamline farmer interactions with government is appealing to him.
Brian Schultz will be interested in a WFP program if he sees it as a convenient tool for information exchange with government, and if it allows him to innovate and remain flexible.
Barb Bakken and her husband Keith operate a 470-acre corn and soybean farm. About 300 acres are in corn and 170 in soybeans. Barb keeps a herd of White Park cattle she intends to increase to 60 head, while Keith runs a no-till and ridge-till implement business on the side. Both Barb and Keith have taken the Holistic Management® training.
Barb is skeptical of government. She characterizes government as "shuffling bits of paper and making decisions on that basis." In consequence, providing government agencies with something like a whole farm plan would not be her choice. But Barb also emphasized the importance of communication and of developing mechanisms for having her concerns heard and acted upon. For her, the Holistic Management® training helped in clarifying her goals and her husband's, and allowed them to discuss those goals.
Because Barb Bakken values privacy, a whole farm planning program would need to guarantee confidentiality. Her emphasis on communication implies that, to interest her, the WFP program would have to provide tools for communication, both within the farm and between the farm and support agencies.
Roger Anderson operates a beef cattle farm on rolling land, much of which is highly erodible. He conserves his soil using permanent pasture and emphasizes that his farm receives no federal support. He values his independence from government and his ability to take the best from agribusiness but not to let it dictate his production system.
Roger is a member of a farmer-scientist research team exploring how farmers can assess the ecological and quality of life changes on their farms. He derides current farm support programs for their arrogance, and comments that when he bought his farm 30 years ago, the Soil Conservation Service agent came out to the farm, whereas now farmers must travel to the agency.
Roger Anderson would be interested in a WFP program that showed respect for farmers' knowledge and problem-solving ability, and promoted mutual learning between farmer and governmental agencies through ongoing monitoring of the whole farm plan.
Dennis Rabe, like Brian Schultz, is innovative and independent. He is changing his business from a corn and soybean farm with an intensive farrowing operation to one that includes pasture and hay for cattle and a pasture farrowing system. He now also direct-markets a portion of his livestock.
Dennis spends time thinking about the ways different aspects of his farm contribute to his quality of life and his bottom line. His interest is very much in the components of his operation that have low maintenance requirements. He wants to net more by spending less and by adding more value to what he sells. His interest in production with low maintenance stems in part from a perception that his management time is more valuable when he is a marketer than a producer.
Dennis Rabe has many different farm enterprises going between his diversified crop and livestock production and direct marketing. He will be interested in a WFP program that helps clarify interactions between farm enterprises from both biological and financial perspectives. Marketing is of primary concern and should be integrated into the plan.
Girard, Mary, and Ed Radermacher are dairy farmers who manage their farm as a three-person thinking unit. All three have taken the Holistic Management® training and Girard has also had some exposure to the Ontario Environmental Farm Plan. Ed is on the board of the local Soil and Water Conservation District.
The Radermachers suggested a few requirements for a good WFP program. A monetary reward for participating seemed essential. Ed discussed the Pepin County, Wisconsin, model of property tax incentives for farm environmental conservation. In that program, farmers themselves come up with the ideas for improvement of the environmental impacts of their farms. The Radermachers are also concerned about the effects of policy on local community needs. They emphasized the financial hurdle new farmers face and the importance of keeping financial profit within the local community.
For the Rademachers, finances are a top priority. A policy that provided financial incentives toward farmer innovation would be favored by them, as would a WFP policy that considered the community's economic needs, not just those of individual farmers.
Sharon and Ray Johnson are dairy farmers in northern Minnesota who milk 48 cows. Both Sharon and Ray have taken the Holistic Management® training, and Ray has also gone to an introductory workshop on the Ontario Environmental Farm Plan.
Like Barb Bakken, Sharon and Ray have benefitted from the emphasis that Holistic Management® places on communication within the farm unit. It has allowed Sharon, who married into the farm, to take a more active role in management. Ray's primary planning interest is in farm finances. His farm is enrolled in a program with Duluth Technical College that provides assistance in analyzing the different enterprises on the farm using FinPak, a computer-based financial analysis system.
Sharon and Ray Johnson are another example of possibly divergent interests in whole farm planning within a single farm. Provisions to enhance communication within the farm family should be present, but so also should effective accounting procedures.
Ken Peterson grazes a herd of 85 beef cattle and direct-markets the meat as much as possible. As a member of the Northeast Minnesota Sustainable Farming Association, he is involved in setting up a cooperative slaughterhouse for local beef farmers. He has taken the Holistic Management® training, and has begun thinking about passing on the farm.
Marketing is a central endeavor for Ken. He says, "Farmers have learned to produce, but not to sell." Whole farm planning models, other than Holistic Management®, are focused on the farmer as a producer rather than as a salesperson. His other concern is the human face of a future WFP program. As an example of a more friendly interface between service providers and farmers, he talked about bankers in southern Wisconsin taking part in grazing discussion groups.
Integrating marketing into WFP and developing mechanisms for local farmers to collaborate with each other and with technical advisors would make a WFP program more attractive to Ken Peterson.
Wendell King runs a 400-acre corn and soybean farm in Clay County, IA. On land that is ideally suited to a simple corn and soybean rotation it may be difficult to rationalize developing a detailed, holistic farm plan. What might a corn and soybean farmer seek to achieve in engaging in a WFP program? In Wendell's case, an interest in communicating with other farmers and with non-farmers is apparent. Wendell is very community-minded and would like more exchange between diverse community constituents. The Ontario Environmental Farm Plan process of farmer peer review intrigued him. He further suggested that representatives from non-farm groups could participate in this review process, furthering reciprocal understanding.
Gaining the interest of farmers whose land is well suited to high-productivity, low-diversity farming is a challenge. Wendell King would be interested in WFP policy that increased com-munication between farmers and non-farmers.
Ron Tobkin owns a 700-cow dairy (soon to be a 1400-cow dairy). The farm includes 3800 acres of crop land on which corn, alfalfa, potatoes, and kidney beans are grown. Ron also runs a company that provides training and consulting for other managers of very large dairies.
Ron is a busy man. Planning is a way of life for him, and the environmental impacts of his farm are all tightly managed: he knows what regulations apply and is responsible. It's hard to see how a generic WFP program could help him achieve his goals more effectively than he already does now, yet he is interested in WFP. He recognizes that a farm like his is vulnerable to public opinion and legislation. He wants the public to understand better what he does and that his farm does not adversely affect the community or the environment. He says farmers "need to wake up and realize that they are being scrutinized every day. That will lead them to communicate with non-farmers."
Highly capitalized and industrialized farmers may have less incentive to participate in a WFP program. These farmers nevertheless depend on the continued support of their communities. Ron Tobkin would be interested in a program that provides a forum to develop that support.
As these farmers' attitudes show, even a small number of farmers can place quite an array of demands on WFP policy. Nevertheless, the necessity to heed these demands stems from the fact that if a WFP program is designed so that farmers may achieve their objectives through it, then it will appeal to them. Otherwise, participation will probably not extend beyond a small minority.
-Jean-Luc Jannink
Jean-Luc is a doctoral candidate in Agronomy and Plant Genetics at the University of Minnesota
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