Kentucky Farmers Employ Conservation Practices As Standard Operating Procedure

RAE WAGONER

PRINCETON, KENTUCKY

Now that Kentucky’s soybeans and corn are growing in the fields, you’ll see them as you drive in rural areas. While there’s nothing quite like seeing a field full of healthy green plants, those who look closely will see more – like grassed waterways and buffer strips. Farmers are good stewards of the land, and they have been using best management practices (BMPs) as a matter of course since long before the buzzword sustainability ever hit the headlines. 

“We just always called it conservation, good stewardship or doing the right thing,” said Meade County farmer Fred L. Sipes. And he should know. As a past winner of both Kentucky’s Leopold Conservation Award and the Southern Region Conservation Legacy Award, Sipes has documented the BMPs he uses on F.L. Sipes Farms for years, and they’re the same practices used on most every farm across the Commonwealth. “This is just what we do,” Sipes said. “it’s nothing new, but I think that we farmers sometimes forget that everyone doesn’t know just how routine these conservation practices are.” 

No-till farming, in which the farmer plants his or her crop directly into the stubble of the prior year’s crop without first tilling the soil, was invented right here in Kentucky in 1966 to minimize soil disturbance, reduce erosion and runoff, maximize diversity, add biomass, and maintain residue cover, to name a few benefits. Farmers today regularly use reduced-till and strip-till practices, which offer the best of both worlds by preventing erosion like no-till while creating the perfect seedbed like conventional tillage. 

Buffer strips (narrow plantings of perennial plants around waterways), are used to reduce water runoff from fields, including loss of pesticides and fertilizers. They are also known to improve wildlife habitat, and some farmers even plant wildflowers as pollinator habitat in their buffer strips. “Kentucky’s farmers are great conservationists,” said Hardin County farmer Larry Thomas. “We’re also good businesspeople. We use precision ag techniques to apply crop protection products and fertilizers exactly where we need them, then we implement BMPs like buffer strips and grassed waterways to keep those inputs right where we put them. Yes, those practices are good for the environment and are the right thing to do in many cases, and they’re also financially sound decisions. Farmers are big believers in the 4 Rs – the right product, in the right amount, in the right place, at the right time.” 

Thomas serves as Chairman of Kentucky’s Ag Water Quality Authority and adds, “the Authority has been working in Kentucky since 1994 to develop and update BMPs for farmers to implement in their operations. Our farmers continue to adopt new practices on farms to protect the waters of the Commonwealth and downstream. No-till and cover crops are widely adopted practices across much of the state, and we know that these BMPs reduce nutrient loads. The economics of production agriculture requires farmers to choose the right practices for each individual operation, while understanding if nutrients are leaving our fields, we are losing money we’ve invested in our crops.”

 Cover crops are also standard practice on many acres, using either crops that are terminated prior to planting or cash crops like wheat, which serves the same purpose of holding soil in place over the winter and is then harvested prior to soybean planting. A crop rotation of corn (harvested in the fall) followed by winter wheat (harvested in June), then short-season soybeans (harvested in the fall) gives the farmer three cash crops on the same acre over a two-year period. Each crop leaves something behind that the next crop needs, and this rotation is a natural way to help reduce weed, disease, and insect pressure – all while building healthy soil.

 Brandon Hunt farms corn, soybeans and wheat in Christian County. “My definition of sustainability is improving the land and water that my farming career depends on as resources for high productivity farming, for the generations to come,” he said. “Of course we keep conservation as the top priority – my family drinks the water from our farm and the land sustains our livelihood. I feel this is my responsibility because my grandfather and father left a better resource for me than they received. I am the fifth generation on this farm, and I customize my portfolio of conservation techniques and management practices for what I know will give my son and daughter the best resource for their careers and the next generation."

 Commodity trade associations and checkoff programs, along with land-grant universities, are doing their part to assist farmers on how improve upon conservation practices for even wider adoption.  Corn and soybean organizations along with Hardin County Cooperative Extension Service have developed an educational program for technicians in Farmers for Soil Health collaboration. In July, Kentucky will host dozens of technicians from about twenty states in this educational effort to train new technicians on these techniques and further enable them to promote farmers’ adoption in this collaborative initiative. For more information, visit FarmersForSoilHealth.org. 

 For more information on row crop farming in Kentucky, visit KySoy.org, KyCorn.org, and KySmallGrains.org.   ∆

RAE WAGONER: KENTUCKY SOYBEAN BOARD