Ms. Harden was asked to address the following questions in her presentation:
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Thank you for asking me to be here today. I appreciate working with the folks who put this together. Gary Jackson and I go way back. He had hair when I first met him. People always say those things and they're bad, but they're funny. I got to know Gary as we were putting together our BMP [Best Management Practices] workbook and handbook for the soybean growers, and I want to thank him publicly for his counsel and advice and support for this effort.
I hope I brought enough copies of the packet for everyone [Soybean Management & the Land; A Best Management Practices Handbook for Growers ]. Mine's pretty and green and slick. What I tell our farmers is that if it stays this way, we failed. It needs to be greasy and dirty, with pages torn and marked and used. That was the purpose of doing a manual.
It started as a dream and a hope, for myself and a grower leader or two in the Soybean Association back in 1993 and '94. Wheat growers were doing a similar project that some of you might remember, providing a BMP manual to their producers, and getting farmers to start thinking about ways to improve profitability through conservation and through management processes and procedures on their farms that were not only good for their bottom line, but also good for the environment and for conservation. It was a core group of us who really just said, this is something that we want to do. We have a very small, lean, mean staff at ASA. We don't have any technical people; we didn't have anyone to pull on to help write and edit this type thing. So we floundered around, we looked at different grants, at different proposals, and really couldn't find enough help, which I think is a big problem. When you have a producer group the size of the Soybean Association--we're one of the largest groups in the country--yet we didn't have the resources to provide a tool like this to our growers, I think that says something about the system that is lacking.
But I'm very determined. Anybody who knows me knows that I can be one of those Bulldogs from Georgia, and I really am one. I was not going to give up. I thought it was the right direction for our association, the timing was right, and that we needed to find the resources. I think I whined long enough and loud enough to the Department of Agriculture that Gary Margheim at NRCS said, "If I help find someone to loan you to help you write and edit a BMP manual, will you hush about it? Would you just do it and get off of my case?" And I'm like, "Yeah, you've got a deal." So we struck a partnership with the agency. They loaned us a delightful, a very talented and qualified young woman, named Denise Coleman, who actually was housed in my office. And she got to learn a lot about soybeans and soybean growers, and the environmental concerns that we have on our farms, and what we could do.
I had envisioned the BMP part, the manual part. She convinced me right off the bat that that's just half the story, that we really needed some type of assessment. We needed farmers to have a tool that they can use in the privacy of their own truck, their own farm, their own kitchen table, to identify their problem areas, to look at that, and take some ownership in that. She sought out the folks at Farm*A*Syst, at that time it was Doug Knox working with Gary, and they very graciously agreed to adapt Farm*A*Syst to work for soybean growers. Soybeans are grown in 30 states, so it was not like there was going to be something that would fit everybody, everywhere. So we had to do a lot of changing, a lot of adapting. And when you look at it you'll notice that it's color-coded by categories, so when you identify the problem area on your farm, or trouble area or area of interest, whatever you want to call it, you can go to the BMP part, the manual, with the same color-coding. In the manual you'll find some ideas and solutions, and an interview with a real live person, usually a soybean grower, one of our members, who is putting that practice in on their own farm. And in the back there's a diagnostic guide, for weeds and insects and diseases. We wanted this to be a tool that farmers would want to use. My dad has his filed on the dash of his pickup truck, so every time he turns it all slides, but we were hoping it would ride in the truck with folks and it would be something they would use, and take advantage of.
Once Denise started, it took her about a year to do the interviewing, to do the traveling around the country. We wanted this to be right. We wanted farmers to contribute, to participate in the drafting and the writing. We wanted it to be farmer friendly, to speak to them, to be easy for them to use. We wanted the issues covered that they had concerns about. And we wanted some sort of range of what practices might cost. I went to a couple of the interviews with Denise, and farmers are very private people. They don't want to tell you what things cost, and they don't want to tell you what their problems are. And we had a hard time, even with folks I know very well, very active, strong members of ASA, getting them to really open up and share with us, so this would not be something that someone in Washington wrote. We were determined it would actually reflect the concerns and the needs of soybean growers. So that took a long time.
During the process, we started running out of money. We'd gotten some seed money from Shared Solutions, a Phillip Morris company, but all of a sudden we're out of money, and we're scrambling: "How are we going to finish this?" And once again, I would say, one of the biggest problems is finding resources to do these type works. Everybody talks a good game, they talk about voluntary practices, they talk about good conservation. But they're not necessarily there to help you find the tools sometimes. We finally got a very generous donation and grant to partner with Monsanto company; and then the Fish and Wildlife Foundation came through at the end to help us pull this together, and make sure it was something that was attractive. We wanted to be sure it would catch someone's attention, that it was four-color and slick and attractive, so it was not something that would just get tossed in the mail. And we made it in two parts, so you have the workbook that a farmer could use for their own assessment, and then the manual to help find solutions and ideas to some of these problem areas.
We've got it distributed, we've sent it far and wide and have many folks asking for more. But as I told ASA from the beginning, if we only do a manual and even a handbook, if we only provide this tool and do not provide the follow-up and the training and implementation, we probably won't be considered a success. We'll have something to show, we'll have something to brag about, and feel good about ourselves. But how much difference will we make in good conservation? And quite frankly I had plenty to do. I didn't need to this to just feel good about a pretty book. I needed to know that it was going to be something that producers could use and would use, and we could provide them help and training to do that.
So, the second phase of this project is the implementation. We picked four target states to go in and provide a kind of testing for the criteria and curriculum. What sorts of farmers would use it? How can we take this to someone's farm, go through an assessment, and help train producers on the things to look for, how to use the worksheets, how to provide the feedback and get the input needed to go to the next stage? We have had some very successful pilot programs.
We have several states that have taken those materials that we developed and are now taking that the next step, doing something at their state level. It varies state to state, depending on the size of the association there, the interest from the growers, the environmental needs, and pressures they may be getting from the state and local level. What comes next after the manual? In a state like Iowa, for example, which is the number one producing soybean state (every other year--they go back and forth with Illinois), they have a very aggressive program. They will end up actually not only with the implementation of the manual with their growers, but a certification once you go through the process, which is very exciting to get to that point, to actually have producers want to do this, look for ways to build on the conservation they're doing, take the next steps, and have comprehensive planning and to be certified for doing so. Not every state has the resources that Iowa has. They have a full time person on our association staff that is helping guide this and promote this and train others at the local and county level. But states like Missouri come to mind, Minnesota come to mind, where they have sought out state help. Departments of Agriculture are involved, Extension is involved. Every state is a little bit different. They're taking the basic information and adapting it to the local and state level and saying, hey, what works? Many of our areas have wetlands problems, some of the states are bone dry and don't have any wetlands problems, so you can't really say that every state should be the same. And I'm thankful that we're seeing some creativity and ownership of the manual, in trying to make it work for the individual in the local area.
The third phase, if we, Lord willing, can find the money to do so, would be to make this interactive on the Web. The idea would be to be able to plug in your problems or your questions and actually get feedback on-line. It's a very exciting concept. There are others who are doing something similar in other areas. We think it could work, but it obviously takes a lot of money, a lot of time and expertise to do something like that. So that's kind of a long-term goal, because obviously once this is published - though we try to keep it as general as we can and still effective -- it's out of date. Things are changing so rapidly -- practices, technology, new varieties of soybeans, new problems occur, new regulations occur. So how do we keep this relevant and up to date? We think the Web might be the way to do that in the long run.
I've talked with some of the dairy folks and other commodities who have considered doing something like this, and if you are interested, I would encourage you to do so. I think if you're in a government agency, if you have expertise and guidance that you can offer, I would encourage you to do that as well. We sought out every resource we could, for example, South Carolina. South Carolina had done a very good BMP manual, and we liked the way that it looked. We went to those folks and said, "Teach us, tell us the problems, tell us what you did wrong, we don't want to re-invent the wheel, we want to learn from what you did and make it one step better." So I encourage you to work with groups like mine. We need your expertise, we need your help, your direction, and help in identifying resources sometimes. The help may be technical, it may be financial. But speaking as someone for whom this really was just a concept in 93 and 94 - to see it implemented, and see farmers talking about it, and to go to a farmer's home and find this greased up, and tattered and torn, and for them to ask questions, and say, "Now, I'm not sure about this." - that is when I know that it was worth the effort and the time. And there's still more to do, there's going to be constantly more to do, but it is a good start. I think it shows the commitment of the soybean growers to good conservation, their commitment to staying on the farm and being profitable, and their commitment that being profitable does not mean that you can't be a good environmentalist and a good conservationist.
Question: What does the certification actually certify? What does it mean to someone if they see that?
Krysta Harden: The Iowa plan is a pilot project. What they're trying to accomplish is at the state and local level, some certification that you've gone through this assessment and planning process. Now whether it could provide you safe harbor, those kinds of issues are still to be determined. That is what they're trying to work out in Iowa. I don't know how successful they're going to be. There are those at the state level who are very hopeful in working with them, to help make that certification process mean something - that once you have that certification, you're guaranteeing that you're doing these practices, you're accomplishing these goals, and that it would provide you some kind of safe harbor. I'm not quite sure what it would be, but it would be a state driven activity.
Question: How are different states financing the efforts? Are check-off monies being used?
Krysta Harden: For some of the training workshops check-off funds may have been used by the states in the implementation stage, for information, providing lunch or maybe mailings. But no check-off monies went into this publication.
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