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DTN partnering with Farmers for Soil Health

ADVERTORIAL

Farmers have long been skeptical of sharing too much about their operations. Land rental agreements, prices paid for seed or other inputs, the actual yields generated by those inputs -- these data points all create the competitive advantage each farmer has over others farming in their area.

That concern about oversharing is at the heart of the United States Department of Agriculture's move away from using farmer surveys to track acreage and production numbers. In the 1990s the response rate to those surveys were 80% to 85%. Today, as few as 60% of farmers actually respond to those surveys.

At the same time, data-driven agriculture has exploded both the amount of information farmers are gathering and their need to carefully share that data with others to get the greatest benefit from it. Data sharing is part of qualifying for the many carbon credit, soil conservation and other efforts that fall under the umbrella of "sustainability" programs.

"What we try to do with farmers is be as transparent as we can be," says Ben West, who leads the Farmers for Soil Health (FSH) program that is paying farmers to plant cover crops. DTN is a partner in the FSH program, assisting in the sign-up of participants and processing the data those participants share.

"We want to be completely transparent on what data we will share, who we will share it with and what we won't share," West says. The FSH effort is a farmer-directed program created to help farmers interested in cover crops to dip a toe into that water. Eligible farmers receive a three-year contract payment of $50 per acre. Payments are structured as $25 the first year, $15 the second year and $10 the third year. The program is a collaborative initiative led by the Soy Checkoff, Pork Checkoff and National Corn Growers Association. Funds are from a $95 million USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant.

A common sensitivity is "any data where farmers can see a pathway in the future to regulate them." Farmers in the Gulf of Mexico hypoxia zone, for example, worry about sharing detailed fertilizer application information.

For farmers to take the next step in data sharing requires adequate value, transparency and trust. "Trust is really the first thing," says an Iowa farmer who's looked into a number of carbon- and energy-related programs. "We have groups that we will share data with, because we trust them and because we see a value from sharing that data. We also have companies that we will not share data with, regardless of the dollars involved, because we don't trust where our information is going."

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-- For more information on Farmers for Soil Health, visit https://farmersforsoilhealth.com/…

-- Information on DTN farmer-focused products can be found at https://www.dtn.com/…

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