COMMENTARY: U of M needs to take whole farm approach

Agri News

Thursday, January 3, 2008
http://webstar.postbulletin.com/agrinews/290636797634161.bsp

COMMENTARY:
U of M needs to take whole farm approach

By George Boody

As was reported in Agri News recently, the University of Minnesota's Board of Regents has given the go-ahead for the university to study what it is doing now and what it will need to do in the future to support Minnesota agriculture.

The Land Stewardship Project applauds this decision to do strategic planning at one of the premier land grant universities in the nation. However, you can often determine the answer by the question you ask, as well as how you ask it.

That's why we think the university should re-examine how it is asking questions for its "Agricultural Strategic Study."

It appears this study presumes a separation between crop and livestock systems by splitting the analysis into "animal agriculture" (to be completed in the spring) and "plant agriculture" (to be completed in 2009).

This breakdown makes it much more likely that the university's consultants will treat the visioning in terms of supporting highly-industrialized approaches that specialize in one area without taking into consideration impacts on other sectors of agriculture, the environment, the rural community at large, even the desires of consumers.

This could stack the deck against a landscape-level understanding of the impacts and opportunities for agriculture and the economics that focus on diverse farming systems.

Instead, the university should ask a simple question: What characteristics of future agricultural systems will create resiliency, prosperity for farmers and rural communities, as well as the good food, fiber and energy products society needs? This question allows the conversation to be broadened to address the options for raising crops and livestock together on the land, to address triple bottom line needs for high levels of stewardship, profitability and social responsibility.

Why is this so important? Separating plant and animal production into enterprises focused on maximizing yields has resulted in numerous problems for our land and communities. For example, an analysis done by University and state agency researchers looked at some 3,900 feedlot permits by Minnesota counties to determine how much phosphorus was being applied to the land in the form of manure. The study found that small farms (less than 100 animal units) had a median phosphorus shortage of 17.3 pound per acre, while medium-sized operations (100-299 animal units) had a surplus of 4.5 pounds per acre. The largest feedlots studied (300-1,000 animal units) were producing 38.2 pounds of excess phosphorus for each acre of land to which their manure was applied.

What was the variable? The larger feedlots tended to have less land per animal available to spread the manure -- they averaged 503 animal units and 558 acres of land available for manure disposal. This isn't so much a size issue as an argument for diversity -- integrating livestock and crops on the land means farms are more likely to have a variety of crops growing nearby, thus providing land for manure application.

Research conducted in western and southeast Minnesota by the Multiple Benefits of Agriculture initiative showed that diversifying monocultures of corn and soybeans with more pasture, forage, small grains and perennial energy crops can reduce sediment and nitrogen runoff dramatically. In fact, the modeling studies done by the initiative showed the environmental benefits occurred even as the number of dairy and beef cattle were increased in the watersheds studied.

The future requires farmers, businesses, consumers, researchers and policy makers to make agriculture whole. That's why it is so critical that the U of M pursue this Agricultural Strategic Study with the idea that plant and animal agriculture are not two distinct industrial processes. I encourage university officials to undertake a strategic study that is as diverse and integrated as a resilient agriculture needs to be.

— Boody is with the Land Stewardship Project

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