By Jana Rose Schleis
Inside a barn in southwest Missouri, Macauley Kincaid operates a massive contraption of wood and metal affixed with pipes, pulleys and wheels.
"This was like state of the art for its time. I mean, this was the bee's knees back in the '80s," he said.
With the help of gravity, recently harvested barley seeds sift through four levels of screens in the mill. Kindcaid is the second generation in his family to cultivate crops for seed production, and he's still using the technology his uncle invested in 40 years ago.
"For every crop we clean, they have different recommended screen sizes and different air pressure that you run on each seed … you get larger seeds very clean and little to no weed seeds," he said. "That's where you want to be."
Kincaid conducts the laborious seed testing and cleaning process so his product can be certified. From the sorting elevator, the seeds are bagged and sold to be planted by farmers throughout southwest Missouri and the Midwest. But they won't be harvested.
Kincaid sells cover crops vegetation that grows in the offseason to keep otherwise bare ground covered to reduce erosion and retain moisture.
Need for regenerative farming
After decades of industrial scale farming, Midwestern soil is suffering. That's on top of increasingly severe weather caused by climate change putting farmers at risk.
Many are turning to conservation methods such as cover crops to revive the soil and increase farmland resiliency. It's a movement called regenerative agriculture.
Kincaid sells a product that can launch farmers into a new way of cultivating the land. An essential part of his job is to answer questions and provide guidance for those new to this practice, which he feels comfortable doing because he has firsthand experience with the crops he's selling.
"I think a lot of the reason why I have repeat customers is because they know that when they call Mac, I'm going to give them the honest truth of the information," Kincaid said.
He describes his farm as "100% regenerative" and aims to farm in a way that heals nature.
"We just believe that this is the way of the future, and it will help our farm financially," Kincaid said. "It will help the environment, whether that's wildlife … the insect life … it helps the atmosphere, it helps water quality. We also help the fishermen downriver from us."
Results may vary
Although cover crop adoption has been growing, the practice is deployed on only about 5% of U.S. farmland acres, according to the most recent census of agriculture.
There are a variety of reasons farmers may be hesitant to plant cover crops. There is the upfront cost and labor of buying and planting a second crop that won't yield an immediate monetary return.
Jennifer Simmelink, a farmer and executive director of the Kansas Soil Health Alliance, an organization that promotes sustainable farming practices, said it comes down to this:
"Can the operator, and can the farm, absorb the risk that comes with doing something new, knowing that it might take a few years for the full profitability to be seen?"
She said the transition from conventional farming methods to regenerative ones can be challenging. Even if cover crops result in long-term gains for soil health, they could be a short-term disaster if the cover crop doesn't align with weather, soil and climate conditions.
In an industry with slim margins, farmers aren't incentivized to take that risk.
"It's so hard to put out: if you plant this, this will be your results, because it can vary," Simmelink said.
Regional research
The University of Missouri Center for Regenerative Agriculture is now leading a national project with more than 40 researchers looking to decrease that variance. Scientists are working with farmers to test how cover crop species perform across 14 different regions. This fall, the project expanded to include participants in over half of U.S. states.
"Our objective is to improve cover crop varieties and release new cover crop varieties that improve on the existing ones," said Solveig Hanson, who coordinates the national cover crop breeding network.
The project aims to boost overall cover crop usage by exploring the scientific, economic and social barriers farmers face. Researchers hope to bolster the industry by creating new seed varieties that can thrive in certain regions, climates and soil conditions.
"Then we plant them in nurseries, we observe them, we select the best ones and advance them," Hanson said.
Researchers hope their tests will give farmers more assurances that certified seeds will work on their land, specifically. These "named varieties" a kind of name-brand seed could be less of a gamble than untested, uncleaned seed mixtures of unknown quality, colloquially referred to as "bin run seed."
But convincing farmers to use name-brand seed as opposed to cheaper, uncertified seed mixtures, which they can buy from a neighbor, depends on the ability of researchers and seed companies to prove the potential results are worth the higher price.
"What there's market space for really translates into what farmers see value in, and what they see enough added value in to pay whatever additional cost there is for a named variety," Hanson said.
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