IL Corn: Valued Partner In Two USDA Funded Climate-Smart Proposals

Sep 20, 2022

By Lindsay Mitchell

Farmers for Soil Health

Funded at $95 million, the Farmers for Soil Health (FSH) project will incentivize farmers to plant additional acres of cover crops. The FSH collaboration includes soy checkoff, Pork Checkoff, National Corn Growers Association and American Soybean Association, resulting in a farmer-led cover crop program that advances the use of soil health practices, meets sustainability goals, and improves farmer profitability.

FSH’s goal is to encourage farmers to expand their adoption of cover crops to 30 million acres by 2030. IL Corn along with Illinois Soybean Association (ISA) and the Illinois Pork Producers Association - are partners in this project via their national associations, but also look forward to contributing the direct farmer conversation and mentorship that will empower the additional planting of cover crops in Illinois.

Field to Market

A second climate-smart proposal by Field to Market is funded at $70 million and includes the Precision Conservation Management (PCM) program as a valued partner. PCM is a premiere conservation program offered by IL Corn and ISA, providing conservation adoption advice and reviewing financial outcomes from conservation adoption. PCM looks forward to being the partner that will interface with Illinois farmers to deliver innovative financial initiatives to increase conservation adoption.

corn

“Via a letter of support, IL Corn promised an additional $100,000 of funding and $50,000 of in-kind services for the Field to Market Innovative Finance Initiative project. We are heavily invested in climate-smart programs, vetted by farmers and workable for farmers,” said IL Corn Growers Association President Marty Marr, a farmer from New Berlin, IL.

“The transition to climate-smart agricultural practices is a journey that many farmers cannot undertake alone,” said Field to Market President Scott Herndon. “We are incredibly grateful to be selected as a recipient of this funding, as it allows us to increase the availability of innovative strategies that reduce the financial and agronomic risks for farmers in adopting climate-smart practices.”

Out of an original budget of $1 billion, the USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program awarded $2.8 billion in grants to 70 selected collaborative projects and partnerships. Ultimately, USDA’s anticipated investment will triple to more than $3 billion in pilots that will create market opportunities for American commodities produced using climate-smart production practices. These initial projects will expand markets for climate-smart commodities, leverage the greenhouse gas benefits of climate-smart commodity production and provide direct, meaningful benefits to production agriculture, including for small and underserved farmers.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”