By Emily Cabrera
What works on one farm may fail on another because every operation is affected by different weather, soils, water availability, markets, pests, diseases and countless other variables. If agriculture isn’t one thing, it follows that farmers aren’t, either.
Yet conversations about conservation often assume farmers fall into two camps: those who use good conservation practices and those who don’t.
Maria Teresa Tancredi recently earned her doctorate in the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences after spending five years exploring why reality is far more complicated. Working in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences with advisor Jennifer Jo Thompson, whose research connects agricultural science and social sustainability, Tancredi interviewed 86 farmers representing a wide range of production systems across the country. She published her findings in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation this spring.
Rather than simply asking whether farmers used cover crops — a common conservation practice of growing plants between cash-crop harvests to improve soil health, suppress weeds and reduce soil erosion — Tancredi wanted to understand how they made decisions, what their days looked like, what challenges they faced, and what mattered most to them.
Source : uga.edu