PCM in 10th year of working with farmers

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — The Precision Conservation Program is in its 10th year of helping farmers adopt in-field practices that impact environmental goals without risking their bottom line.

Greg Goodwin, Illinois Corn Growers Association director of PCM programs, and Laura Gentry, ICGA director of water quality research, looked back at the program’s successes and looked ahead to its potential growth during an Illinois Corn TV episode.

“We launched the program with a $5.35 million Regional Conservation Partnership Program grant through Natural Resources Conservation Service. We wanted to start an effort which evolved into PCM as a response to the Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy that came out in Illinois in 2015,” said Gentry, who was on the ground floor when the program started.

The primary goal of the Illinois NLRS is a 45% reduction in both nitrogen and total phosphorus loads, with interim targets set at a 15% nitrogen decrease and a 25% total phosphorus decrease by this year.

“We knew that Illinois farmers needed to address the non-point source pollution that was leaving fields as nitrate and phosphorous. So, we started a farmer service program, but we knew that we needed to have a strong financial focus,” Gentry said.

“We also knew that we wanted to make it very data-focused to help farmers understand what they were doing, how their management decisions were impacting local water quality and what it was doing in terms of their financials.

“Tying the financials and the environmental assessment piece of it was important. We had to have data for that, and that was kind of springboard for it all.”

One-On-One

Among the most valuable pieces of PCM are the specialists working one-on-one with farmers.

“It’s our conservation specialists. It’s that one-on-one component that we offer — you can’t just AI that stuff. You’ve got to have the people. Some people say they’re always trying to get the people out of the loop. You can’t get the person out of the loop,” Gentry said.

“Having a specialist there for a farmer to sit down across the table from and have a conversation with, I think that that piece is really critical and the data piece of it is really critical. That’s what makes us pretty special.

“Our deliverable is when the specialist comes to the farmer to deliver the farm report, which is called the Resource Analysis and Assessment Plan. The specialist delivering the RAAP, which is all the data to the farmer, is pretty important.”

Goodwin joined the PCM team in 2017 and said one of the biggest accomplishments has been an expansion of its partnership with PepsiCo that brings value to farmers through the incentive program to help offset their financial risk for conservation adoption.

The exclusive program was designed by PCM and PepsiCo provides financial incentives for farmers to utilize cover crops, nitrogen reduction and reduced tillage. Farmers are eligible to receive up to $35 per acre for the practices.

There is no cap on the number of acres. PepsiCo uses the carbon credits produced to account for supply chain emissions reductions.

In March 2023, PepsiCo announced a $216 million multiyear investment in strategic partnerships with farmer-facing organizations, including PCM, Practical Farmers of Iowa and Soil and Water Outcomes Fund.

Several months later, Walmart announced it would partner with PepsiCo and PCM.

Growth

“We’ve seen that program grow now to about 400,000 acres as of the end of 2024 and hope to continue to expand that moving forward. I think that, along with the simplicity of that program, the importance of the conservation specialist role and how they help farmers navigate the data side of sustainability and conservation programs are among the biggest accomplishments,” Goodwin said.

“I also think just the way in which the team continues to refine and add value to the RAAP reports every year is really, really impressive. And, again, speaking to the data side and how we’re trying to add value back to the farmer and put that data back to work for them. I don’t see other programs doing it in the way that PCM does that.”

In talking to farmers at different conferences, Goodwin said they are “starving for knowledge.”

“The RAAP really breaks the data down in a way that adds value and knowledge back to the farmer about their own operation, comparing them to themselves in time. And each year they continue to participate, the greater value they have back to them,” he said.

“Then also the comparisons that are drawn across farmers that’s anonymize and aggregated across regions in the program is really valuable, as well.”

Distilleries

Four leading spirits companies and the Kentucky Distillers’ Association recently teamed with PCM and the Kentucky Corn Growers Association to launch a five-year, $2.8 million initiative for Kentucky corn farmers.

The collaborative Kentucky partnership, formed by Brown-Forman, Diageo North America, Heaven Hill Brands and Suntory Global Spirits, will support farmers by hiring additional conservation specialists to maximize management education beginning in this year.

PCM will work with farmers in the central Kentucky region to implement regenerative corn growing practices on more than 100,000 acres throughout five years.

With these practices and new on-farm resources, the goal is to ease administrative burdens and identify economic and environmental benefits that can be scaled.

“That is also a really cool partnership between both ends of the value chain from the farmers that are growing the corn that goes directly into Kentucky bourbon and several of the companies that own distilleries in that region,” Goodwin said.

Addressing Challenges

Gentry was asked how the program addresses some of the major challenges farmers face when they begin to adopt conservation practices.

“Farming is complicated, and you don’t just change one thing. It’s usually you change one thing, which means you’ve got to change another thing and then a third thing, and then you wrap around and find out you didn’t do the first thing right,” she said.

“It’s just like the cyclical cycle of changes sometimes and you’re just always refining and responding, refining and responding. Then things change like your number of acres or your soils and you have adapt to that.

“Farmers have lots on their plate, and I think that it’s the being able to respond to different changes in an informed way. That’s why the data piece is so important.”

Among the biggest challenges is responding to carbon markets and understanding what opportunities are available through different incentive programs.

“Some of the NRCS programs are really great deals that they have certain restrictions with them that you have to know about and knowing which programs can stack with each other. All of those are challenges and then the technical expertise of understanding how to get into strip-tilling or which fields may be good to start with for maybe looking at your nitrogen management. Maybe you could change your nitrogen or reduce your nitrogen application on one or two fields and see how that goes,” Gentry said.

“Those are the kind of challenges, just knowing where to start, having a good place and having a person who can navigate that with you. That’s what the specialists are so good at and that’s what we try to train them to do.”