Regenerative practices, such as cover crops, diversified rotations, and replacing fertilizer with manure, all promise benefits.
But adoption rates are still low among farmers, said Doug Jackson-Smith, Kellog Chair of the AgroEcosystem Management program at OSU.
"Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent just in Ohio to incentivize farmers to adopt," he said. "And despite all that, adoption rates for most of these practices are less than 10%. So there's an adoption gap puzzle and this new project kind of walks into that arena and says, 'okay, we shouldn't keep doing things the way we always do things.'"
In an effort to make headway on this problem and promote sustainability, the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a total of $70 million to research projects in June. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture gave $10 million to each project.
The Ohio State University was one of seven projects selected for funding. Working with Central State, Lincoln University and the University of Missouri, OSU will focus on translating years of research into sustainable agriculture practices and bring it to the working farm world.
The collaborative research kicked off on July 1 with plans to build infrastructure over the next six months. Researchers will recruit and partner with farmers during this time to prepare for the first season of fieldwork in 2025.
To turn the disconnect between research and farming practice on its head, researchers are trying to find out what does not translate or perform well in real-world farming situations.
Set up in a three tier system, the project will connect farmers, scientists and other partners to get these ideas off the ground and into the real world.
Farmers are the root of this research. According to Jackson-Smith, having farmers take the lead on designing and implementing local projects gives researchers a new perspective.
"We learn things about farming practices we wouldn't learn otherwise as scientists and we bring the conversation to a whole new place in terms of developing and identifying the innovation pathways we're going to need to solve the problems that we're facing," he said.
After working directly with farmers in the local tier, researchers will talk with leaders in the communities they are in. For example, a lot of farmland is rented so landlords can bring a new perspective to the research.
Lastly, project partners want these examples to go national, so they plan to push for their project to become policy and templates for success.
“The core of this is a network of on farm research, where farmers will be very involved in designing the kinds of things they want to evaluate, what practices they think are worth evaluating, and helping decide what outcomes we need to measure," Jackson-Smith said. "So what are the answers? The questions they need answered before they can move forward?”
Projects were selected based on three major components: they thought big on the systems level, brought people together from different fields of work and included the community and stakeholders in their research, said Amy Ganguli, National Program Leader at NIFA.
“We look at these projects as having life beyond that five years," Ganguli said. "And so many of these projects have very strong continuity plans and we often see additional proposals that are built upon the findings of these individual projects.”
The selection process is highly competitive for NIFA grants. According to Ganguli, experts from across the country help out in a rigorous peer review process to select the projects.
"Those proposals are reviewed for their responsiveness to the program's requirements as well as the scientific merit of what they're proposing," she said. "In general, this program supports visionary projects that have the potential to transform our food and agriculture system."
For more information about all seven projects selected for funding, visit nifa.usda.gov.
