Testing Fungicides ‘From The Ground Up’ with Farmer-Led Science in Action
Ed Mershon has been in the farming business for several decades, and the farm has served him well. Despite the success of his production business, Ed believes farming is all about learning, adapting, and leading. That encouraged him to join four other grain farmers to participate in the From the Ground Up (FTGUp) Project, experimenting with alternative fungicides. “We’re testing out how fungicide helps corn and soybeans. We are trying to see if there’s an economic benefit to putting fungicide on them,” Ed explains.
FTGUp is a farmer-led project in Ohio and Missouri, working to improve the real-world, on-farm performance of conservation practices across the Midwest. Backed by researchers from Ohio State, University of Missouri, Central State University, Lincoln University, and non-profit partner Solutions from the Land, the project brings farmers like Ed to the center of conservation agricultural research. It focuses on exploring three big questions: How do conservation practices perform under real-world conditions? What causes variability between farms? And what kinds of policies and support do farmers need to keep adopting these practices?
In this project, Ed and his fellow farmers are getting hands-on with science, comparing the effects of high- and low-quality fungicides on corn and soybeans, applied by drone at different stages of growth. Some zones are left untreated as a control, giving them a chance to track differences in yield, disease resistance, and soil health. It’s field-scale research with boots on the ground and data in the dirt. At the end of the research, the farmers hope to come up with recommendations on best practices in the application of fungicides that will yield optimum agronomic, economic, and environmental outcomes.
With support of FTGUp researchers and staff, these farmers were able to come together, discuss their ideas and form a research question they wanted to explore. Working collaboratively, they designed their own study, decided what to test, how to collect data, and discussed how the results could help improve their farming practices.
“FTGUp is different from anything else I think we have going on out there right now in the depth to which we’ve released control of the project to farmers,” FTGUp Project Lead, Professor and Director of The Ohio State University’s Agroecosystem Management Program, Dr. Douglas Jackson-Smith explains.
Apart from Ed’s team, there are eight other groups of farmers who are investigating different research questions across the Mid-West. “This project was the culmination of a lot of work where we wanted farmers to be in the driver’s seat, and really turn the keys over to them instead of researchers inventing things and handing them out and trying to persuade farmers to use them,” Dr. Jackson-Smith adds.
Farmer motivation
As fate would have it, Ed is the kind of farmer who’s always eager to try something new and shake up the routine. “I like to participate and try new things,” he says with a smile that hints at both curiosity and grit, when asked what motivated him to join this project. “I decided to get involved in this project because I think it would benefit a lot of farmers.”
Although the research is still in its early stages, Ed says he’s already benefiting from the concept. “Working with other farmers has helped me grow personally and professionally,” he says. “We sharpen each other because we all talk about our different techniques, how we do stuff. And we learn from each other. We share ideas.”
There’s a grounded pride in Ed’s voice when he talks about the research project being farmer-led. “We are the hands-on people. We are the actual ones that do it. We don’t do it as a novelty. It’s a business for us. It’s a lifestyle.” Ed is confident that other producers will more quickly adopt the recommendations of this research because it was led by farmers like him.
By Joseph Opoku Gakpo & Lauren Spirk
