The Puzzle

The Problem

Over the last 100 years, US agriculture has led the world in productivity and efficiency. While this has provided abundant affordable food, there is a growing awareness of unintended side effects that threaten its long-term viability, including declining soil quality, biodiversity loss, worsening water quality, and greater exposure for farmers to market and weather shocks.

A Solution?

In response, there is growing interest in the use of sustainable, regenerative, and climate-smart agricultural practices. Experimental research has shown that practices like cover crops, diversified crop rotations, reduced tillage, and integration of livestock and crop production can have significant environmental benefits and can also improve yields and farm resilience to extreme weather.

Reality Check

However, adoption of these practices remains low, largely because of variability in agronomic and economic performance for farmers, off-farm community obstacles, and insufficient market or policy incentives for their use. In addition, farmers are often told what kinds of practices they should use, rather than being able to do what makes most sense for their farm and situation.

We flip that script by putting farmers in the driver’s seat in the development of innovative technical, management, and policy solutions to the challenges faced by modern agriculture.