by Natasha Paris and Jeff Hadachek
University of Wisconsin-Division of Extension and UW-Madison
Sustainability is a common topic of discussion in agriculture. This is often viewed from the environmental perspective in terms of how agriculture may impact natural resources, either positively or negatively. But sustainability actually has three facets: environmental, financial, and social. Social sustainability involves the wellbeing of the people impacted. Financial sustainability involves making decisions to promote the financial viability of an entity.
When discussing the implementation of conservation or soil health practices such as cover crops or reduced tillage, discussions often center around their contributions to the environmental sustainability of a farm and their impact on the greater landscape. But the financial sustainability of these practices is key, as even the most environmentally friendly farm in the world can’t stay in business if it doesn't turn a profit.
Determining the financial impact of these practices both in terms of costs and long-term benefits has historically been difficult. That led to the creation of the Soil Health Decision Tool, a model that allows farmers to input their own costs to see how their bottom line would be affected if they implemented specific conservation practices.
The Soil Health Decision Tool, available at go.wisc.edu/SHDecisionTool, has farmers start by selecting corn or soybeans as the crop they want to grow. The farmer then enters the price he or she expects to receive when selling that crop at the end of the season. Slider bars allow one to select the amount of nitrogen they want to apply, the nitrogen credit from any manure applied, herbicide costs, tillage cost, and anticipated yield before any changes to practices are made.
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Next, the farmer decides what changes to the system they'd like to try. When it comes to cover crops one can look at the cost of the seed, the effect on nitrogen available to the main crop, changes in herbicide costs, and any extra cost associated with terminating the cover crop. The farmer can also change their cost of tillage in either direction to factor in the reduced passes across the field or the increased cost of equipment if they're changing the tillage regimen. If the cover crop will be harvested as forage, they can add the value of that forage to the equation. Finally, the tool will ask the farmer to consider if their yield will be positively or negatively affected, and if they are receiving any cost-share incentives to adopt these practices.
The tool provides graphs that show the probability of the net return of the two sets of practices on a per acre basis, with yellow (lighter) representing the conventional status quo practices and green (darker) representing the soil health practices. The taller the portion of the graph the higher probability of that outcome. As one slides the various numbers around based on their projections, the results update immediately. That way one doesn’t have to come up with a complete set of information and wait for it to run and then start over again. Farmers are also provided information about the likelihood that either scenario will break even, which is an important factor in this era of projected negative margins.
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While this tool is only a model and can’t account for every in-field situation, it is a way for farmers and agribusiness professionals to visualize the impact of various environmental practices on their finances in pursuit of whole-farm sustainability.
Contact Natasha Paris, Regional Crops Educator, at 608-264-6509 or natasha.paris@wisc.edu, or visit cropsandsoils.extension.wisc.edu for more information.
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