More Cooperation, Less Distraction
Kathleen Glass, Vice President of Marketing, AquaSpy
What is Climate Smart Agriculture? I think Climate Smart is really about soil and water management.
It’s interesting being here in Southern California, which right now is in the middle of an atmospheric river. That is one of those symptoms of our climate challenges. If we had been talking earlier this year, we would have been bemoaning our lack of water and how arid everything was. Then the El Niño came and just north of us there was a foot of rain yesterday.
These kinds of events really cause you to think harder about climate and Climate Smart Agriculture. The main tenets of that are so impactful with these climate challenges. For instance, conservation tillage and cover crops protect the soil during heavy rain. Things like soil and water management, irrigation, managing your grazing and other practices — these aren't new practices. But I think in some ways, they’ve gotten lost along the way. There were popular conservation practices that said, “This field should lay fallow.” And yet what was happening was either wind would come along and blow that topsoil away, or heavy rain would wash it away.
Building healthy soil is part of good irrigation management because healthy soils are able to better utilize the water that's available or hold onto that moisture
With Climate Smart Agriculture and focusing more on soil and water management, it's a different perspective. When it's very dry, we’re thinking about the best ways to utilize the water that's available. You are timing your irrigation throughout the season to minimize those inputs, while still getting a good yield. Conversely, when you have a lot of water, hopefully you have been using cover crops or rotations. Building healthy soil is part of good irrigation management because healthy soils are able to better utilize the water that's available or hold onto that moisture so it's refilling the water table and not running down into the ocean.
AquaSpy has been working with a group in Egypt, and their soil conditions were so bad they didn't really even have dirt. It was just substrate. But they were heavily invested in [rebuilding their soils and] trying to grow better crops. It's taken 3 years, but we're able to see a change. Water used to just sit on the top layer. But now we're actually seeing the water soaking in, because through their efforts we're seeing that improvement. It can happen. It's really going back to these practices that are more like smallholder farms — more holistic, integrated kinds of growing.
AquaSpy and myself, personally, are very involved in groups like the Global Ag Tech Alliance and Leading Harvest. It’s really near and dear to my heart, and I think these initiatives can play a role in the Climate Smart conversation.
With Climate Smart, it's not as much about technology per se as changing or evolving practices — or stopping some practices or adopting other practices. Those aren't things that you do overnight.
I've only been in agriculture for 3 years. My background is IoT and telecommunications, and I have sold those sorts of technologies into various industries in my past. From that experience, my observation is that for agriculture and ag tech adoption, it is a long cycle.
Row crops are actually quite technology focused — look at the inside of a combine — but in specialty crops, agriculture is kind of a late-adopter industry. And on top of that, a buying cycle is 1-3 years. So, it is vitally important to really understand what technology you're going to be adopting or how you will make changes. With Climate Smart, it's not as much about technology per se as changing or evolving practices — or stopping some practices or adopting other practices. Those aren't things that you do overnight.
When I came into agriculture I saw an opportunity for more collaboration among the constituents, both collaboration with the providers and the growers, as well as the providers and the ag tech developers themselves. We were just at The VISION Conference, and we were talking about this idea of coopetition. We're not enemies anymore. We have to be collaborators in a new industry, and it's new as far as ag tech goes. We need to work together to help with the adoption.
So, the reason we are participating with AquaSpy in the Global Ag Tech Alliance, and Women in Ag Tech, and with Leading Harvest is that I'm seeing the opportunity to come together via these communities. For this idea of coopetition to help figure things out, we need to talk about things like standard APIs. How do we do more effective field trials? How can we better share that output and create these?
It's challenging, especially around Climate Smart because the variety of crops is so different. You can't say ‘This is the way you do it, you all have to do this,’ because cotton versus lettuce versus corn is all different. Regions are different. Your soils are different. Your weather is different. So, it has to be outcomes based. But we need to figure out how we can share these best practices to go through these process improvements. And so that's why we're passionate about collaborating with these other folks to help move this Climate Smart initiative forward together.
To make all this happen we have to have patience. Climate Smart Agriculture is a journey. It's not going to be an instant fix. We need to share. We need to collaborate. I'm excited to see groups of growers coming together to create environments where there are field trials. Collaboration with universities and Extension. UNL TAPS is something I talk about a lot. We've been supporting different master irrigator programs. There's one just starting up in Mississippi coming up later this month. There's one in Colorado. There's one in the Texas Panhandle, and Oklahoma.
Know that not only is [Climate Smart Agriculture] a journey, but there is no single right answer. It's going to be a lot of different things that work well for different growers.
Whatever we can do to support more testing evaluation, sharing outcomes, sharing best practices, making it possible to test and to touch and to experience that through testimonials and case studies. That's really what we all have to come together to do, and know that not only is it a journey, but there is no single right answer. It's going to be a lot of different things that work well for different growers.
Climate Smart Agriculture does not necessarily equal carbon credits. I think we got a little distracted. Obviously, an output of Climate Smart is that we will keep more carbon in the ground where it belongs. But at the same time — getting back to the journey part — carbon looked like a shortcut. “Let's go straight to the carbon credits.” Well, no. We need to start with the soil.
Unhealthy soil is never going to hold the water or the carbon it should. So, we have to start with the soil, get the soil healthy, get the biome healthy, and then from there things will start to improve.
We can’t be distracted. Patience, persistence. We have to keep at it.
