The Water Table

#128 | Bridging the Divide: Tenant Farmers, Landowners & Conservation Decisions

• Jamie Duininck • Episode 128

Share episode


Episode Description

Who makes the decisions when it comes to implementing conservation practices on rented farmland? Ruth McCabe, Heartland Co-op Conservation Manager, discusses the pivotal role of non-operating landowners in conservation decisions on rented farmland. Listen in as Jamie and Ruth discuss the spectrum of landowner engagement and how to encourage land stewardship across the board.


Chapters:

00:00Welcome to The Water Table

01:01Working with tenant farmers

01:25The perspective of landowners

02:30Letting landowners off the hook?

03:30Generations removed from farming

04:45Preventing soil loss, and cleaning water

05:38In-field conservation vs. edge-of-field conservation 

08:18What trips their trigger?

09:04Erosion and incentivizing conservation practices


Related content:


Find us on social media!


Listen on these podcast platforms:


Visit our website to explore more episodes & water management education.


Ruth McCabe (00:00):

I work in this world of trying to help tenant farmers specifically adopt practices that offer some level of ecosystem services back to the environment, but that also are not going to torpedo that farmer's margin on that field. When you get tenant farmers, or you get non-operating landowners, those are two ends of an extreme spectrum where the tenant farmers are... You might have a trust of 17 grandkids that own a property, but they don't understand that soil isn't a static resource. Non-operating landowners, their ears perk up, and they're like, "Wait, what? A short-term profit?"

Speaker 2 (00:30):

Welcome back to The Water Table for the second part of our conversation with Ruth McCabe.

Ruth McCabe (00:36):

And you get into the whole conversation about tenants versus landowners versus owner-operators. That's probably a conversation for another time, but I work predominantly with tenants. And so, I work in this world of trying to help tenant farmers specifically adopt practices that offers some level of ecosystem services back to the environment, but that also are not going to torpedo that farmer's margin on that field, or their ROI on that field for that year. Because as a tenant farmer in Iowa, if you're on a cash rent lease, for example, I mean, you have no idea whether or not three years from now you're even going to be farming that field again. So are you going to be willing to take a three to five-year yield hit? Probably not. And so, I'm working in that space, which is a very different space from the space of owner-operators.

(01:22):

Anyway, I'll stop.

Speaker 2 (01:23):

Yeah, and landowners that are renting their land, how do you see them in regards to their perspective of these two practices? And as we've been talking about, whether it's... I mean, they aren't the guy making the money on it, but what do they think about their land and that...

Ruth McCabe (01:45):

That's all over the map, too, yeah. Maybe three or four times a year I'll be meeting with small-groups of absentee or non-operating landowners who really want to learn more about conservation practices. And there's a ton of research that supports this, too, so I don't feel bad saying it out loud. I'll call out the elephant in the room. But what you see in the research is really borne out by my own experience, and that is that when you get tenant farmers, or you get non-operating landowners, those are two ends of an extreme spectrum where the tenant farmers are really incentivized, especially if they're on cash rent lease basis year to year, they're paying top dollar for those acres. They want to get as much as they can out of those acres. And you get these non-operating landowners who are getting top dollar out of those acres, and they want to continue that.

(02:36):

And so, I think in the discourse in the lay public, especially the environmentalist public, the discourse is, well, it's farmers that are making these bad decisions, and I'm like, "From my experience, we're really letting the landowners off," 'cause I've had conversations with a lot of landowners who have said, "Oh, well, golly, I don't want to reduce my rent to share in that short-term yield loss with my tenant farmer. I'm not going to reduce what I'm getting per acre to share in that loss so that my farmer uses practices that are ultimately going to be good for my land long-term." I see a lot of that, and folks don't want to hear that. And I'm like, "Well, I've had way too many conversations where I've wanted to throttle the landowner." It's just frustrating.

Speaker 2 (03:17):

Yeah, but part of that isn't just because you can't see what's... It's some of the same things with drainage, you can't see what's happening in the soil. You might tell me something, but if I can't see it, why would I believe it?

Ruth McCabe (03:31):

Well, and if you've been removed from farming for two or three generations, which, again, that's what we're starting to face, right?

Speaker 2 (03:36):

Yeah.

Ruth McCabe (03:36):

We've gotten to the point now where landowners, you might have a trust of 17 grandkids that own a property, and that trust is incentivized to go after short-term profits, and then none of those grandkids have been raised anywhere near a farm. So they don't understand that soil isn't a static resource. And I say this like all non-operating landowners are bad. Hashtag, they're not. I've had lots of conversations with absentee landowners who are super clued in to preserving their soil long-term, and they're all about that. Awesome folks. So they exist, but I'm just saying, from my experience, it's not just tenant farmers that are a part of that equation. Non-operating landowners are a part of it, too, and they are both incentivized to go after maximizing their short-term margins. And so, that's where I see that there's a problem.

Speaker 2 (04:19):

That's an interesting dovetailing that over to water and water quality.

Ruth McCabe (04:24):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (04:26):

You just explained that with, and we talked quite a bit now about cover crops and soil, but let's apply that a minute to water quality, batch and build, those kind of things. When you see it from a perspective of the landowner, is it the same, or is it different [inaudible 00:04:46]?

Ruth McCabe (04:47):

I'm glad, this is a great segue. It might not seem like a natural segue, but your listeners are about to learn that it is. So in my world, I'm concerned about two things, preventing soil loss and cleaning water, providing cleaner water to downstream folks. I-

Speaker 2 (05:03):

So what you're really saying is for the listeners is, the water that lands on the field-

Ruth McCabe (05:09):

Yes. I want it to come-

Speaker 2 (05:12):

... is cleaner when it comes out of the tile line or into the river stream than when it landed on the field?

Ruth McCabe (05:16):

That's what I'm shooting for. Absolutely. Yes, and I want to continue that trend. I'm all about making sure that water coming off of our fields is cleaner than when it arrived. And what I love about-

Speaker 2 (05:28):

And a lot of it's pretty clean when it arrives.

Ruth McCabe (05:29):

Oh, absolutely because we don't have smoke stacks that as belch sulfuric compounds into the air anymore. I know.

Speaker 2 (05:36):

It's a big task.

Ruth McCabe (05:37):

It is, right? So the reason why I love edge-of-field structures, for example, saturated buffers, bioreactors, restoring oxbow wetlands or nutrient treatment wetlands or what have you, is now we're talking about things that are interesting and attractive to the non-operating landowner, getting at that audience that it's really hard to get at when it comes to in-field conservation practices, non-operating landowners have less interest in-field conservation practices-

Speaker 2 (06:00):

Meaning cover crops and-

Ruth McCabe (06:02):

No-till, exactly. Yes, yes. So I'm working with tenants mostly on in-field practices, and I'm working with them in that sphere, and that's great, but when I work with non-operating landowners, I'm coming at them from the perspective of, okay, these people are the ones who have the decision-making power over things like putting in filter strips, buffer strips, putting in saturated buffers or bioreactors. Let's look at their field and see if there is a good place we can maximize, we'll call it precision conservation, if you will, where we could put in a saturated buffer that's making the water coming off their field through their drainage even cleaner than it was when it entered it, and, "Hey, I've built a program that offers cost share to pay for the construction of that structure, and I'll even give you a thousand bucks an outlet to do it." Now you have a short-term profit incentive that is greater than the alternative, right?

Speaker 2 (06:48):

Mm-hmm.

Ruth McCabe (06:49):

And now, I'll tell you what, it works. Non-operating landowners, their ears perk up and they're like, "Wait, what? A short-term profit? All I got to do is just have you trench in this very simple, elegant tile system and a drainage control box, and I'm going to get..." It's five outlets, say, "I'm going to get a $5,000 check, and it's not going to change my field 'cause I already have a buffer or a filter strip in place? Where do I sign?" So that's what I'm so excited about, is it's like, sweet, we have this capacity or capability to put these relatively elegant and simple structures in the field, taking advantage of the drainage system that are already there, making them better and more efficient, making the field more efficient at providing even cleaner water downstream. I get real, "You can see, you can see." I move my bottle in between so I can't whack it off the table. I get excited about it because now non-operating landowners are listening.

Speaker 2 (07:35):

Yeah, yeah. So you took my question away so [inaudible 00:07:39]-

Ruth McCabe (07:35):

I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (07:39):

... but it was really, where do you see the easiest way to sell that landowner? So I'll still ask the same question. It was the financial incentive, but if you take the financial incentive away, what's the next thing that gets them to listen to the conversation that you're hooking them with, and then you can tell them about the financial incentive to close the deal? But what perks them up? What makes them stop and say, "Wait a minute, what'd you just say?" around that? Is it the water quality piece? Is it some conservation where they have some benefits for wildlife in that part of the field? What really trips their trigger?

Ruth McCabe (08:20):

Fantastic question. So, the bulk of the fields that come to my team that we go out and survey in the spring are actually brought to us by tenant farmers, which I love. And so, the tenants will come to us and they'll say, "I cannot convince this landowner to put in wider filter strips." Your program pays for filter strips, so they wouldn't have to pay for it. They wouldn't have to apply through the local NRCS office. They don't have to go that route. I've heard you guys can do it all, and also it'll help control a lot of their erosion that they're losing from their field because they have all these gullies they don't want, they refuse to pay to put in grass waterways, or they refuse to pay to put in filter strips, and I can see that they're losing soil. I don't want to lose access to this farmland.

(08:59):

I've been farming it for a while, and I really don't want to lose access to it, but I feel like this is something that they would go for. It's erosion, Jamie. I can go to landowners, and yeah, I get them with the, "And by the way, we'll pay a hundred percent to put in the filter strips and we'll give you a thousand dollars in outlet." They love that. But the first thing I'll go is, I'll go to that field and we will take pictures of eroded outlets. We'll take pictures of side banks that are sloughing off. We'll just take pictures of things that could be fixed with a 30-foot brome buffer strip real simple. You show that to a landowner and say, "Hey, we'll pay to put this in. Your tenant really wants it. Your tenant is the one that brought this to our attention, so everybody's on board with this. We'll pay to put it in. And then, of course, it would help slow some of the erosion that you're experiencing. And oh, by the way, here's this financial incentive," and that, usually, it's like a one-two slam dunk.

Speaker 2 (09:53):

Right, right, right.

(09:54):

Thanks for joining us. Tune in for the next episode and part three of our conversation with Ruth McCabe.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Jamie Duininck

Host