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Anna and student science liaisons explore HB199, an act including soil health and soil conservation in the state soil conservation plan. Joined by expert guests, Cheshire County Extension specialist, Carl Majewski, and Cheshire County Conservation District’s Amanda Littleton, they learn about soil conservation and how it intersects with agricultural business in the great state of New Hampshire.
University of New Hampshire students explore the science behind the underlying aspects of current issues under consideration at New Hampshire's State House.
From UNH Cooperative Extension, this is Relative to New Hampshire.
Step into the classroom and listen in while group of UNH students explore the underlying aspects of current issues under consideration at New Hampshire's State House. We pick apart those issues and connect with experts. All to share with you, insights from our scientific community that enhance our understanding of the biological world right here in New Hampshire, home of the greatest democracy in the world.
Anna: I’m your moderator, Dr. Anna Kate Wallingford
Ella: and I’m Ella, Junior Biology Student at UNH
Anna: We’ve taken a look at HB 199 including soil health and soil conservation in the state soil conservation plan. While Ella followed this bill and attended public hearings, she has been reporting back to the group in our weekly meeting about what she learned along the way. The group is a team of science liaisons made up of UNH students from a diverse array of departments in the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, as well as my co-moderators Extension’s Public Engagement Program Manager, Nate Bernitz and Extension’s Public Affairs Manager, Lauren Banker. With each bill we discuss, brainstorm, dare I say, grapple with the potential intentions of the bill, of what we know, what we don’t know, what kind of scientific knowledge could contribute to the conversation, and who could help us with what we don’t know…who are the experts we want to talk to? We’ll jump in to hear some of this conversation, starting with Ella summarizing her understanding of HB 199.
Ella: …this is kind of just an amendment on the previous bill that was the plan for soil conservation in the state, but it added a focus on general soil health, and also adaptation to and mitigation of the effects of climate change. It didn't include anything about, you know, climate change before. And now, that is a focus.
Anna: Well, here I have my first question, what is the state soil conservation plan?
Ella: So they outline it here, actually, and it's they basically have five different conservation districts. And those are the kind of what run the show that each have, like a supervisor, I wasn't really clear, what the qualifications of the supervisor were? And I was especially curious about that, because they're in charge of like conducting research, and a lot of different things. And I was just like, Who is the person that is qualified to be doing this? Who is the person that determining what is healthy enough soil? You know, what are the benchmarks?
Anna: That's on our list of something to understand, before we even dig into this legislation, we have to understand what the soil conservation plan is, who is involved in writing the soil conservation plan? What is the …what is the kind of universe the soil conservation plan lives in? And are these state rules based on federal rules? You know, things like that.
Ella: We only have control over conserving the land that the state has control over. So a lot of it was like, if landowners want to, we'll go in and do this. And it's like, you know, it wasn't really about like making regulations for how, like, private landowners can act, really.
Anna: So this is essentially, like, a way the way that they're promoting the best practices?
Ella: Yeah, there's definitely outreach and like education involved with the plan as well.
Nate: Anna, am I right in saying that the soil conservation districts are housed within the NRCS local services offices like they're, they're nested, right?
Anna: That sounds right. I’m not sure.
Nate: There are soil conservationists that work within NRCS offices, and NRCS is a sister organization to extension, they're just not University affiliated, they're still getting county funding, they're still getting federal funding through the USDA. They work with a lot of the same clients. Although more commercial oriented, more soil oriented. Yeah, I love their their overall soil data. I find that really useful and interesting.
Anna: I’m going to jump in here to point out that NRCS stands for Natural Resources Conservation Services. This is a federal agency, part of the US Department of Agriculture, that started out life as the Soil Erosion Service, in response to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. They’ve obviously broadened their mission since then, to improve, protect, and conserve all natural resources on private lands. That’s opposed to public lands, which are overseen by the department of interior. Keeping in mind that we don’t have too much public land here in New Hampshire, mostly private lands. The NRCS is similar to Cooperative Extension in that they work in collaboration with state and local agencies to bring education about best practices but they differ in that they carry out incentives programs that encourage adoption of conservation practices on private lands.
Ella:Basically, what we had talked about before was correct about the bill, how it's just like kind of an amendment to the past bill, I feel like it's more the purpose of it is more clear to me now.
They had Roger Noonan, he's the head of the New England Farmers Union. He was also on in one of the conservation districts, he kind of explained that the purpose of this bill is basically to put the language in place in relation to soil conservation, and kind of redefined soil health, because this hasn't been updated since like the 80s. And we know a lot more about like how the microbial life in soil like affects the health of the soil, and also to include language related to mitigation of the effects of climate change, mainly to make it easier for conservation districts to get grant money, it seems, because the specifically, which would make them more able to be like, Hey, we need money for this very specific thing that's related to climate change from the droughts that have been happening lately. So they can be better funded is basically what I got. From that he was the main person that spoke.
There were other house members that had questions, but it like, it was honestly very different from the questions that I would have asked if I was asking questions, it was, it was a lot of stuff. Just clarifying, like, why do we need language specific to climate change? Why are we not using environmental change, just like, kind of specific clarifications on the definitions that were used there?
I think I got a little bit of a better idea of what the conservation districts do. And I'm kind of understanding more of the purpose of this bill, which is that like, it has nothing to do with creating regulations on people, it's pretty much just to, like, I don't know, bring more funding.
Anna: It's kind of like a statement of principles?
Ella: Exactly. And it's more about just providing like the incentives for the better farming practices than its really about like, regulating them in any way, which I thought was interesting, because I was like, that's an interesting place of government that I hadn't really thought about very much before.
Anna: That's a super important point that you bring up. A lot of the times, when we think about laws, we think about rulemaking, but there's also this kind of thinking that there's all sorts of people who work for the state of New Hampshire, and you have to have some kind of agreement on where their priorities lie. And so part of the role of the legislature plays is saying, this is important to us, this is worth spending your time and money to work on it. So the folks at the Department of Environmental Services have some kind of guiding principles for their work. There's some kind of democratic approach to saying this is important. This is worth spending time and money on.
Anna: We took some time to talk to a few of my colleagues about their conservation work in collaboration with New Hampshire farmers, but I’ll let them introduce themselves.
Carl: I’m Carl Majewski, Field specialist with the food and Ag program with UNH extension. I work over in Cheshire County in the Southwestern part of the state. My own background is in crop production, and of course, that gets into some soils and soil conservation and things. Lately I’ve been doing a fair amount of work, quite a bit of it I should say, with Amanda, on stuff relating to cover crops and soil conservation practices and no till and that sort of stuff.
Amanda: So, my name’s Amanda Littleton and I work with the Cheshire County conservation district. Conservation districts are set up so there’s one in every county in New Hampshire here. And I’ve been with the district for working on my fourteenth year now. And we work with a lot of different stakeholders. Farmers are certainly an important one though for us, as well as landowners, forest landowners and municipalities. Most of our work is in four subject areas. We work with soil health, water quality, wildlife habitat, and then we have some work on farm viability which is more looking at market expansion and sort of more of the business side of things with farms.
Anna: I’m going to jump in again here and flesh out a couple important soil conservation terms that Carl and Amanda discuss, cover crops and “no till”. I think most northeastern farmers are familiar with the concept of a cover crop that is grown not too be harvested but to keep the land covered, which prevents erosion and can also serve as a nice rotational crop between cash crops. These could be nitrogen-fixing legumes like clovers, vetches, and peas, cereal grasses like rye, wheat, barley, or broadleaf species like buckwheat, or mustards like forage radish or tillage radish). Traditionally these covercrops would be tilled in at some point in order to prepare the soil for the next cash crop. A no-till approach would have the farmer kill the cover crop with herbicides or by physically rolling or crimping or covering with tarps. No-till growers typically need specialized equipment to plant into these fields but this approach provides a nice layer of organic mulch, which does wonders for weed management and long-term soil health. Back to our conversation with Carl and Amanda:
Anna: I guess my overarching question, and you may or may not have thoughts on this, the point of this bill is to update the state soil conservation plan. Like, having looked at the changes they’ve made, do you largely agree with them. If you were writing a state soil conservation plan that everybody should be on board with, is there anything missing or were the additions appropriate? Like, what are your thoughts?
Amanda: I think that they don’t make that much difference to be honest with you. I only say that because in practice, we’re all already working on soil health and climate change. So, it is good that they’re being more explicit because this was written, the language was written so long ago before people were utilizing works like soil health and climate change. So it is nice that they’re including it. But I don’t think in practice it will change our work all that much because that work has been underway for many years. It’s just simply it wasn’t stated yet in the bill. Before it was a lot about soil erosion, preventing soil erosion versus building soil health. Which they’re, I mean they’re related. But, but, I think that, being really explicit about the language being chose and then adding climate change and environmental change. And there’s a lot of pushback on that from some partners and legislators, but I think the idea is just to make it so our work by state statute we’re seen as a resource for the changing climate and how to respond to it.
Anna: So is this a weird addition? A few of us were kind of surprised to see climate change in a soil health plan. Is there a direct connection between climate change and soil health?
Amanda: Sure, yeah, um there’s a very direct connection, um, with climate change and soil health. The one I think we talk the most about, like with the soil health partnership, is how, how farmers, how growers can improve their soil health as a way to be more resilient in the face of the changing climate. So, when you’re having more droughts, when you’re having more extreme weather events, building your health of your soil is really a cornerstone of how you can ensure that you will be able to be productive and profitable into the future. Um, just because climate change is so politically charged, even though it’s based on science, you know, it’s still very, uh we’d rather talk to the growers about the experiences they’re having and what they are seeing on their own land and how they could adapt their practices to better respond to what they’re seeing with the weather. I don’t know Carl, what do you think does that sound ok?
Carl: No, I, I, I agree with that entirely. So, well, I mean, farmers aren’t any different as far as the general population is sometimes having very strong political opinions, and sometimes using the term like climate change doesn’t make for a productive conversation. But, if you can relate it to what they’re dealing with, just like Amanda said, you know in the last few years we’ve had to deal with a couple really severe region wide droughts. We’ve had to deal with exceptionally wet rainy springs that cause some serious delays in fieldwork for a lot of farms. We’ve had winters that, you know, rather than getting cold and staying cold, they fluctuate between warm spells and turning really cold and that causes a lot of crop injury. So those are things that they can relate to. If we can talk about things that they can do to kind of safeguard against those kinds of fluctuations, I think you find a more receptive audience. You have a healthy soil, it’s better able to withstand erosion from these heavy rain events that we’re having more frequently. Its better able to store water, so that crops can maybe cope with these droughts a little better. You know, there’s a biological component in there that can make those soils more robust and less likely to be infected with a lot of diseases or things that can harm crops. So, that’s I think we’ve found to be a better way of approaching it.
Ella: So, is it part of the role of the conservation districts to provide that kind of information to farmers? Is that like part of what you do?
Amanda: Yes, so we were born, the conservation districts in the country, were really born from the Dust Bowl. The most obvious soil erosion issues that our country’s really seen, the Dust Bowl way back when. We just are actually celebrating our 75th anniversary here in New Hampshire this year for conservation districts. And so, we, we, got established to be the local contact that is able to prioritize what folks think locally are the priorities for the federal government. So, it’s all about the locally lead process. We have a board of supervisors that are typically made up of landowners, farmers, who can share, you know what are the priorities of the local land user. What are the biggest concerns. Each district has slightly different focus and that’s intentional because we want to be responding to the locally lead aspect of our work. But overall we’re really set up to help direct federal resources, so financial assistance, as well as technical assistance through farm bill programs, through the Natural Resources Conservation Service or what used to be the Soil Conservation Service, to the local land user.
Anna: I kind of wouldn’t mind, since you are here, talking a little more about cover crop work you have done and they success you’ve had as far as adoption. I know Amanda you mentioned having to you know use new equipment and things like that. Like, how did that whole cover crop project start?
Amanda: Actually its, for us, the equipment conversation started because a farmer went to their local representative, their state rep in Walpole. Terra Sad, she’s not a rep anymore, but, and they said you know, we, we would like to see this equipment be more readily available to us, but we’re not interested in purchasing it for ourselves. So it was actually, it was, it was, kind of the way we like to see things happen. It came directly from a farmer saying we have a need and we’d like to see, you know, these organizations, try to fill that need. That’s how our work with equipment rentals got started. But, in a nutshell, its been a long standing tradition to help sort of looking at cover cropping and soil health, it’s just that that was sort of how we got into this sort of niche with the equipment.
Carl: And on my end, cover crops are something that have always sort of been there at least a little bit, but I don’t know, it would have been maybe ten years ago or so, maybe a little bit longer, that this concept of soil health started gaining traction. And then with that there was maybe a little bit more emphasis on cover crops. Some NRCS programs that might have reopened up some cost sharing for some of those incentives that Amanda mentioned, for establishing cover crops. At the same time, Northeast SARE had this huge professional development grant that really involved all the Northeast states. Each state assembled a team to work on cover crop programming in their state. Uh and in New Hampshire, that included a couple of us with extension, someone from NRCS and it was someone from another conservation district, as well as a couple of farmers. The overall goal was to get more farms to put more acres into cover crops. It was like a three-year project, um, and over the course of those three years we’ve had, we had a lot of field meetings where we would meet at a given farm, uh someone who was actually using cover crops basically doing show and tell saying this is what I do, this is what the benefits I’ve seen are, here’s some of the sticking points, and here’s how I’ve delt with them. So that farms can see for themselves. We’ve found that works well with adult learning, and it’s an effective way of reaching out to farmers. If I get up on my soap box and then talk about cover crops and what you ought to do that’s only gonna go so far. If a farm sees one of their peers doing it, and they know that they’re having to deal with the same sorts of labor equipment, land challenges or something that he is, that’s gonna give it even even more creed. It’s been neat to see that it has been taking effect, that conservation districts, NRCS, extension, kind of all working on this has, I think, been paying off. When I started with extension, there were basically like two farms in the, in, in Cheshire county, that um, really did anything with cover crops. This past fall, I did just sort of an informal survey a couple of days just driving around the county. I would estimate that maybe about 2/3 maybe ¾of the fields, corn fields anyways, are now in some kind of cover. Whereas before it would have been you know 10%. Farms are listening, they’re seeing the benefits themselves.
Anna: After having investigated this topic for some time, Ella and I asked the group what their main “takeaways” were here.
Tyler: Probably the biggest takeaway for me as somebody who hasn't really investigated soil very much is that connection to climate change, like I wasn't really interested in soil that much. But once you connect it to climate change, it becomes more interesting for me because usually, when I think about climate change, I'm thinking about like, the traditional stuff like temperature and increased frequencies of storms and stuff. But you know, when you tie in, in soil, it kind of brings this whole picture together.
Max: I think the biggest takeaway for me was, instead of talking about, like, the conversation about climate changes like this a lot is how soil conservation in the soil health affects the environment, they kind of made it more about how it affects the farmers, like I was expecting the whole talk to be, if you don't take care of your crops, you don't take care of the soil, here's what it's going to do to the planet. But instead, they're saying if the farmers take better care of their soil, and they make it more resilient, as the climate changes, it'll, it'll be able to handle weather events and different things, and it'll benefit the community, rather than just the planet. So I thought that was a cool way to look at it.
Ella: I totally agree, it was an interesting look into how mitigating and preventing climate change isn't just for like saving the planet, or conserving wildlife or any of these, like abstract ideas that don't necessarily benefit humanity directly. It's, it's, it's essential. It's essential stuff for us to continue existing as a species on this planet for us to adapt, and try and prevent the climate change as much as possible.
Emily: I was just going to say I also like the resilience piece of it, too, because agriculture is such a huge part of like New Hampshire economy. So in talking about New Hampshire, specifically, like being resilient as future years go on, and climate change increases effect, just having that economy, like, be able to persist is like really important. So I like that it touched on that.
Tyler: And another other takeaway that I got from it, there was kind of like a subtext message with the approach that he was talking about, about going to the farmers that is kind of similar to a public health class that I took, where they talk about, rather than, like, when they go over to like Africa, or whatever, and try to prove these people's lives, rather than being like, you know, here's some soap wash your hands or whatever, to try to improve their lives, they actually asked the native people like what is it that we can do to help you and then try to affect those changes, rather than come in and be like, here, do this, this is the way to do things.
Anna: …and I’ll leave the final word to Ella.
Ella: I think like the most important things that I learned was at the start, I feel like I had no understanding really, of how, like soil conservation was prioritized and promoted by the state. And it was really interesting to learn about how the conservation districts operated and what their purpose was. And also interesting to hear from Carl about success that they've had with cover cropping and other like healthy farming practices to just hear about how, like all of these different agencies work together towards this common goal.
Relative to New Hampshire is a production of UNH Cooperative Extension, an equal opportunity educator and employer. All music is used by permission or by creative commons licensing. UNH Cooperative Extension is a non-partisan organization, the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of the university, its trustees, or its volunteers. Inclusion or exclusion of commercial enterprises in this podcast does not equate endorsement. The University of New Hampshire, New Hampshire Counties, and the US Department of Agriculture cooperative to provide Extension programming in the Granite State.This podcast was made possible by the UNH Extension Internship program - if you’re interested in supporting great work like this for the future, learn more at www.extension.unh.edu/internships.
[Music Credits]
“Forgottenland” by airtone (CC license)