Sustainable Agriculture: One Farmer's View
About 100 years ago, the world shrank. According to history.com, developments in transportation and communication--and mass population movements--helped create an awareness of an interdependent world. Early automobiles were mass produced using an assembly line. Air transportation began to take flight, and more than 9 million people emigrated from Europe to the United States. This was also about the time that Pratt, Kansas, farmer Mark Fincham’s great-great-grandfather, began farming.
“I’m the fifth generation to be on this farm,” Fincham said. “My grandfather told me that he worked this land with a horse for power. He then turned to tractors, which evolved into my father utilizing larger tractors. Technology has now allowed us to move to what we have today; guidance systems and precision planting for our seed. Small improvements throughout the years have made a big improvement on our land.”
Producing More
“When I started growing DEKALB® corn eight or nine years ago, it was almost a giveaway in our area because Pioneer Hi-Bred had almost 99 percent of the area locked up,” Fincham said. “Our Monsanto representative at the time asked us to plant one plot--which we did on about twenty-five percent of our farm. Due to the success we achieved with higher yields from this plot, we are now 100 percent DEKALB or another Monsanto seed corn.”
Conserving More
“Pumping water to our field is high cost for us,” Fincham said. “That is a large part of our budget. If we can eliminate one circle with our center-pivot irrigation, that is a big deal for our bottom line. One of the things we used to do on our farm was grow 118-day corn with a non-Monsanto branded seed. Now we’re growing 114-day DEKALB corn. The 114-day corn allows us to get it off the field a little earlier which in turn allows us to save one circle of water being used, and at the same time beating our older yields.”
Improving Farmers Lives
Conserving water plays a major part on Fincham’s farm. And, Monsanto is helping Fincham save even more water through their Soil Moisture Probes and Irrigation Water Management program.
“We had some moisture probes placed on our field as part of this program,” Fincham said. “The first year we participated, Monsanto requested that we just do what we’ve always done regarding water irrigation. What we saw after that first year was, on certain fields, we were watering pretty much right on the nose. However, on other fields, we were running our pivots too fast and probably not getting the soak or the root development on those fields. This year, we’re going to have to probes placed again. But this year we’re going to be able to take a weekly look at the data coming in and make the necessary changes in our watering patterns and timing--and hopefully that will help us improve yield.”
Produce more, conserve more, improving farmers’ lives. This is Monsanto’s commitment to sustainable agriculture. To Mark Fincham, being a good steward of the land is just common sense.
“If we don’t take care of our land, it won’t take care of us. We make sure that the crops we grow have the best inputs that we can provide for them. We keep wind and water erosion at a bare minimum. We take pride in what we can do by maintaining our soils in the ground--not only for me, but for the generations that are coming behind me.”
Is it perhaps due to all the anti- Monsanto posts that you receive? And if so, surely you have to ask yourself the question of, why so much hate mail?
I'm not here to point fingers guys but I in turn would like to encourage you to truly look deep within the morals pertaining to the globe and the individual rights pertaining to us as human beings and ask yourself where you fit into all of that?
Where your morals lie an how you can morally justify your actions and input into this world or ours…
I'm so totally sure you could play a bigger better role with the power and knowledge that you have. So please could I ask you to be apart of this change in the most positive and moral way you can muster.
xxx