Land matching lets our rural communities have a brighter future, by letting young farmers work the land.
Land matching keeps our family farms strong. It keeps our rural communities vibrant. It ensures that the American independent farmer is here to stay.
NEW FARMER/RANCHER BENEFITS
gain access to land
find help with financing
learn from experienced landowners
LANDOWNER BENEFITS
tax incentives and other financial benefits
ease transition into retirement
ensure the continuity of a farm’s operation and legacy
bring fresh energy and strong hands to work on the farm
EVERYBODY BENEFITS
small family farms continue a proud American tradition
rural communities thrive with new farm families
Land matching is a great way for new farmers to get started, for retiring farmers to make sure their operation will continue long into the future, and for rural communities to stay strong.
How do matching programs work?
All matching programs work a little differently, but the basics are the same:
Sign up: The program compiles lists of new farmers and of landowners who want to link.
Match time: Usually, the new farmer must contact a landowner.
Talk about it: Both parties get to know each other and decide whether/how to link.
Think before you link: Most application forms ask about participants’ assets, experience, and goals. Both landowners and beginners need to know what they want to get out of a linking relationship before they start trying to work it out with each other. This worksheet for beginners and this worksheet for landowners will help you describe what you’re looking for and what assets you bring to the discussion. Before you link, you should:
Know what you want and need
Be flexible where you can and firm on what you need
Most programs focus on specific states or regions, so new farmers can find matches in the area where they want to farm. Some matching programs work with farmers nationwide.
Looking for even more opportunities? Use your acquaintance network to build connections in the area you want to farm. Anyone—family, friends, business acquaintances, extension agents, real estate agents, postmasters, feed store staff, and more—can be your “in” to a farm transition opportunity. The more people you build relationships with and the more people know you’re looking for and seriously committed to a farming or ranching opportunity, the better your chance of being in the right place at the right time to access that opportunity.
Did you know, last year the U.S. spent $18.6B (20.5M tons) on fertilizer? Over 60 percent of that fertilizer was used on corn, soybean, wheat, and cotton.
Yet scientific literature states that over 50% of fertilizer is lost because it becomes tied in the soil, washes off, erodes, or becomes volatilized in the air. That loss equates to $9.3 B USD.
“The waste is outrageous. And the thing is, soil microbes improve fertilizer efficiency,” explains Dave Stark, P.hD., and President of Agriculture at Holganix, LLC. “Biologically healthy soils create greater corn yields per unit of nitrogen input.”
In this blog, we discuss how soil microbes improve fertilizer efficiency. Click the link to skip to the topic of your choosing, or continue scrolling to read the full report.
Higher Nitrogen Efficiency With Higher Microbial Populations
A meta-study from Nature Research Scientific Reports reviewed 230 published studies on how microbes interact with fertilizer. According to that study, only 36-42% of the current year’s applied nitrogen goes to the crop (corn, rice, and small grains).
In fact, soil organic nitrogen turnover (the nitrogen that is mineralized or cycled by microbes) contributes more than the nitrogen we apply to the crop.
And, since microbes increase the soil’s ability to mineralize or cycle nitrogen, the presence of high microbial populations leads to better nitrogen efficiency.
“Using a microbial and using farming techniques that foster beneficial microbial populations, increases your farm’s ability to use fertilizer efficiency and can reduce the need for fertilizer,” explains Dave.
“This is so critical to farming today. Fertilizer prices are high. Farmers need an edge to reduce costs and increase their crop productivity.”
What About Phosphorus And Potassium?
“The top six inches of soil is abundant in phosphorus and potassium, but extraordinarily little of that phosphorus and potassium is bioavailable,” states Dave. In other words, phosphorus and potassium become bound in the soil and the plant cannot access them.
Yet, while the plant cannot access these bound nutrients, soil microbes can! Microbes break down phosphorus, potassium, and other micronutrients and feed them back into the plant root.
This is just another way microbes increase fertilizer efficiency.
Accessing Nutrients Via Crop Residue Breakdown
In addition to solubilizing and mineralizing nutrients, microbes also make nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium available by breaking down crop residue. Crop residue is filled with valuable nutrients. As an example, corn stover holds about 17 lbs of nitrogen, 4 lbs of phosphorus, and 34 lbs of potassium per ton.
Having an abundant source of degrading soil microbes allows farmers to use no-till farming techniques to access these nutrients.
A Note On Diversity And Using Microbial Inoculants
Microbial inoculants are soil amendments containing microbial species. Most microbial inoculants contain just a handful of bacterial species, while others like, Holganix Bio 800+, contain a large diversity of soil microbe species including bacteria, fungi, and protists.
Choosing to use a microbial product that contains only a few species of plant growth-promoting bacteria or nutrient solubilizing bacteria might boost root mass or improve the availability of a single nutrient, such as phosphorus. However, products with just a few species of microbes, can’t do everything. Instead, they focus on a narrow piece of the puzzle. For example, a bacteria-only product won’t cycle nitrogen efficiently since bacteria require a lot of nitrogen to grow. Microbes that eat bacteria, namely fungi and protists, require much less nitrogen and cycle it back to the crop.
With Holganix Bio 800+, growers do not have to choose; over 800 species of bacteria, fungi and protists are present including a broad range of plant growth promoters and nutrient solubilizers. In fact, the microbes in Bio 800+ consume fertilizer and keep it in the root zone, all while cycling nutrients back to the plant so more nutrients go to the crop instead of being lost in the environment.
Holganix Bio 800+ has consistently given farmers a 2-10x ROI through increased crop yields and improved fertilizer efficiency. Bio 800+ is a valuable tool that allows growers to back off inputs knowing more of the inputs put down will actually feed the crop.
With soil health management, producers can increase profits and reduce costs and risk all while conserving our nation’s resources for the benefit of all. However, the extent of these economic benefits has not been consistently quantified – a major constraint to soil health management adoption identified as a priority by NRCS and many of its customers.
We hope that farmers who have been considering adding soil health practices to their operation will use these case studies to make better business decisions as they invest in healthy soils, and to start a dialog with landowners about sharing the risks and rewards of soil health investments. We believe our staff and partners can use these case studies to help answer customers’ questions about the costs and benefits of adopting soil health practices.
Background Funded by an NRCS’ Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) awarded in 2018, American Farmland Trust (AFT) and NRCS have started to release a series of Soil Health Economics case studies. USDA and NRCS have invested in the people and tools that provide these quantitative assessments. AFT utilized this infrastructure to show the economic benefits across a broad sampling of farming operations and worked closely with NRCS Economists & Soil Health Specialists to review these case studies. In addition to the funding for the project, USDA and NRCS resources were further leveraged:
Florence Swartz is AFT’s Project Economist and served as the NRCS New York State Economist, where she developed two well-received soil health economic case studies that have since been used as the template for the AFT project.
