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With Season 3 of the Field Work podcast well underway, we want to hear from you. How's it going? 


Let Us Know What You Think

Washington County, Iowa, has consistently been one of the highest performing counties for cover crop acres in Iowa.


How a Conservation Culture Was Born

Field Work is supported in part by the Walton Family Foundation, working for solutions so nature and people can thrive together.


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Small Farmers, Big Stakes

Farmers John and Kara Boyd join Zach and Mitchell on this episode to talk about the challenges of practicing regenerative ag in Southern Virginia. They are also civil rights activists. John leads the National Black Farmers Association and Kara founded the Association of American Indian Farmers.


John and Kara Boyd are equally committed to farming and to farm ownership for people of color.  John heads the National Black Farmers Association, and Kara runs the Association of American Indian Farmers. They told Field Work hosts Mitchell Hora and Zach Johnson they became activists because of their own experiences with a racist USDA. Meanwhile, they are trying to spread the word about cover crops, no-till farming and conservation.

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A Winning Personality?

For years now, Iowa State University Professor Kevin Kimle has been asking his ag students to take a personality test. Zach and Mitchell talk to Kevin about what his findings say about the willingness of farming communities to try new things.


For a few years now, Iowa State University Professor Kevin Kimle has been asking students in his ag entrepreneurship classes to take a personality test. What he’s found so far is that compared to the average person, those ag students score pretty low when it comes to openness. He and the Field Work hosts talk about what that lack of openness might mean for trying new practices like cover crops. And after taking the personality test, Zach and Mitchell learn some awkward things about themselves.

Kevin Kimle works with students during an incubator session.

The Magical Dividing Line Between Counties

The Nature Conservancy funded a study at Purdue University to look at why some counties have a high rate of cover crop adoption while neighboring counties with similar precipitation and soil types do not. Zach and Mitchell talk with Kris Johnson and Linda Prokopy about what they learned.


The Nature Conservancy and Purdue University are among a lot of people in the sustainable ag keen to figure out what it takes to scale conservation practices. Does it come down to the availability of funding? Climate? Soils? What happens if all those factors are pretty equal between, say, two neighboring counties, but the level of adoption of conservation practices varies dramatically between them? Kris Johnson from the TNC and Linda Prokopy from Purdue talk about research in three different states where they compare counties with a robust conservation culture to neighboring counties that aren’t doing much. They talk with Zach and Mitchell about cover crop culture, the importance of collaboration among farmers, government agencies and entrepreneurs, and what they still don’t understand.

Field Work

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Recent Episodes

Small Farmers, Big Stakes

A Winning Personality?

The Magical Dividing Line Between Counties: Researchers Try to Tease Out What Makes Some Areas More Inclined to Plant Cover Crops

Announcements

Let Us Know What You Think

How a Conservation Culture Was Born

Sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation

Field Work

Latest Episode

Sponsor

Field Work is made possible in part with support from the Walton Family Foundation.

Recent Episodes

Small Farmers, Big Stakes

A Winning Personality?

The Magical Dividing Line Between Counties: Researchers Try to Tease Out What Makes Some Areas More Inclined to Plant Cover Crops

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Announcements

Let Us Know What You Think

How a Conservation Culture Was Born

Sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation