Collecting the Data on Regenerative Practices
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Before considering regenerative farming practices, it’s critical to know whether those practices are actually doing what they’re designed to do. Kris Johnson, director of agriculture at The Nature Conservancy says with the creation of Operation Tillage Information System (OpTIS), they hope to collect consistent and accurate data across all growing regions to determine the impact of regenerative practices.
Johnson… “You just can't really effectively answer those questions unless you have good, consistent data over a large area every single year over a long, long period of time. And so, having little snapshots or having one method at Indiana and a different one in North Dakota, you know, that, it doesn't enable you to kind of do that, that longitudinal large scale, you know, ongoing kind of gut check. And then there's just a whole host of really, really important research questions that they're not just research questions. They're like, how do we do better? How do we do better and faster to work with farmers, to support farmers in adopting these practices? Because if it were easy, and if it were a no brainer, you know, Bill and his team would be tracking 100 percent adoption, 80 percent adoption, 90 percent adoption, but it's not easy. There are like real fundamental challenges to changing management on the ground, farm by farm, and we're working through that, and these data are just really, really critical to kind of help overcome those challenges.”
OpTIS is a partnership between Regrow, The Nature Conservancy, and the Conservation Technology Information Center.
