R Spencer wrote:My hope is I could talk to the current farmer about my interest in ag and to share NRCS-supported techniques I'm interested in, with the goal that he'd put some of them to trial on my family's field. He farms 20ac there, which is a small portion of the hundreds or few thousand acres he manages in the area. I'm very interested in agroforestry but even basic things like no till, cover crops, and multi-cropping would be great to see. I recall he's planted white clover as a cover crop when the field would've otherwise been fallow, and my family that lives there says he's talked about doing minimal till but I can see from the field it gets tilled (I think with disks pulled by a tractor). They tell me he does use 'modest amounts' of herbicides and chemical fertilizers.
A person has to be wary with NRCS supported techniques because it is all subjective. Just because it is listed as approved by NRCS does not mean it is supported locally. The reason for that is, the NRCS-FSA is the only Federal Agency that is governed by an elected local board. That is because in the 1930's when the NRCS was created, they knew government officials walking up to farmers and saying you must do this, just was not going to work, so they created a system where there is local oversight. To wit; where I live...the Permicultural Capital of the World, our county has only about 50% buy in into the NRCS programs that are outside of conventional agriculture. But it is better than it was 12 years ago when only dairy farmers got any NRCS monies. Still, unless the local Conservationists champion a supported practice, it will not get funded. And if a person is not looking for a farm grant, and just hoping a NRCS practice will convince a farmer it is a good practice...hardly; like anything the government does, while well meaning, they are often so full of red tape there is not much of a favorable look upon the NRCS as a whole.
Something else that jumped out at me was mentioning that the farmer, "talked about doing minimal till, but I can see from the field it gets tilled". That is minimal-till, doing as little as possible to prepare the seed-bed. That requires pulling a disc harrow through the fields, but not tons of passes, or using a deep plow first. I think you are getting
minimum till and
no-tilll mixed up. Depending on soil conditions, non-till may or may not be possible, for instance where I live, it is not. That is a a good thing because while you would not think so, conventional no-till agriculture relies heavily on herbicides and pesticides to accomplish the task.
You should definately have a conversation with the farmer, but you are at a little bit of a disadvantage. With only twenty acres, if you mention taking over the land, then its possible that he just gives back the acreage. I know I would. Not that what you are doing is wrong, but just because I have been burned so many times putting money into a rented farm, only to lose the land just after doing so. At the very least, I would farm it putting just enough in it to get my crops to grow, but no more, not if I might lose it the next year. Now if the farmer does put money into the acreage, and you take it back, legally you must pay him for those improvements. The time frame for that varies depending on what the improvements was. So if it was lime or fertilizer, it is like 3 years, but if it is drainage tile, then it is something like 7 years, so it varies. It only makes sense, otherwise landowners would convince a farmer to make improvements, then take the ;and back the following year to have their own animals within the fence, or sell the property for more money at the farmers expense. That is why every state has this law, along with every providence in Canada.