By Nancy Szikszay, Szikszay Family Farms based in Otisville, Michigan
I was raised in downtown Flint, Michigan. Before meeting my husband, Bill, I never really thought about farming and all that it entails. When we met, Bill’s family had recently gotten out of dairy to concentrate on growing corn, soybeans and wheat around Otisville, Michigan.
When Bill and I married in 1978, I decided that I needed to embrace this way of life and support him. One thing I learned about farming was that there are going to be lean years, and you have to be disciplined in what you spend so that you can survive the lean years. I also learned farmers want to protect the soil. The soil is the foundation of everything we do.
Conservation programs have helped us take care of our soils and water. This is even more critical with the increased frequency of extreme and erratic weather events we have been experiencing. We participate in the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program (MAEAP), which assesses a farm’s current practices and layout then suggests projects to make the farm more environmentally friendly. To become MAEAP verified ,we completed multiple projects. Federal funding from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) proved extremely valuable.
Today, we mostly use NRCS’s Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). The five-year contract provides us payments that help us become more resilient and improve our existing stewardship efforts.
NRCS programs do come with strings attached. You have to involve their engineers, who design the projects then come our every step of the way to ensure you’re sticking to their specifications. We are required to provide a lot of records. It can sometimes feel cumbersome to the farmer, but I tell people as a taxpayer, I’m glad they are doing their due diligence to make sure funds are used appropriately.
Farm margins are always tight, but I don’t think people realize how dire the straits are on the farm right now. It does impact conservation. When we were making reasonable profits, we were more inclined to put money into innovations. Right now, we’re just struggling to make paychecks. I was at a meeting recently where farmers who have never talked about their financial situation were actually opening up about how much they’re struggling to get loan money for their input costs. Farmers are losing acreages that have been part of their family farming operations for generations. Depression is a major issue on farms right now.
I make it my mission to make farmers aware that these programs exist. It helps to have the funds available as well as the technical expertise that help us implement new technologies and practices appropriately – in a way that best benefits the land and the people on it, not just us but our community.
Farmers want to do what’s right by the land and people. I’m asking our policymakers and the public to value and protect conservation funding. Aim us in the right direction and most of us are going to do our part.
