American farmers—the men, women and families who grow our food, contribute to our economy and steward our agricultural lands—have a crucial role to play in making America healthy.
But for our farmers to adopt new practices, we have to provide them with the incentives and the support to make these changes affordable and accessible. At the Nature Conservancy, this is something we’ve put into action.
We know the wide-scale adoption of conservation management practices can help reverse the upward trend of chronic disease suffered by an estimated 129 million Americans. When farmers have the opportunity and resources needed to use practices like precision fertilizer management, cover crops and buffer strips at the edges of their fields, they can keep fertilizers and other agricultural inputs on the fields and out of the air and water we all share.
