Sustainability has become a hot topic, as the field has grown rapidly over the past decade. Farmers began adopting sustainable practices to ensure the survival of their farms for two reasons: honor and avoiding contact with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – a US Federal Government agency whose purpose is to protect the environment. We were able to meet with Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, who elaborated on why these two reasons are important to the average farmer.

Most farmers tend to group a visit from a federal agency with a bad day. Mr. Northey stated that by adhering to EPA regulations, farmers are able to stay out of one agency’s way. I mean if you know someone could make your life miserable, you should probably do everything in your power to avoid them.

The next notion caught my attention: The honor of farming. This phrase just has a certain ring to it, making you feel like a good samaritan every time you say it. Repeat it to yourself and notice how you probably sounded like a superhero fighting for justice. No farmer wants to be the reason his family farm fails.  As Secretary Northey noted, each year, he awards certificates to families who have kept the farm in their family for 100 and 150 years.  Northey thinks that Iowans are deeply motivated to do the right think to keep the farm in their family, and he believes that Iowa’s farmers will get behind the nutrient management strategy.   By being sustainable and participating in Iowa’s Nutrient Management program,  farmers can prevent their soil from eroding, reduce nitrogen and phosphorous leaching into the rivers, and keep the EPA from imposing top-down regulations on nitrogen run-off. And in so doing, they are protecting the family farm for another generation.  Most of these family farms have been around for years and important milestones are only a couple years or even a decade or two away. By adopting a sound environmental plan for their farms, farmers will be able to reach this milestone. Farmers will receive a small plaque commemorating them for their hard work, but why is this plaque so important?

While the plaque itself is not important, it represents a sense of unity among the family members. Take for instance my teacher HN. After his father passed in 2010, HN could have easily sold his shares of the farm and acted as if the farming side of his life had never occurred. Four years later he is running a program to show the significant strides farming has made since his “glory days” of farming as a kid. The part you don’t know is that HN was not an avid farmer growing up, telling us he wanted to escape the farm life as soon as possible. However by keeping the family farm running you can not help but notice that part of this decision was to honor their late parents. To me that is the honor of farming, showing that the notion of family is still on the forefront of people’s minds. Some people say the notion of family has been retreating over the past couple of decades, but here in the Midwest it is stronger than ever. For my classmates and me, we do not need to look far for an example of this. As HN, his brother Denny, sister Nancy, and nephew Scott continue the strong tradition of family farming, you can tell the strong family effort has kept this family farm running. Whether it is being sustainable, nothing will stop a family from honoring their late loved ones through their farming. I believe family is the motivator to the honor of farming.