{"id":6128,"date":"2016-04-21T09:10:31","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T13:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/?p=6128"},"modified":"2025-06-11T12:30:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T16:30:51","slug":"from-my-grandfathers-farm-to-nutrientstar-why-i-believe-in-growers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/2016\/04\/21\/from-my-grandfathers-farm-to-nutrientstar-why-i-believe-in-growers\/","title":{"rendered":"From my grandfather\u2019s farm to NutrientStar: Why I believe in growers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Old<\/a>
My grandfather, John Beall, with his brother, on the family farm in Ohio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I once dreamed of pursuing a career in public radio and becoming the next Cokie Roberts. Not surprisingly, my life took me in a much different direction. The catalyst was a two-year Peace Corps stint in biodiversity-rich Ecuador that led me towards a career in conservation. But I never steered too far from my agricultural roots, and today my farming life has come full circle.<\/p>\n

I grew up on a small farm in rural Ohio, surrounded by fields, woods, wetlands and a menagerie of animals. My grandfather lived next door and every day I\u2019d tag along with him and help vaccinate the chicks, collect eggs, bale hay, and feed the cows.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the responsibilities he gave me as a young child, I feel a special connection to the farmers I work with today as they face pressure to increase their yields without polluting the water supply or surrounding ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my agricultural story, and why I believe that a new program called NutrientStar<\/a> will positively impact both farmers\u2019 businesses and the surrounding ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Detours to Ecuador & Texas<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"With<\/a>
With the Cotogchoa village women during my Peace Corps service in Ecuador.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During my time in the Peace Corps, I witnessed first-hand the double-edged sword of introducing natural resource extraction into a country with high poverty rates but also rich biodiversity. My heart especially goes out to Ecuador this week after the devastating earthquake.<\/p>\n

I spent the next 15 years in Texas working on coastal and freshwater policy and the restoration of endangered species habitats near the U.S.-Mexico border \u2013 first with the Texas Center for Policy Studies and the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission, and later with EDF Texas.<\/p>\n

But when an opportunity arose to transition to EDF\u2019s sustainable agriculture team and focus on the Western Lake Erie Basin, the decision to move home to Ohio \u2013 and back to agriculture \u2013 was an easy one.<\/p>\n

Farming in a new era<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>
My grandfather’s farm in Ohio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Times have changed a great deal since my grandfather took me on his morning farm rounds. It\u2019s become extremely difficult to make a living from farming, especially with unpredictable crop prices. Growers must apply nutrients and grow crops in a leaky biological system and can\u2019t meet their production goals without the nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers they use, which are also harmful to the environment.<\/p>\n

But the farmers I\u2019ve come across are also keenly interested in being good stewards of the land; this makes my work with farmers in the Midwest incredibly rewarding.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s also part of the reason my colleagues and I developed NutrientStar<\/a>, an independent, science-based program that reviews the performance of commercially available fertilizer management tools.<\/p>\n

NutrientStar<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Seal\"<\/a>Most of us read the ingredients on a food label or research the estimated gas mileage of a car to make the best buying decisions. When farmers try to evaluate fertilizer management tools, they don\u2019t have the same kind of objective information at their fingertips.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we created NutrientStar<\/a> \u2013 to give farmers confidence that the money they spend on fertilizer management products and precision agriculture technologies will be well spent, and that those tools will work as advertised.<\/p>\n

Assessments are conducted by an independent review panel of leading scientists, fertilizer experts, and technology practitioners. It\u2019s the \u201cwho\u2019s who\u201d of fertilizer experts across the country.<\/p>\n

Food companies are also interested in NutrientStar \u2013 as it gives them a tangible way to help farmers in their supply chain reduce fertilizer losses \u2013 and meet corporate sustainability goals.<\/p>\n

Remembering my roots<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I\u2019m out in the field meeting with farmers and talking about their stewardship goals, I often conjure up the memory of my grandfather whistling a happy tune as he walked to the barn with a swing in his gait. I\u2019d like to think he\u2019d be proud of the path I\u2019ve forged and the modest contributions I\u2019ve made to preserving natural systems and the rural life he adored.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I once dreamed of pursuing a career in public radio and becoming the next Cokie Roberts. Not surprisingly, my life took me in a much different direction. The catalyst was a two-year Peace Corps stint in biodiversity-rich Ecuador that led me towards a career in conservation. But I never steered too far from my agricultural …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46310,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[120554],"tags":[234,56,84801,383,42756,39411,63672,71830,63845,71637,84767,28800,84800,61056,413],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","tag-agriculture-tag","tag-conservation","tag-ecuador","tag-environmental-defense-fund","tag-farmers","tag-farming","tag-farms","tag-food-2","tag-food-production","tag-nutrient-efficiency","tag-nutrientstar","tag-ohio","tag-peace-corps","tag-soil-health","tag-sustainability"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46310"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15541,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6128\/revisions\/15541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6128"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}