SPARC-ing Change on the Plains:
Soil, Health, and Sustainable Wheat
 —Wylie Harris
Seventy-odd giant windmills slowly churn the sky from the ridges
around Weatherford, turning the sun-baked air of the southern Plains
into a clean, renewable source
of electrical power.
However, more than just hot air is driving other currents of rural
sustainability in western Oklahoma.
Larry Wright, the Resource Conservation and Development Coordinator
for southwestern Oklahoma's Great Plains Area, is helping
wheat growers chart a course through some of those currents.
With a group of farmers, university staff, and other agency personnel,
Wright in 2004 formed the Southern Plains Agricultural Resources
Coalition, or SPARC.
The group's aim, he says, is to "spark" sustainable
change in the region's agriculture.
Wright began formulating the idea of SPARC as a kind of self-test
as he completed a five-year area plan for the Great Plains RC&D.
To really make a difference, he thought, any conservation plan
would have to affect a large portion of the land area. In western
Oklahoma, that line of thought leads straight to wheat (Figure
1).
"So," Wright asked himself, "What can I do
to add value to wheat?"
The Value of Ideas
Originally from Hinton, Wright is a career Natural Resources Conservation
Service (NRCS, formerly the Soil Conservation Service) employee
with 22 years under his belt as district conservationist for Weatherford.
So he naturally thought of answers to that question in terms of
conservation.
"This is catching the wave of the Conservation Security
Program," he says, "The idea of rewarding farmers
for stewardship."
SPARC's idea, he says, is to take wheat into the market
not as a commodity, but as a finished product, produced in an environmentally
friendly way.
"It's a new way of thinking," says Wright. "We
need that in agriculture in order to be economically sustainable."
According to Wright, SPARC's economic rationale is similar
to the one that planted windmills outside Weatherford. "We
all want to do our part," he says. "People are willing
to pay more for sustainability."
"Wind-generated electricity costs $5 more a month," Wright
says. "Within the first 6 months, they had 8,000 people
sign up."
To generate the same "green" consumer appeal for
wheat, SPARC proposes to create a certified label for products
made from wheat produced in accordance with its standards of sustainability.
To qualify for the label, producers must be certified by an independent
third-party inspector. SPARC has negotiated an arrangement with
the Portland, Oregon-based Food Alliance to conduct the inspections
and certification.
By December 2005, according to Wright, ten Oklahoma wheat farmers
have signed up and paid their SPARC membership fees. Later in the
winter, SPARC elected its board of directors and officers.
It also drew 277 participants to a SPARC-sponsored no-till seminar
in Hollis. Food Alliance certification visits may begin as soon
as early spring of 2006.
Making the Grade
The label tells the consumer that the wheat in certified products
was grown in a way that improves soil health and water quality,
two of SPARC's priority resource concerns.
Criteria for certification are based on growers' use of
practices that improve the soil conditioning index, such as minimal
tillage, and maintaining soil surface cover in the form of crop
residues or cover crops.
The Food Alliance certification criteria include four fixed standards
that must be met by all certifying farms. These are: no genetically
modified organisms, no use of synthetic hormones or feed additive
antibiotics, no use of a prohibited list of highly toxic pesticides,
and continual improvement in production and management practices.
In addition to these fixed criteria, there are other "scored
standards," for which farmers receive points on a sliding
scale, with a set minimum number of points required for certification.
These include whole farm standards, such as soil and water conservation,
reducing pesticides, safe and fair working conditions, and animal
welfare.
Finally, there is a set of product-specific standards that must
also be met to complete the certification process. For wheat, these
include detailed evaluations of cover crop usage, seedbed preparation,
grain storage, and several other practices.
The Dough in Wheat
As consumers opt for SPARC's certified, labeled wheat products,
they will help the coalition realize its third priority research
concern —that of improving local rural economies.
"We ask only the cost of production, plus a reasonable rate
of return," Wright explains.
As part of that rate of return, the consumer pays a premium for
the ecosystem services, such as soil and water conservation, provided
by environmentally friendly wheat farming.
Here, too, Wright uses wind power as an analogy. "The payment
from one of those windmills to the landowner is about $4,000 a
year," he says.
With over seventy windmills in the area, most on land held by
different owners, the economic returns are large and relatively
well distributed.
For wheat, SPARC's scenario runs like this: Imagine that
a regular loaf of bread costs $1.00, of which the wheat grower
receives 3 cents. Now, say that a loaf of bread bearing the SPARC
label retails for $1.05.
"If we can get the producer another 3 cents out of that
extra nickel," Wright says, "We've doubled
his income."
"Then," Wright continues, "what if a third —or
half —or even all, of the wheat growers sign up? What has
that done for the economy?"
SPARC is focusing first on wheat, Wright says, because the crop
is such a major part of western Oklahoma's farm economy.
But once the system is in place, he points out, it can be expanded
to other crops —cotton, beef, fruits and vegetables —as
well as to other areas, both in Oklahoma and in neighboring states.
Wright emphasizes the market-oriented nature of SPARC's
strategy, providing a product to satisfy consumers' expressed
demand while using a price premium to persuade farmers to change
their practices.
Contact:
Larry Wright, RC&D Coordinator
Great Plains Resource Conservation & Development
580-832-3661
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