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I started working in the North American potato industry nearly five years ago. My job was to "educate" potato growers on the opportunities to integrate regenerative farming practices in potato production.
I had some level of expertise with regenerative farming practices. My master’s research explored the impacts of cover crops and manure on water and nutrient cycling in corn production. I published that research, along with a few other studies and farmer-facing factsheets on cover cropping.
I had a decent grasp of the science.
More importantly, I had done that research on-farm, working with a super innovative and collaborative farmer. That connection launched me into a network where I was exposed to hundreds of farmers with their own unique approaches to implementing regenerative farming practices in a variety of cropping systems.
I had a decent library of stories.
But I quickly discovered that stories and science weren't enough to help these potato growers with their questions. No matter how many examples I shared, I kept hearing the same question:
"What's going to work on my farm?"
These farmers wanted more than general principles. They were asking me to advise on a specific approach for their specific situation.
I knew intuitively that I couldn't give them what they were asking for.
It took me a couple years to understand why.
There are two types of change that get made on the farm.
Type one is what I think of as a Test. The defining feature of a Test is that it has a clear right or wrong answer. To solve a Test, you need expertise. If you don’t know the right answer, you hire an advisor to give you some expert advice. Most crop health and protection changes fall into this category.
Tests also tend to come with a specific set of questions:
You’ll notice that these questions all have the same set of possible answers: Yes, or No. They’re purposely narrow because the aim is to diagnose the problem and find the singular solution.
But not every change is like this. Some changes could have a million possible solutions for the same farm!
I think of this type of change like a Quest. Quests come with a lot of unknowns. There isn’t necessarily a right way or a wrong way—only better or worse.
This is why, if you're staring down a Quest, the last thing you need is someone coming onto your farm and giving you advice! You can't outsource the right solution, because only you can know what will work best!
Most attempts to promote regenerative practice adoption get stuck for this reason:
They approach regenerative agriculture like it's a Test.
They recruit experts to advise farmers on how to adopt.
And farmers resist because the advisor doesn't know their farm like they do.
But regenerative agriculture is a Quest—
not a Test.
There are a million possible ways to make it work on your farm.
The challenge isn’t how to adopt regenerative agriculture, it’s how to adapt the practices and principles to each unique farm operation.
If you’re looking for an advisor to provide a silver bullet solution among the overwhelming list of possible approaches, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
The good news is that there's another way—a simpler, better way to promote Quest-type change than giving advice.
Asking Questy questions.
In contrast to the Testy questions I shared above, here’s a better set of questions to ask when you’re facing a Quest:
In keeping with the type of change, these questions all have an unlimited supply of answers! They’re wide open because the aim is to surface as many options as possible so that you, the farmer, can weigh the alternatives and choose among them—not the right path, but the best path for your farm.
This is the advantage of a coach.
Where advisors have been trained in providing the right answer, coaches have been trained in asking the right questions to help people navigate their Quests. The coach is not the expert; the coach recognizes the farmer’s expertise and asks curious, open-ended questions to help the farmer discover and decide where to go next.
It’s rare to find a coach in ag. We’ve worked the advisory muscle hard, and lots of people are eager to flex it.
We haven’t exercised the coaching muscle so much, which means that when we try to support farmers with their Quests, we flop and resort to giving advice.
For the potato growers I was working with, I knew I couldn't provide the answer they were looking for, but I believed they could discover it for themselves if I asked the right questions.
That hunch turned out to be true.
I helped launch several group coaching cohorts where small groups of growers would commit for a couple seasons to trial new regenerative practices on their farms.
I had lots of ideas of things they could try, but I kept those to myself. Instead, I asked them open-ended questions:
What are your long-term business goals?
What regenerative practices align best with those?
What are you interested in trying?
And then I reflected back the ideas, challenges, and solutions I heard them coming up with.
One of the growers later shared with me, "These meetings haven't been pushy, but they have pushed me."
When you're on a Quest and someone gives you advice, it feels pushy.
When you're on a Quest and someone can be curious with you, it pushes you forward.
Curiosity can make the difference between success and stagnation.
This approach is the foundation of my upcoming book, Farming Curious. It’s all about how to make Quest-type change and future-proof the farm.
If that’s what you’re trying to do, I hope you’ll subscribe to this newsletter and follow along as I share more ideas from the book before it’s released next year. Click here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your email.
If you know someone else who’s on the same journey, please share this with them! I hope it helps.
Stay curious, friends.