Serving Mankind and Nature: USA Rice—Ducks Unlimited Rice Stewardship Partnership Honored for Efforts to Unite Rice Industry to Deliver Sustainable Outcomes
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Driving through Tallahassee County, Mississippi in winter, you are most definitely in rice country. But if you look closer, there’s another world nestled among the paddies—ducks and other migratory waterfowl who make their winter homes among the flooded rice fields.
The recipients of Field to Market’s 2019 Collaboration of the Year Award have harmonized the needs of mankind and nature by bringing together the rice industry to support waterfowl habitat, protect and conserve water and create lasting value for stakeholders across the rice value chain. This year’s award honors the USA Rice—Ducks Unlimited Rice Stewardship Partnership, which unites ten Field to Market members including USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Walmart.org, The Mosaic Company and the Mosaic Foundation, Nestlé Purina PetCare Company, RiceTec, BASF, Corteva Agriscience and Riceland Foods, Inc, to deliver sustainable outcomes for the U.S. rice industry.
By working together in all six rice growing states, the Rice Stewardship Partnership has delivered on the promise of unparalleled collaboration within a single industry to drive continuous improvements in water quality, water quantity and habitat protection.
A Perfect Rice Production System
“Rice and ducks get along swimmingly,” explains Rice Stewardship participating farmer Mike Wagner of Sumner, Mississippi. “They love an aquatic environment, and we inevitably farm an aquatic environment. We’re able to supply a lot of the protein and carbohydrates they need to sustain their cycles of life. They fertilize our land, they do our tillage for us. It’s a perfect rice production system as I see it.”
“The Mississippi River Valley is one of the most important wintering regions for water fowl in all of North America” says Dr. Scott Manley, Director of Conservation Innovation, Ducks Unlimited. “Agricultural production practices can be managed in a great way for wildlife, and that is what you see private landowners doing today. They’re growing the crops, feeding the world, and during the off season—when many migratory birds are moving through here—those same fields are managed to hold water and are mimicking the wetlands that were once here.”
This symbiotic relationship between waterfowl and working ricelands is at the heart of the Rice Stewardship Partnership, a collaboration formed by USA Rice and Ducks Unlimited in 2013 with a mission to conserve three interrelated critical natural resources—ricelands, water and wetland wildlife.
Driving Continuous Improvement in Water Quality and Quantity
The Partnership has relied closely on Field to Market’s Fieldprint Platform to measure and deliver on continuous improvement in these areas since 2014, using the tool to support rice growers in better understanding the relationships between their management practices and their ability to improve environmental outcomes in these areas. To date, the Partnership has analyzed over 42,000 acres of rice fields using the Fieldprint Platform, working side-by-side with producers to engage them on continuous improvement in water quality and quantity.
“Since each producer and each landscape has a variety of different natural resource concerns, we have to work with each operation individually to maximize conservation outcomes,” explains Dr. Ellen Herbert, Ecosystems Services Scientist, Ducks Unlimited. “The Fieldprint Platform allows farmers to understand how sustainability practices directly impact their operations, their yields and their use of natural resources.”
“The data is key,” explains participating farmer Mike Sullivan of Burdette, Arkansas. “By collecting data in the Fieldprint Platform, you feel more comfortable trying something new on a single field instead of your whole farm. You try it one year, a few more fields the next, without committing to the whole ball of wax before you know its worth.”
Beyond supporting growers with tools to understand and improve the sustainability of their own operations, the Partnership’s use of the Fieldprint Platform has also provided a powerful tool to tell the sustainability story of the U.S. rice industry. “Using the Fieldprint Platform, we’ve been able to demonstrate that changing irrigation strategies have saved substantial ground water in eastern Arkansas, for example” says Dr. Herbert. “The Platform can help us document and demonstrate that agriculture is successfully addressing some of the most pressing natural resource concerns, including declines in biodiversity, decreasing water quality and declines in availability of fresh water.”
Unparalleled Collaboration for the U.S. Rice Industry
“One of the remarkable things about the Rice Stewardship Partnership is the fact that we operate in all six of the major rice producing states—Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas,” explains Lydia Holmes, Sustainability Manager, USA Rice Federation. “It’s been really important for the Rice Stewardship Partnership to have collaborators from across the supply chain—from farmers to inputs to retailers and end users. Having those different perspectives has helped us to build a strong program that’s beneficial to farmers and the environment.”
In 2013, USA Rice and Ducks Unlimited formed the Rice Stewardship Partnership with a vision to unite the rice industry in conserving working ricelands, water and wetland wildlife. Since then, the Partnership has not only utilized Field to Market’s measurement tools, but brought together ten Field to Market members from across all five sectors of its membership to achieve unparalleled collaboration across the entire rice value chain.
“It combines Ducks Unlimited, USA Rice, NRCS, rice producers and supply chain partners to do awesome things on the ground for conservation,” says Dr. Manley.
The Rice Stewardship Partnership relies on collaborative funding mechanisms to support farmers in the adoption of critical conservation practices to meet their mission. “Leveraging both private and public funds allows us to achieve a much larger impact on the landscape,” says Dr. Herbert. “These funds support both the adoption of practices and changes in infrastructure that make farmers’ operations more sustainable. And, they fund our staff on the ground, which is perhaps the most important part of this partnership.”
One of the critical partners in the Rice Stewardship Partnership is the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The Partnership leverages funds through the NRCS Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), in addition to partnering USA Rice and Ducks Unlimited’s networks of ground staff with local NRCS offices. This creates a powerful network of boots-on-the-ground advisers which allows participating growers to navigate practice adoption and data collection with the appropriate support.
“The goal of the program is to promote the producers to try something new,
says Steve Crisel, Area Resource Conservationist, Missouri NRCS. “These partnerships provide financial assistance for the producers in order to provide waterfowl habitat. It’s a win-win situation.”
The Partnership prioritizes farmer livelihoods by providing financial assistance in addition to conservation planning and technical assistance. This help growers adopt practices, like innovative irrigation techniques, that significantly reduce water use and improve water quality, soil conservation and more. In total, the project’s financial assistance is set to scale to impact over 1,000 farms and more than 800,000 acres before 2024.
“It’s like this 3 legged stool,” says participating farmer Al Montna of Yuba City, California. “You have to be responsible to people, your community, and your neighbors. You have to be responsible for the planet, you have to leave this better than you found it. Finally, you have to be able to make a profit. Because profit is what drives us being able to do conservation on these lands.”
Uniting the Rice Value Chain
In addition to NRCS, supply chain collaborators in the partnership provide both technical assistance to the project and work to multiply and leverage NRCS dollars to scale the Partnership’s impact. “Through participation in programs like the Rice Stewardship Partnership, we’re able to drive forward the message of some of the conservation practices that are taking place,” says Jack Scott, Vice President, Sustainability and Responsible Sourcing, Nestlé and Nestlé Purina. “We need to have ongoing stewardship of the land. These are things that cannot only benefit individual farmers but can long term benefit the entire community of rice farming as well.”
The Partnership has harnessed the impact of ten Field to Market members and nearly twenty-four financial sponsors in total, scaling sustainable outcomes for the rice industry by harnessing a multi-stakeholder partnership and implementing locally-led solutions. To date, the Partnership has completed approximately 250,000 acres of conservation projects which support conservation of ricelands, water and wildlife—and partners involved only have plans to grow their impact.
“Agriculture has to leave its gates open and conservationists have to come in to work with us to keep this land better for my family and my grandchildren than when I found it,” says Montna. “And it’s going to be their responsibility to do that and pass it on to the next generation.”
"It’s been critical for the Rice Stewardship Partnership to have collaborators from across the supply chain—from farmers to inputs to retailers and end users. Having those different perspectives has helped us to build a strong program that’s beneficial to farmers and the environment.”
Lydia Davis
Sustainability Manager
USA Rice
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