Ag Info Service Is ATTRActive, Free Adviser

When Dow Brantley started looking into ways to ensure that his family’s third generation Delta farm will be around for another three generations, he hired Ben Noble.

Noble, now vice president of federal affairs with Troutman Sanders Public Affairs Group in Washington, D.C., has served stints as the agriculture policy adviser to U.S. Senators Dale Bumpers and Blanche Lincoln.

Brantley, whose 6,700-acre diversified operation is near England, Ark., rightly figured his college buddy could help out.

Noble told Brantley to call the folks at ATTRA (Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas), which is the single largest project of the National Center for Appropriate Technology, or more commonly, NCAT.

ATTRA would be able to answer Brantley’s questions about organic certification, help him understand the market for organic goods and give him ideas about how to develop a niche for his business.

And they’d do it free of charge.

To top it off, one of the biggest ATTRA offices as well as the project’s manager is located in downtown Fayetteville, a stone’s throw from where Brantley and Noble met as University of Arkansas students.

NCAT, a publicly funded, non-profit organization based in Butte, Mont., has a mission to provide “sustainable solutions to reduce poverty, promote healthy communities, and protect natural resources.”

ATTRA is the agricultural branch of the NCAT organization and provides nationwide research services to livestock and crop growers through its ATTRA project. But research doesn’t just end with technical data on growing calves to cows or seed to stalks. It also includes marketing, business planning and risk management, as in the case with Brantley.

Teresa Maurer, NCAT program manager, oversees the entire ATTRA project from her office in Fayetteville. She said the NCAT’s $4 million annual budget is funded by federal grants (as a line item in the the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget), state contracts and private foundation donations.

Of that $4 million, ATTRA takes about $2.5 million each year to write and print various publications run its Web site, man the phone lines and put on workshops around the country.

Maurer said it’s difficult to track the program’s client numbers because of the increasing traffic coming through the Internet site, but she guesses ATTRA in some way reaches 500,000 to 1 million people a year.

NCATin’ Around

NCAT traces its roots back to the oil crisis of the 1970s when it started as an organization to explore alternative energy, Maurer said.

During the 1980s, the idea of “sustainable agriculture” became predominate within the organization, and over time, ATTRA has become the single largest segment.

Sustainable agriculture refers to the ideal of balancing ecology and maintaining natural resources while producing marketable products.

Maurer, who also raises sheep near Elkins, joined the group in 1991 from the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Oklahoma where she worked for several years.

She said the organization’s offerings are simple: A farmer calls in on the toll-free line or e-mails through the Web site, an intake specialist routes the query to an appropriate program specialist, and that person researches the topic. The organization’s core topics include:

farming fundamentals;

horticultural crops;

field crops and soils;

pest management;

organic farming;

livestock;

marketing, business and risk management;

energy and agriculture;

education;

and other resources.

About 24 different agriculture specialists are spread across NCAT’s five offices (two in Montana and one each in California, Iowa and Arkansas). There is an intricate networked phone and computer system and each office takes turns fielding calls and each specialist is assigned a case depending on his or her expertise. There are eight specialists in the Fayetteville office.

The specialist then culls through ATTRA’s library of publications (both written by ATTRA employees and from outside the organization) and generates an answer for the farmer or rancher.

For example, Steve Diver, program specialist, has been with the ATTRA project since 1989 and provides information on agronomy and horticulture. He said a recent call from Florida led him to research the use of marigolds as a safe way to control nematodes — a parasitic wormlike organism. Marigolds produce a chemical that repeals nematodes and it’s a common practice among small gardeners.

The problem is marigold seed as it’s sold to nurseries is expensive and hard to obtain.

Diver dug into the books. He came up with three alternatives that produce the same type of repellent — sunn hemp, sorghum sudan grass and various brasicus plants (mustards and rapeseed). All of which are readily available and affordable, he said.

Diver describes ATTRA as the inverse of traditional scientific research, where he and his co-workers are doing peer-level work.

“We are really doing cutting edge research,” he said. And not just research that sounds good, but practical measures that farmers put into practice. “That’s where the rubber meets the road.”

Growing Organic

“I think it’s a great service. I wish I’d known about it 10 years ago,” Brantley said.

Brantley Farming Co. primarily grows cotton, but also produces rice, soybeans and corn. Brantley declined to reveal his annual revenue, but said he has started a subsidiary called White River LLC and is considering switching some of his rice production to purely organic rice.

The organic foods niche is becoming more and more popular, he said, and he believes that getting his farm in on the ground floor will give him somewhat of a competitive advantage, as well as diversify BFC’s offerings.

“Organic is less than one percent of the products sold in the U.S. and it’s growing,” Brantley said.

The folks at ATTRA have helped him figure out the organic certification process, which is a lengthy application with a third party, and ATTRA specialists are giving him ideas of how to develop a niche market.

“I can talk to you all day about growing it.” But developing a profitable market without help is another story, Brantley said.

Margo Hale, an intake specialist in Fayetteville, said a lot of calls coming in seem to be about organic farming.

Lance Gegner is a program specialist and another longtime team member — he’s been with NCAT for 14 years. His specialty is in alternative livestock, hogs and equipment.

A rancher recently asked him about raising alpacas, a domesticated cousin to the llama. Gegner happened to know that the alpaca wool market is limited and that the population in the U.S. is on a sharp rise.

Gegner didn’t really dissuade the rancher from the move, but “I gave him something to think about,” he said.

ATTRA’s Future

Since NCAT depends on government grants, its future is always in as much peril as the average farmer’s.

Maurer said the program’s line item under the USDA was noticeably missing from President George W. Bush’s proposed 2007 budget announced in February. But, she said, it’s happened before.

The ATTRA project has many friends on both sides of the political spectrum, she said, so the organization as a whole is optimistic their funding will make it back in.