Together for Conservation Agriculture
Read time: 4.5 minutes
Various CNH stakeholders including agricultural brands Case IH and New Holland brought together conservation experts, policymakers and farmers to a one-day workshop at the New Holland Campus Farm in the Chesapeake Bay area of Pennsylvania, USA, in July 2025 to share best practices and innovative ideas
Chun Woytera, CNH's Chief Quality & Customer Advocacy Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer, during her speech.
Opening the event, CNH’s leadership highlighted that sustainability is a shared journey — one that may look different for each participant but ultimately connects everyone involved. “When designing our technology, we think about how we can help customers reduce inputs and build resilience,” said Chun Woytera, CNH’s Chief Quality & Customer Advocacy Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer. “Sustainability isn’t something any one group or company can achieve alone. By coming together, we can learn, grow, and create solutions that make it easier for farmers to adopt conservation practices — because when our customers and local partners succeed, so do our industries and communities.”
This shared success goes beyond farming operations. Conservation practices not only protect soil, water, and biodiversity, but also contribute to healthier and more productive crops and, ultimately, healthier food. Strengthening these connections is key to building resilient crop and food systems for the future.
Conservation agriculture in action
The workshop aimed to bridge gaps in practical guidance, which can often be fragmented across the agricultural value chain, by showcasing equipment and technologies that make farming more resilient, efficient, and environmentally responsible while also enhancing the quality of crops that nourish both people and animals.
In the long term, these practices show how farming methods that care for the land improve the quality of the food system we all depend on.
Testing techniques for conservation agriculture
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the USA and its watershed is home to some 83,000 farms that must contend with nutrient pollution, soil erosion, rising temperatures and extreme weather. On the New Holland Campus Farm CNH brands test new conservation-friendly technologies such as methane powered tractors, as well as autonomous technology and precision tools. This hands-on approach allows us to share practical conservation techniques with local farmers.
“Given its role in promoting sustainable initiatives across the area, including restoring stream bank vegetation and improving soil quality, the campus farm was the ideal location for the conservation workshop,” explains David Eberly who runs the New Holland campus farm. “It all feeds into promoting a healthy, economical and sustainable crop system.”
It all feeds into promoting a healthy, economical and sustainable crop and food system
On the left: guests at the event. On the right: New Holland Construction machines.
Showing what works
The 2025 workshop was built on a pioneering Farmers’ Workshop held at the farm in 2024, which focused on conservation practices, funding and technical assistance. “This year we wanted to expand it to show not only the value of those practices, but also how we can be a partner and help producers and conservation organizations to implement those practices,” says Ryan Romanowski, Subsidies and Funding Manager for CNH North America.
The program was developed in partnership with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and included presentations from sustainable crop specialist Professor Heather Karsten from Penn State University and Eric Rosenbaum, who leads the crop productivity improvement group Pennsylvania 4R Alliance. There were also contributions from farmers’ groups such as the Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance.
The event provided the perfect showcase for CNH’s brands’ equipment designed for conservation farming, including the New Holland Methane Power tractor. It demonstrated how alternative fuels can lower farming emissions, and how no-till seed drills and precision farming can be used to improve soil and crop quality, ensuring a healthier soil ecosystem and providing water quality benefits.
Some 150 people attended — more than double the previous year’s Farmers Workshop.
The event provided the perfect showcase for CNH’s brands’ equipment designed for conservation farming, including the New Holland Methane Power tractor. It demonstrated how alternative fuels can lower farming emissions, and how no-till seed drills and precision farming can be used to improve soil and crop quality, ensuring a healthier soil ecosystem and providing water quality benefits.
Guests at the event.
Learning from innovative farmers
“The workshop was a unique opportunity to bring farmers, experts, funders, policymakers and us, the equipment manufacturers, together to talk about conservation solutions,” says Romanowski. “Everybody was there to learn from one another. But that’s not all. It also helped raise public awareness about sustainable crop production practices.”
According to Eberly, the first innovators are always the farmers. “They’ve been making equipment and altering it to make it work the way they need. Us, the experts and the policymakers, need to listen to them,” he says.
This approach brought valuable perspectives and reinforced the need for collaboration across the crop and food system. For example, CNH representatives heard concerns such as the difficulty of transporting equipment on rural roads and the limited infrastructure for methane fuel — and took note for future solutions.
“We were able to discuss not only what we offer, but also what farmers need. We’ve got to be their partner,” Eberly adds.
Guests at the event near Case IH machines.
Doing what’s right for the land
But both Eberly and Romanowski note that conservation takes time to bear fruit. “The effects of the practices are really measured in decades” says Eberly. They both stressed that those making lasting change succeed out of a love for the land and the belief that conservation delivers better results.
They point to a photograph of a big pile of soil pushed back from the road that had been washed from the fields of a farm neighboring New Holland’s Campus Farm.
“This shows that the neighbor has lost soil from their field,” says Eberly. “That pile accumulated in a couple of weeks and the township had to keep coming out to push it back after the rain. The operator told me he couldn’t remember the last time he had to do this to the roads by our fields. They get the same amount of rain and are subject to the same weather. That’s the difference employing these conservation methods make.”
While the full effects take time, the workshop demonstrates that planting buffers, improving soil, water and air quality, and responsible farming help protect the environment while enhancing efficiency and crop quality. Healthier crops mean healthier food, reminding us that sustainable practices are vital not only for the land and the environment, but for the wellbeing of our diets and the resilience of the entire food system — a responsibility we all share.
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