Together for Conservation Agriculture
Read time: 4.5 minutes
CNH agricultural brands Case IH and New Holland brought together conservation experts, policymakers and farmers to a one-day workshop at their Campus Farm in the Chesapeake Bay area in July to share best practice 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 stressed 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.”
Conservation agriculture focuses on practices that preserve and improve soil health while maintaining farm productivity. 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.
“Conservation agriculture is a set of best practices that not only preserves soil health and resources but also enhances them and the economic viability of the farm,” explains Dave Eberly, who runs the New Holland Campus Farm.
Testing techniques for conservation agriculture
Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the country and the surrounding area is home to some 83,000 farms that increasingly have to contend with the effects of over-farming and climate change. This includes nutrient pollution, soil erosion, increased temperatures and extreme weather events such as flooding, all of which can reduce productivity and harm the environment. On the New Holland Campus Farm CNH brands test new conservation-friendly technologies such as methane-powered and hydrogen-fueled tractors, as well as autonomous technology innovations, and teaches conservation agricultural techniques to local farmers.
“Given its role in promoting sustainable initiatives across the area, including restoring forests and improving soil quality, the campus farm was the ideal location for the conservation workshop,” says Eberly. “It all feeds into promoting a healthy, fair and sustainable crop and food system.”
It all feeds into promoting a healthy, fair 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, Gross Margin Improvement Engineer and co-chair of the sustainability team at the campus farm.
The program 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 and conservation groups such as the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay.
The event provided the perfect showcase for CNH’s brands’ equipment designed for conservation farming, including New Holland Methane Power tractors. 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 life for the soil.
Some 150 people linked to and interested in conservation agriculture attended, more than double the sixty who attended the previous Farmers’ Workshop.
The event provided the perfect showcase for CNH’s brands’ equipment designed for conservation farming, including New Holland Methane Power tractors. 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 life for the soil.
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 Romanowksi. “Everybody was there to learn from one another. But that’s not all. It also helped raise public awareness about sustainable crop production practices.”
This networking approach is important because, according to Romanowksi, 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.
“We got to discuss not only what we offer, but also what farmers need. We’ve got to be their partner,” Eberly adds.
CNH brands’ representatives heard that some equipment is difficult to transport on rural roads in the Chesapeake Bay area and that a lack of infrastructure to supply methane fuel was hampering uptake of some of its equipment. The Company took note and will keep seeking the best solutions for farmers.
“Conservation will not succeed if we try to force solutions and ideas on farmers. We’ve all got to understand them and the way to make the biggest impact is to listen to what they need and showcase best practices so they can see how these practices can improve the efficiency of their businesses,” says Eberly. Conservation groups and policymakers are an important part of that conversation and they too were interested in hearing first-hand from the farmers and from CNH.
“I spent a lot of time with representatives from local government and from the US Department of Agriculture’s National Resource Conservation Service. It was really exciting for them to see our commitment to bringing people together to advance conservation agriculture,” says Romanowski.
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 Romanowsky. “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 these conservation methods make.”
While the full effects take time, the workshop demonstrates that replanting forests, improving soil quality, and responsible farming help protect the environment and boost efficiency — results that American farmers are increasingly eager to achieve.
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