Category: The Farm Life

It All Begins With Dirt

earthworms on a persons hand

Building Strong Foundations, Part 2. Adaptive Grazing: Matching Land and Livestock

How many animals should I have? This is the second session of the three-part Building Strong Foundations series for beginning livestock farmers. Learn about soil structure and its effect on water infiltration​, then find out how to determine the carrying capacity​ of your land. Find out how adaptive management​ helps you “keep your eyes on the prize” through observing, implementing, and adapting. Having the right number of livestock for your farm will help you take better care of your land and make money with fewer costs.

Years of farming and visiting other farms, combined with recent education in soil health, have convinced me of this: We can best serve people, the land, and the livestock by learning to care for the soil FIRST. 

That’s why NCAT’s Livestock and Grazing Team began with this foundation when they gathered to teach a three-part series for beginning livestock producers.   

If you missed that series, no worries—you can watch recordings of each part at your convenience and share the links with others who are managing land or considering starting a livestock enterprise. Here’s what you will find in each session: 

Part 1-Soil Health: Your Grazing Foundation

NCAT specialists introduce the principles of soil health and explain how healthy land is the foundation of successful livestock production. Presenters explain the concepts of minimizing disturbance, maximizing biodiversity, keeping soil covered, maintaining living roots in the soil, and including animals. Find out how grazing affects the plant, soils, and livestock and learn the importance of grazing plants at the right time and allowing full plant recovery before re-grazing. By respecting the soil health and grazing principles, you can take better care of your land. See the additional resources for this session.

Part 2-Adaptive Grazing: Matching Land and Livestock

Learn about soil structure and its effect on water infiltration, then find out how to determine the carrying capacity of your land. Find out how adaptive management helps you “keep your eyes on the prize” through observing, implementing, and adapting. Having the right number of livestock for your farm will help you take better care of your land and make money with fewer costs. See the additional resources for this session.

Part 3-Choosing Livestock for the Farm  

NCAT specialists draw on their own experience to offer tips for success in starting a livestock operation with worms, poultry, rabbits, hogs, sheep, and goats, or cattle. Learn about respecting the limits of your land and choosing a livestock species based on resource base, marketing, and goals. To give an idea of the options available, NCAT specialists provide virtual tours of their own farms. Each session has a customized resource page for more information because an hour is just enough time to whet your appetite to learn more. See the additional resources for this session. See the additional resources for this session.

Our experienced team of livestock specialists periodically offers training sessions. We have several on tap during the next few months, including free webinars hosted by Food Animal Concerns Trust (foodanimalconcernstrust.org) and an advanced grazing training to be held in April 2022. Watch NCAT’s Events page so you don’t miss it! Let us know what topics you’d like us to teach in the coming year. Email me at lindac@ncat.org and I will pass the ideas on to the team. 

Thank you for the work you do in caring for soil, plants, and livestock! Please join us at the forum at the Soil for Water forum to network with other producers who care about stewarding the land well. 

Related ATTRA Resources:

Livestock and Pasture

Regenerative Grazing

Soil and Ecosystem Health

Other Resources:

Soil for Water

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Working with Your Farm’s Ecosystem

tufted titmouse bird perched on a tree branch

For the Love of the Wild: Livestock Pastures as Wildlife Habitat

By Lee Rinehart, NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Specialist

photo of deer on grass field
Photo by Matthis on Pexels.com

Warm-season grasses provide wildlife habitat and excellent livestock forage. Photo: NRCS

Farmers, ranchers, and researchers have come to understand that the functionality of ecosystems on farms is largely dependent on plant and animal biodiversity. Functional ecological processes and services, such as soil and water quality, renewal and regeneration of soil and plant organisms, and nutrient cycling on farms and ranches, are facilitated by biology, necessitating maintenance of biological integrity and diversity in agroecosystems (Altieri, 1999). It is not surprising that adaptive multi-paddock grazing is an effective conservation practice on grazing lands for enhancing water conservation and protecting water quality (Park et al., 2017), as well as enhancing soil carbon, fertility, and soil water-holding capacity (Teague and Barnes, 2017) that soil organisms rely on for building healthy soil.

But there is another aspect of biodiversity that is just as important as soil and plant organisms. Livestock and wildlife compete for landscape resources, and they both put pressure on the forage available, as well as water, cover, and space, depending on their resource needs. In fact, wildlife species often “require considerably greater amounts of space to achieve acceptable levels of reproductive performance whereby survival of a population is assured” (Barnes et al., 1991). Birds need cover and shelter during their reproductive phase, and deer and elk need forage, cover, water, and a range large enough for them to thrive. Small mammals need space and protection from predators, and fish need quality streams and ponds. The concepts of resource supply and demand are just as important for wildlife as they are for livestock, and this affects our grazing management.

Historically, livestock have been a destructive force on landscapes (Ohmart, 1996), but they don’t have to be. Our agricultural landscapes are habitat for wildlife, connected and ecologically linked to set-aside wild lands, parks and reserves, wetlands and riparian zones, abandoned farms, privately owned non-agricultural forests and fields, and peri-urban low-density residential areas, which make up a large portion of the land in many areas. The ecology of our lands has changed over time due to invasive species, exotic species, removal of large carnivores, and human encroachment. But farmers and landowners have become better wildlife stewards, and many include wildlife habitat into their whole- farm plans out of love of the wild and for quiet woods and fields populated with majestic creatures. And they invite friends and neighbors into the woods to see and reflect on the wildness that constitutes an important part of their farm.eggs in nest

Nest located on land where NRCS has provided technical assistance to landowners in the prairie pothole region of northeastern South Dakota.

We have a large toolbox of practices that can help us be better stewards of our land and all its inhabitants. One way of including wildlife in farm planning is to manage plant succession to favor diversity that is beneficial for wildlife. The desired plant community for a diverse population of wildlife species is one comprised of a diversity of grasses, forbs, and woody plants interspersed across the landscape and having different structures in terms of size, growth form, and physical maturity (Stevens, 2016). Livestock grazing can be used to manipulate various paddocks to maintain different habitats throughout the grazing season. For example, habitat requirements vary seasonally for nesting, breeding, feeding, etc. for different wildlife species. Standing vegetation is often best for nesting birds but grazed diverse vegetation is good for feeding sites (Vavra, 2005). This is just one example of including practices that take wildlife into consideration.

An adaptive grazing system, because of its inherent flexibility, can be compatible with wildlife habitat management by mimicking the seasonal movement of species based on forage quality and quantity (Schieltz and Rubenstein, 2016). It can foster diverse landscapes at various times of the year by manipulating animal numbers in paddocks, grazing some paddocks heavily and some lightly, and some perhaps not at all for a part of the season, leaving diverse grasses and forbs ungrazed for a part of the year for wildlife.

There are many resources to help farmers, ranchers, and landowners foster wildlife habitat on their land, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Partners Program, which works with private landowners to plan and implement on-farm projects to create, restore, or enhance habitat for wildlife. Farmers and ranchers are telling their own stories of restoration of the land for its own sake, much like Meredith Ellis, a second-generation Texas rancher, put it better than anyone I’ve heard when she said that species diversity and rare species are indicators that you’re doing something right (Ellis, 2021).

Reference:

Ellis, Meredith. 2021. Keynote presentation at the 2021 National Grazing Lands Coalition Conference, Myrtle Beach, SC.

Related ATTRA Resource:

Adaptive Grazing – You Can Do It

Other Resources:

The Basics of Managing Wildlife on Agricultural Lands

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Partners Program

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HOLISITC FARMING: a jigsaw puzzle

landscape field trees hill

Looking at your farm as an interdependent entity means evaluating how each aspect, crop or product interacts with the ecosystem of your farm much like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces are an integral part of the whole.  Most farmers only think about these things when it comes to growing zones and choosing plant varieties. There is so much more to this equation if your long-term goals include stewardship, sustainability, and consistent profits.

Farming is a challenge under the best of circumstances.  Weather and rising cost of inputs being only two of the variables you must accommodate to succeed.  By examining the micro-environment of your farm, you can make informed decisions about plant and animals that will not only grow and make money for you but will continue to enhance the ecosystem of your farm.

Monocropping (planting only one type of plant or raising only one type of animal) only makes your farm subject to the whims of the market and attack by pests. This type of single mindedness will need a large amount of inputs like fertilizer and pesticides to bring your ecosystem even close to being back into balance and ready to monocrop year after year.  This type of farming is not only riskier and more costly but unsustainable.

Holistic Farming works with the environment not against it. By having diversity in your crops and animals you not only work with nature to create a sustainable farm, but you create multiple income streams. Both of these factors are important in creating a sustainable farm.

Subscribe to this Blog to join us on the Agriculture Adventure of making your farm a reality.

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Understanding Soil Health. Understanding Life

brown shovel

November 2, 2021

Written by: Lydia Griffin

Soil is the basis of all life. In fact, without the diversity and functionality of soil, plant and animal (yes, that means you, too) life could not exist. But how is this possible? How is it that soil accepts back that which came from it century after century, while still serving as a host and origin to so many life forms? 

This introduces the concept of soil health, which the National Resource Conservation Service defines as the capability of soils to ceaselessly sustain the vitality of all players in a living ecosystem (NRCS, 2021). You see, with no soil, there is no life; and when you know soil, you know life. Whether you’re a soil scientist, farmer, gardener, or mailman (that’s right, walking on the grass decreases soil quality), we all have a role to play in maintaining soil quality. This section is about the basics of soil health. Understanding the definition of soil health is the first step needed toward learning how you can make an individual contribution. 

Other than knowing that soil sustains plant and animal life, you may want to know what the other benefits of maintaining a healthy soil are:

  • The soil acts as a filter for dirty materials and other pollutants that could harm you, me, or your dog (just in case you don’t care about you or me, I know you care about your dog). Rather than allowing potential pollutants to infiltrate into drinking water, there are physical, chemical, and biological processes that decompose the harmful chemicals. This is all happening right underneath your feet! The soil also acts as a reservoir to store the majority of our drinking water. Thanks soil!
  • The soil cycles nutrients (carbon, calcium, phosphorus, and potassium, to name a few) which are taken up by plants, which are then eaten by you and me. Thanks soil, for our food! The cycling of nutrients for plants means that a healthy soil also plays a significant role in carbon capture, which is important for lessening the dangers impacts of climate change. Thanks soil!
  • The soil serves as an engineering medium by providing support for infrastructure and recreation (roads, housing, sport, etc.). The management of the soil in combination with its environment often determines its success as an engineering medium. For example, you would not build a skyscraper on slippery, unstable soil. Likewise, you would not build a road on overly dry soil, which could lead to cracks in the road. In other words, the soil is the home for your home. We now have food, shelter, and water covered, all thanks to soil!

You now know soil better, but how do we keep it, and thus ourselves, alive? Here’s how:

  • Less soil disturbance contributes to the longevity of a healthy soil. Disturbance includes tillage, compacting the soil (with vehicles or foot traffic), or using pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides that detrimentally affect soil biota. Less disturbance also allows the soil to maintain its high water-holding capacity for plants and us. 
  • Plant a diverse array of plants. Like humans, microbes need a diverse diet. Covering the soil with varying plant types, or rotating crops each year, encourages the microbes in the soil to maintain a high and consistent population. This allows soils to function at their highest efficiency.
  • Keep the soil covered. If soil is left bare, it can erode into waterways and sidewalks and become hazardous. Additionally, if soil erodes away, it is not in place to feed plants, and therefore people. Keeping the soil bare also hinders its role and ability to mitigate the effects of climate change, as there are no plants to capture carbon. You can cover the soil in ornamental plants and grasses, mulches, or tall trees that provide a canopy for the ground. 
  • Feed the soil! In other words, feed the microbes. Soil microbes contribute to many aspects of soil health. Adding organic matter like manure, old grass clippings, leaves, etc., allows for the microbes to break down the material into more soil. Over time, any soil that was or is ever lost by natural or human process can be added back this way. It takes 100-1000 years to make 1 inch of topsoil, though it takes way less time to lose it, so add amendments regularly. 

Now you have the fundamental knowledge, and hopefully care, to learn more about how to upkeep our soil. Soil is the common denominator between you and I, and has the ability to connect people, plants, microorganisms, etc., from all over the world! The soil was here long before we were. The likelihood of it sticking around for the benefit of future generations is dependent on us. When you save the soil, you save life. Check out the resources below on how to further dive into the realm of soil health. 

I hope that you will try out the concepts and be willing to share your experience with other subscribers on the Solace Farm Facebook Page so we can grow and rejoice in each small success.

References:
Natural Resources Conservation Service. Soil Health | NRCS Soils. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/soils/health

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Dreaming of Farming?

Small Garden

How much land do you need? How many and what kind of animals? Start where you are and take small steps toward your goals…you will get there. The important thing is to start.

For years we talked of farming, being self-sufficient and someday; then one day we realized that was what we had been doing all along. You don’t need a large homestead to farm – hundreds of acres and just as many animals. All you need is to make the most of what you do have. If you are a good steward of what you have it will grow and before you know it you will be asking yourself if you want to take on more or be content with what you are busy doing now.

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