For farmers: You’re not alone.

Connect with other farmers:

Craig Watts stands in front of the mushrooms he grows. (Photo credit: Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Craig Watts of Socially Responsible Agriculture Project says: “First and foremost, reach out to me directly and let me hear what is happening and see if there is something as it is a case-by-case process.”
Connect with Craig, or learn more about SRAP, here.

Tyler Whitley. (Photo credit: Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Tyler Whitley of The Transfarmation Project says: “Just know that there are possibilities, even if they’re tough, and spend your time looking into those. Reach out to some organizations. It doesn’t have to be just us—there are a lot of organizations that are out there; their purpose is to help farmers outside of a ‘Big Ag’ system. Quality of life is what a lot of the farmers bring up to us. And if you’re unhappy with your quality of life, the best thing that I can say is to look into making a change. I think that’s something that resonates with all readers, not just farmers. Change is possible, even if it’s tough. But you can definitely do it.”
Learn more about the possibilities available to you with The Transfarmation Project.

Explore information resources:

Tanner Faaborg. (Photo credit: Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Tanner Faaborg of 1100 Farm says: “I think they should at least just have an open mind. Have an open mind and do a little bit of research to see what’s out there because people are farming differently. There are some really interesting things happening right now. And then just start to write it down. You don’t need to do everything all at once. You don’t need to make a decision overnight. But I think I would recommend them to just start making a plan. And then just continue to look for resources like Transfarmation or talk to the USDA…There are a lot of resources out there that will help you at least get started. It doesn’t have to be a massive project. You could start out with one small change.”
The Faaborgs went from hog farming to selling value-added mushroom products. See how they reimagined their farm. 

Angela De Freitas. (Photo from Animal Outlook)

Angela de Freitas of Animal Outlook says: “I think knowledge is power. And I know that with a couple of the farmers that we’ve worked with, the first thing they did, which is eventually what led them to us, is they simply went online and started reading, because it helped them to understand that it wasn’t them. They were able to see that there are plenty of other nightmare stories out there of things that have happened to farmers, particularly in these contract situations. Start calling organizations—call Tyler, call me, call whoever you find, because there are resources out there to help and there are organizations out there to help. And there is no need to have to try and figure it out yourself because, at this point, there are a couple of us out there who have done it and had successes.”
Contact Angela at Animal Outlook.

Paula and Dale Boles. (Photo credit: Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Paula Boles of JB Farms and Grace Chapel Greenhouses says: “The first thing that I would advise them to do is just do research. There are so many places that you can reach out [to] and talk to other people. And just see what options are out there. Even writing down ideas or visions, missions, whatever you think that aren’t possible—write them down anyway. And, sometimes, it’s almost like, once you write it down, it almost becomes a real thing. And then you can start looking at other ways to get there.”
Read about how contract farming affects mental health, from Paula’s perspective.

Contact your representatives:

Kara Shannon. (Photo from ASPCA)

Kara Shannon of the ASPCA says: “One of the first things that [farmers] should do is to talk to their representatives, both in their state legislature and in Congress, and just tell their story, because this is not the story that those lawmakers are hearing, especially in Congress. [They hear] from Big Ag that these contracts and these growers, they’re building strong rural economies and creating jobs and feeding the world, etc. And they are not often hearing from people who have these stories of getting into contract farming because they wanted to be their own bosses and keep the family farm and maintain this way of life and then find themselves in something so far from what they thought. So, I think sharing those stories [is] really important, because that is what is going to get those policymakers motivated to make changes to fund programs to help get those farmers out of it, to improve the accountability for these big producers that are getting the farmers in these incredibly unfair contracts.”
Support farm system reform here.

For interested consumers: You can help.

Ask questions:

The ASPCA has a guide for buyers called “Shop with Your Heart.” It helps consumers navigate grocery store aisles and determine whether the language or certifications on animal product packaging is legitimate or greenwashing. They also have a list of questions you can ask producers if you have the opportunity, such as at the farmers market. Often, smaller producers will qualify for legitimate certifications, but actually becoming certified is a financial obstacle, so it’s helpful to know what to ask them if you have the chance to speak to them directly. 

The ASPCA’s Kara Shannon shares a question she likes that implies transparency: “My go-to would be, ‘Hey, do you allow people to come out to the farm? Do you allow visits?’ And if the answer is yes, that’s kind of all you need to know.”

Become a farmer ally:

Additionally, Angela de Freitas of Animal Outlook says: “Something that’s really important to us organizationally is that farmers are our allies and that we don’t engage in shaming farmers or making them feel bad for what they have done or chose to do. And we recognize that farmers are part of the solution. That is, I think, a really important way to think about this—supporting the farmer to get out, celebrating the farmer getting out, offering the farmer options to get out, as opposed to trying to create change through shaming.”

We love to connect with our Modern Farmer community. If you have a farm and are considering transitioning to a more sustainable model, we would love to hear from you. Comment below or send us a note at lena@modfarmer.com.

The post Advice and Resources for Getting Out of Factory Farming appeared first on Modern Farmer.

But soon, other expenses started getting tacked on. Tyson required a new computer system to control the temperature in the barns. This was another $70,000. Their propane bill averaged around $25,000 per year. Not making the updates wasn’t really an option—no matter how much time and money you invested to be a farmer for the company, they could cut your contract at any time.

And the income wasn’t quite what they expected. Companies like Tyson pay their farmers in what’s called a tournament system. There’s a base pay, but whoever raises the best flock and has the best “feed conversion”—the biggest birds for the least feed— makes the most money, and payment decreases the further you go down the ladder. This essentially pits all the regional farmers against each other. 

Challenging company representatives, even on small things, resulted in retribution. Paula Boles says sometimes they’d intentionally bring you a “bad flock,” keeping your yields low and locking you into the bottom rung of the tournament system.

“If you complain too much, they just start sending you bad flocks of chickens,” she says. 

The Boles’ situation with Tyson was far from unique. While contract farming, or “factory farming,” has been exposed in the media for being exploitative of animals, the farmers who sign contracts with companies like Tyson, Perdue or other big players in animal agriculture also find themselves backed into a financial corner. But, over the last several years, there has been a wave of efforts to find ways to support farmers transitioning out of factory farming. The Boles, who raised their last flock for Tyson about nine years ago, are proof that getting out is possible.

“Now to have come through it, it’s been a long process,” says Boles. “It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve lived to tell about it, so to speak.”

Creating pathways

Tyler Whitley is the director of transfarmation for The Transfarmation Project, an initiative of Mercy for Animals. He has helped work with 12 farms to get them out of the industrial system—a system, he says, that is designed to exploit them.

 “The way that the current structure of factory farming is designed is that…the steps that carry with it the most risk and the most debt and the most liability are transitioned to the farmers,” he says. “And so what you have is you have farmers building these extremely expensive facilities at the very specific direction [and] design of the company that they’re working for. But they don’t own the animals.” 

The Transfarmation Project was founded by Leah Garcés. Whitley says that Garcés realized that ending factory farming would necessitate support systems for the farmers.

“She thought that if we’re going to be able to end factory farming, it’s not just about creating a different system that runs parallel, like you might see a lot of organizations doing when they talk about agroecology or regenerative farming [and] things of that nature,” says Whitley. “But you have to actually create transition paths for farmers to exit out of factory farming.”

And these pathways can be difficult to find and establish. Debt is one of the biggest hurdles to transitioning out of contract farming, says Whitley. And it’s not simply that the farmers have debt but a specific type of debt that requires lender authorization before farmers can make a change. 

Two of the other big challenges relate to the question: If not contract farming, then what? If you’re choosing to grow a different crop, a big obstacle is the learning curve—all forms of farming require specialized knowledge that makes changing lanes difficult. The other hurdle is marketing. When you have a contract, you don’t need to market your product, because you only have one buyer. This is also part of what makes factory farming inherently risky for the farmer.

“They don’t market the animals directly, so they have one customer,” says Whitley. “If you’re a business that has only one customer, you have a very high amount of risk for your business if you should lose that customer.”

When transitioning out of factory farming, farmers can try to use what they already have for a new purpose. This former chicken barn is now a greenhouse. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Before The Transfarmation Project can help farmers find specific buyers for new crops, it needs to have a pretty good idea of what would feasibly bring in an income for the farmer. For this, it  turns to Highland Economics for market analyses. Highland Economics has composed reports on a handful of specialty crops of The Transfarmation Project’s choosing, such as hemp, edible flowers, strawberries and microgreens.

The assessments are twofold—it looks at the regional market drivers for a crop, including what types of investments are being made in the sector and important trends—and it also considers what the projected costs and returns of growing that crop are in an indoor setting. Looking at the data that emerges in these analyses, such as consumer demand and the debt service coverage ratio (the ability of a producer to pay their debts with the income they earn) helps farmers decide if a certain crop is right for them.

Travis Greenwalt of Highland Economics also encourages producers to do their own research. “I think this is a great preliminary or a starting point for starting that conversation,” says Greenwalt. “But the specific costs and specific returns are going to be all dependent on the location and the producer.”

‘Steady treadmill of debt’

Garcés started The Transfarmation Project after meeting Craig Watts, a then-poultry farmer for Perdue who let her come to his farm and film inside his chicken barns. This view into what factory farming was really like made national headlines. Watts found himself as a whistleblower after feeling deeply disturbed by the disconnect between how this scale of poultry farming was portrayed versus the reality of the situation. But when he was starting out, his goal was to get back to farming on his family’s land, and contracting with Perdue seemed like the way to do it.

“It just sounded like a good deal,” says Watts. “You build the houses, they supply the birds, they supply all the technical advice. It’s a steady cash income. Supposedly, you could have positive cash flow the first year in business, which was unheard of.”

Craig Watts. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

But Perdue exercised control over how Watts farmed. It could move the goalposts as it desired, requesting upgrades to his equipment for which he had to pay.

“They’re always coming back to you when you get your houses close to being paid for to make these additions or renovations,” says Watts. “There’s always this new thing, ‘it’s gonna save the industry and you have to have it, but we’re not going to make you get it but we’re not gonna bring you any more birds until you do it.’ It’s kind of making it mandatory without actually saying ‘mandatory.’” 

Instead of making good money, Watts found himself on a “steady treadmill of debt.”

Additionally, the way that the birds were being treated was misrepresented to the public, which eventually tipped Watts over the edge.

“I guess everybody has their breaking point,” says Watts. “And I had mine sitting in a motel room in Brookings, South Dakota.”

A commercial had come on the television for the company. As Watts watched the commercial, he saw Jim Perdue driving down the road and then stepping into a chicken barn. Inside the barn were big, beautiful, clean birds, walking around on floors covered in pine shavings.

The reality that Watts had witnessed day in and day out for 20 years was quite different: chickens packed into small spaces, often injured or physically unable to stand or walk, panting due to overheating and sitting on a cake of fecal matter.

“I had a contract with Perdue Farms, but at the end of the day, the customer was my boss,” says Watts. “And I just felt like they needed to know.”

And that was how he ended up letting Garcés inside his barns to film. The resulting video made national news in 2014.  

Craig Watts and Leah Garcés inside a former chicken barn. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Now, Watts works with the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project (SRAP), heading up its Contract Grower Transition Program. At the same time, he is learning how to effectively grow mushrooms on his farm in the old poultry barns. Growing mushrooms requires a very different set of skills, and as he learns best practices, he helps other farmers find a place to land.

Most people who come to SRAP are in crisis mitigation mode; they just had their contracts cut, many are strapped with debt and they’re trying to figure out how to proceed without losing their land and their livelihoods. Every farm is different, so there is not one uniform approach. But SRAP provides guidance through the financial and legal obstacles.

“We are an air traffic controller, so to speak,” he says. “We are looking for that pilot to help them land as soft as possible.”

It’s not without loss, Watts cautions. Changing the way you farm or remaining in farming after a contract is cut isn’t always possible. “People still lose their farms,” says Watts. “There’s no magic wand here. We flip rocks until we can’t flip anymore.”

For Watts, the bigger changes have to be systemic.

“We hear about how the food system is broken,” says Watts. “The consolidation has given farmers less options to sell to and less options to buy from. But the reality is, the food system is working as it was designed to work. It’s working perfectly. What has got to happen is there has to be a major shift in policy.”

Ripple effect

The video Garcés made with Watts made waves in the media, but it also resonated deeply with other farmers who were in the same position and had felt completely isolated. In December 2014, the video made its way to Paula and Dale Boles.

That day, the Boles came home from a difficult day at their barns with a bad flock.

“We went back to the house and watched that, and just sat there in tears,” says Paula Boles. “Because we knew when we saw that, that we weren’t the dumb hillbillies like Tyson had told us that we were. We knew that there was somebody else out there. And everything that [Watts] said in that video was the life that we were living.”

They looked at their calendar and decided that May 2015 would be their last flock. Boles wrote a letter to Tyson requesting to terminate their contract, and four weeks later, they received notice that their cancellation had been accepted.

“Even driving to the post office to pick it up, I was a nervous wreck,” says Boles.

Farms contracting with Tyson have a sign on their property that says “Tyson” and the name of the farm. About a week after their cancellation was confirmed, someone from Tyson drove out to the farm and picked up their sign.

“We were just standing there, we thought, wow—we invested $400,000, we almost lost everything that we have, and all they had invested in us was a $20 sign.”

To learn about what the Boles did next to create a second life for their farm and hear about more organizations that offer support to producers transitioning out of factory farming, read part two.

The post They Once Worked in Factory Farming. Not Anymore. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“The path they were on, they wouldn’t be able to do that,” says Faaborg. “And that’s when Wendell Murphy started moving into Iowa.”

Murphy Family Farms (later bought by Smithfield Foods) helped out with the loan needed to get started. The idea was that after about 10 years, it would be completely paid off.

“It sounded like a pretty good deal,” says Faaborg. “And it turned out a little differently.”

To maintain their contract, the company required the Faaborgs to take on additional expenses, such as upgrades to their barns. 

The Faaborgs farmed hogs for 30 years. When Tanner Faaborg came back to the farm as an adult, the family began thinking about ways to transition out of hog farming. 

“We started to see all these family farms just disappearing,” he says. “And then it became this kind of existential thought process for us on, you know, what is the future of this farm?”

This question would end up guiding the Faaborgs’ transition out of hog farming and into a business model that Faaborg hopes will sustain his family and their community for years to come. For farmers like Faaborg and Paula and Dale Boles, whom you met in part one, this transition has proven to be difficult but not impossible.

“It doesn’t have to be a massive project,” says Faaborg. “You could start out with one small change.”

Tanner Faaborg. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Risk tolerance

While many contract farmers find themselves in parallel positions—burdened with debt and lacking independence in making decisions on their farm—the path out of factory farming looks a little different for everyone. Animal Outlook, an organization that helps farmers transition out of contract farming, has a general blueprint it uses to help farms transition, but the actual steps vary, because each farmer has different circumstances. According to Angela de Freitas, director of farm transitions for Animal Outlook, these are conditions such as varying amounts of debt, regional positioning, knowledge of how to do other things, whether or not there is off-farm income, what kind of regional collaborators or partners exist and a farmer’s risk tolerance for trying something new. Animal Outlook works with poultry farmers who have had their contracts cut, which can happen at any time.

“They find themselves in a bit of a crisis, because it’s unexpected,” says De Freitas. “It’s not as if they have notice, they don’t have notice—it’s just like from one day to the next they don’t have a job, basically. Yet, they still have a tremendous debt load.”

One of the first things that some of the farmers she’s worked with have done is to start accumulating knowledge by going online and reading about others in similar positions. This early step helps them to realize that it’s not just them, says De Freitas. From there, farmers can begin reaching out to organizations such as Animal Outlook for support.

Animal Outlook is an animal advocacy organization, but De Freitas says any alternative to factory farming also has to be financially viable for producers. It’s important, she says, to see farmers as allies in building a different food system.

“We also approach it with the absolute understanding that if it doesn’t work for the farmer, if the transition cannot be financially successful and offer them a good quality of life, then it doesn’t work.”

The future of the farm

Finding others who share your vision for something different is an important early step. When Faaborg wanted to start changing the way his family farmed, he was met with some skepticism and felt overwhelmed with the process, he says, until he linked up with The Transfarmation Project. Tyler Whitley and the team there brought not only the can-do optimism for a big change like this but also came equipped with some of the technical knowledge and resources.

The Faaborgs began a pilot project to grow mushrooms, all while working with an outside team to retrofit the hog barn and convert it into a growing space. After eight months of learning the ropes, they now make and sell value-added products, such as tinctures and coffee blends. Finding the market for a new product was one of the most difficult parts, says Faaborg. But their website is now live for pre-orders under the name 1100 Farm. The “1100” is a nod to the fact that company barns were called “Murphy 1100 buildings,” in reference to the number of hogs that were housed in each barn. Faaborg included it in the name as a reminder of where they’ve been.

“It will always be a reminder of the change that’s possible and the change that happened on this farm,” says Faaborg.

The Faaborgs’ former hog barns. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Faaborg has also applied for funding from multiple USDA programs supporting projects geared toward things such as energy efficiency and oxbow wetland restoration. Faaborg’s goal is to showcase that it is possible to convert hog barns to do a different kind of farming, and in doing so create jobs and revitalize the local rural economy. A couple of years into this process, Faaborg now has an answer for the existential question he and his parents were asking at the beginning of the transition—what will be the future of this farm?

“I think this will be a family farm and stay in the family for generations to come. I think this will be a public space where people can come and tour the facilities,” he says. “I want people to be able to come out in the country and be in nature and actually see where their food comes from.”

The role of policy

One of the biggest obstacles that Kara Shannon, director of farm animal welfare policy for the ASPCA, has observed for farmers wanting to transition out of industrial animal agriculture and into specialty crops or something more humane is the lack of funding and resources available to overcome financial hurdles.

“The resources just aren’t there, which I think is particularly jarring for farmers who entered into the industrial model,” says Shannon, “because agricultural lenders are incredibly quick to give out enormous loans for farmers who want to build a CAFO [concentrated animal feeding operation]. And [they’re] not nearly as happy to loan to them for these types of projects.”

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way forward.

State and federal policy have a big role to play, says Shannon. At the federal level, the Farm Bill is a big piece of legislation that pours a lot of money into US agriculture, and, unfortunately, says Shannon, a lot of conservation funding through the Farm Bill goes to CAFOs.

“I think federal and state policy play a really huge role in shaping our farm system, which is evidenced by the decades of regulatory and policy choices that have gotten us to where we currently are with this consolidated industrial system,” says Shannon. “We really need policy now to support farmers who are trying to build both more humane but also more resilient regional food systems.”

Federal legislation moves slowly, but Shannon has observed that more and more states seem to be providing farmers with grants to diversify their operations. And it can make a big difference—Shannon points to Vermont, which recently launched a grant program for small farm diversification and transitions. An added bonus of this program is that, unlike some other grants such as the Value-Added Producer Grant Program, it doesn’t require matching funds from the producer, something that can be hard to pull off if you’re saddled with debt from contract farming.

“Vermont’s a big dairy state and a lot of the dairies are struggling,” says Shannon. “So, there’s been a lot of focus on helping them, and this grant program was one of the first major steps towards doing that.”

The ASPCA also helps fund some grants for farmers looking to make their operations more humane. Paula and Dale Boles, former Tyson poultry farmers, received one of these ASPCA-funded grants during their transition.

Thanks in part to Dale’s experience in construction, the Boles were able to adapt their poultry barns into greenhouses. During the transition, they have both held off-farm jobs, but at JB Farms, they grow things such as microgreens and vegetables. It’s important for farmers to experiment with different crops or ideas, says Paula Boles, to figure out what works for them. She has leaned into growing flowers under the name Grace Chapel Greenhouses. Two years ago, the Boles were able to pay off the lingering debt from their years in poultry farming.

Left: Paula Boles. Right: The Boles’ former chicken barn was converted into a greenhouse. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

“I walked into Carolina Farm Credit and handed them a check for $5,000 and paid off the loan from the business that we exited seven years prior,” says Boles. “But we live to tell about it.”

And their farm has found some new life as a community-centered space. They frequently have people coming out to the farm to visit or volunteer. The connection to the community has been rewarding for Boles—it’s the complete opposite of the Tyson tournament system, which pitted her farm against other farmers. Her goal is to one day be able to work in the greenhouse full-time. 

“I have a vision, I have a long-term goal, something that I think will sustain us, something that will keep me healthy and keep me active,” says Boles. “You know, the whole thing that I thought was going to kill me I think is now going to sustain me.”

Catch the first part of this series here to read about what drove the Boles family to make their farming transition.  

The post Exiting the Factory Farm appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In tow was the organization’s new “Cultural Harvest Trailer,” a four-wheel vehicle custom-designed to process the sacred bovid in line with Tribal customs—and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) meat-processing standards. Built through a cooperative agreement with the federal agency, the $75,000 prototype is a game-changing innovation, says Troy Heinert, ITBC executive director and a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota.

“We can slaughter, skin and quarter an animal in the open, with grass still in his mouth and have him in a cool trailer in 90 minutes,” or half of the processing time allowed by the USDA, says Heinert. The narrow window, which is tailored to the centralized harvesting of cattle and other transport-friendly livestock, can be challenging on Tribal land, he says. Often, “it can take a couple hours just to get to the highway, let alone a processing plant.”

The harvest trailer is one example in a recent set of sweeping USDA initiatives that recognize and promote buffalo—an animal central to the identity of numerous North American peoples—as foundational to Tribal food systems.

Spurred by years of advocacy by the ITBC, the agency’s grant programs and regulatory overhauls reinforce the interwoven nature of bison husbandry, processing and distribution. The shift in perspective helps restore “Tribal buffalo lifeways,” he says, by putting bison back onto local plates and into the local economy.

The ITBC’s Cultural Harvest Trailer rolls across the Crow Reservation in southern Montana. (Photo courtesy of the InterTribal Buffalo Council)

For Native communities, especially those in rural and economically disadvantaged regions, reclaiming their food source is a major leap towards self-determination, says Heinert. “So, this is just a huge win for Tribal people.”

Prairie roots revival

Approximately 30 million American bison once roamed the country’s vast grasslands. But in the mid-1800s, federal policies tied to westward expansion fueled their systematic slaughter, devastating the livelihood of Native Tribes. By 1884, the buffalo population had plunged to just 325 animals, but subsequent conservation efforts have revived those numbers to about 400,000. Heinert estimates that Tribal herds total nearly 30,000; the remainder reside in state and national parks, including Yellowstone, and on commercial ranches.

As a keystone species, buffalo play a vital role in restoring grasslands by enhancing native grass growth. The fertile and highly threatened ecosystem is essential to biodiversity, water filtration, soil stabilization and carbon storage, and fostering them aligns with federal climate and environmental goals. (A recent study finds that, in the face of greater droughts and wildfires, the deep-rooted system can sequester more carbon than forests.)

The USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program includes nearly $92 million in bison-related grants. The ITBC is administering $5 million to assist Tribes in implementing climate-resilient, regenerative ranching practices, mainly through extensive fencing and water infrastructure development.

Like many other native animals and plants that have evolved with the land, bison are hardy and climate-resilient, requiring few interventions or inputs to flourish, says Heather Dawn Thompson, the USDA Office of Tribal Relations director and a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. As a food source, the bison’s high nutritional content can also help boost health outcomes in communities grappling with diet-related health challenges, making it a key consideration in promoting national food security.

Yet, the USDA’s commodity-centered approach, which favors industrial producers and national distribution models, hasn’t fostered the small-scale production of Indigenous crops and livestock, says Thompson. Bison are a prime example; the undomesticated and free-roaming animals don’t fit the Big Ag paradigm of concentrated feedlots, commodity grain feeding and centralized processing facilities—common livestock practices needed to achieve the scale required to fulfill the 40,000-pound minimums required for USDA meat procurement contracts.

Consequently, “Tribal producers couldn’t even apply to programs that served their own reservations,” says Thompson, such as the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) and other initiatives that comprise the agency’s $3-billion annual spend.

The 2021 American Rescue Plan revamped the rules to accommodate “a more complex and diverse food system,” says Jennifer Lester Moffitt, the USDA’s under secretary of agriculture for marketing and regulatory programs.

In particular, the FDPIR, which includes elder and child nutrition programs, expanded food choices to cover traditional staples such as bison and wild salmon. It also drastically lowered procurement minimums and allowed state meat inspections in place of federal ones. (Bison, being a non-amenable, or wild species, don’t require a USDA seal; however, federal contracts and interstate sales do.)

Last year, the USDA tested these changes through the Bison Purchase Pilot program, awarding half-year FDPIR procurement contracts to four Tribal producers, including $67,000 to the Cheyenne River Buffalo Authority Corporation (CRBAC), a ranching operation owned by the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.

ITBC and Crow Tribe members slaughter bison using the ITBC’s Cultural Harvest Trailer on the Crow Reservation in southern Montana. (Photo courtesy of the InterTribal Buffalo Council)

The solid commitment helps “even the field for Native producers,” says CRBAC manager and Tribal member Jayme Murray, whose corporation has kept nearby reservations supplied with 800 pounds of bison meat every month since last November. While the near-10-percent uptick in sales is a boon for business, the profits go far beyond the bottom line, he adds. “A local food system [allows] us to feed our own Tribal communities and put a culturally significant [food] back into our diet.”

The recognition of state inspections also permits procurement opportunities with other federal agencies, as well as access to a national, online market. These changes “bring much-needed revenue and jobs to the Tribe and community,” says Murray, giving an economic boost to a region officially identified as being in “persistent poverty.”

Shoring up the safety net

Sitkalidak Island faces Old Harbor, a remote village of 235 residents—mostly from the Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor, a Native Alaskan people—in Alaska’s Kodiak Archipelago. Rugged and verdant, the uninhabited isle has long been a rich hunting ground for brown bears, Sitka deer and ducks, while the surrounding seas have provided the Alutiiq with abundant salmon, halibut, butter clams and seals. Yet, depleting fish stocks, increasing algal blooms and crashes in the deer population have made those traditional food sources less reliable in recent years, says Jeffrey Peterson, Alutiiq chief and city mayor.

In 2017, the Tribal Council acquired 30 buffalo with support of the ITBC as a means of enriching the local diet. For an isolated community with no grocery store—the closest is a 40-minute flight away in Kodiak City—the herd, which has grown to about 70 heads, has become crucial to Tribal food security. “They can survive the bears and the winters,” says Peterson. “And as Native people, we feel a connection to bison or any indigenous animal that may have roamed our [North America] lands.”

Currently, the Alutiiq harvest about two heads a month for local consumption. But without a processing and refrigeration facility, handling and storing the carcass of the continent’s largest land mammal—a mature bull can stand 6.5 feet tall and weigh upwards of 2,000 pounds—is a challenge, says Peterson.

The long-awaited approval of the Indigenous Animals Harvesting and Meat Processing Grant, a USDA program designed to bolster the processing, storage and distribution infrastructure of culturally relevant meat in Native communities, will be transformative, says Peterson. The $1-million grant secures the purchase and modernization of an existing warehouse—and with electricity costing more than four times the national average, will help keep it running.

The ability to process and stock ample buffalo and other locally sourced meats and fish helps shore up the safety net of the entire Tribe, he says, including expats in Kodiak City, Anchorage and beyond. It also opens up opportunities for new jobs, food exports and increased tourism by catering to more recreational hunters and fishermen. 

“You can’t stop… changes in the climate, the acidification in the ocean,” says Peterson. “Without a backup plan, we’re going to be hurting.”

Together, the comprehensive nature of these initiatives recognizes the centrality of bison in restoring both the land and Native food sovereignty, says ITBC’s Heinert. “The buffalo was nearly decimated in order to control the Native people of this country. Now, [we’re able to] bring this animal back to its rightful place, in its rightful numbers… all the while helping to heal our lands,” he adds. “It’s starting to come full circle.”

***

How to support Tribal buffalo efforts

Although Tribal ranchers and advocates see the economic potential of bison, they’re quick to dismiss the notion of turning it into a cattle-like commodity. Bison ranching runs counter to high-volume, mass production, says Dave Carter, regional director of the Flower Hill Institute (FHI). The Indigenous-led nonprofit partners with the USDA to assist Tribes with grant applications and project implementation, including bison processing, marketing and distribution.

As wild animals, buffalo are raised as nature intended—on vast open land, in natural herds that include bulls. They’re spared standard livestock practices such as castration, artificial insemination and confinement in feedlots, says Carter, who previously headed the National Bison Association, a trade group representing the interests of commercial bison producers and processors.

While these factors can limit the size of operations, “we have a lot of room to grow to herds without [it] becoming a commodity,” he says. Although Americans eat, on average, 59 pounds of beef annually, per-capita buffalo consumption equates to mere nibbles of a single burger.

“The best way to preserve bison,” Carter adds, “is to eat bison.”

For a Tribal source, check out the Cheyenne River Buffalo Company.

The post A Buffalo Renaissance appeared first on Modern Farmer.

By literally wiping out tons of pests every night, bats save US farmers an estimated $3.7 billion annually. Besides the bug carnage, bats also pollinate crops such as coconuts, agave, guava and bananas, disperse seeds and create fertilizer. 

However, these little mammals are under attack—more than half of North American bats risk severe population declines over the next 15 years. And agriculture, which destroys foraging and roosting habitat, is one of the greatest threats to bats. 

Yet farmers can be important allies for wildlife by using innovative practices to conserve bats. In turn, this mammalian air crew protects and pollinates their fields.

Pests and heirloom produce

“I know a lot of people are kind of freaked out by the bats but they are invaluable in sustainable agriculture—absolutely invaluable,” says Stephanie Miller, owner of Mystic Pine Farm in Virginia, which specializes in organic heirloom crops from the African diaspora.

Her farm is bustling with bat activity for several reasons.

“We don’t obviously use any chemicals because that’s also a main deterrent and that will definitely get rid of your bat population very quickly,” says Miller. 

Besides directly poisoning bats, pesticides and insect-resistant crops reduce the abundance of their prey. 

A wooded area on Mystic Pine Farm in Virginia. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Miller)

Miller also maintains oaks on her property to provide roosts for the bats and intentionally supplies food for her winged guests. 

“I grow night-blooming plants that attract the bats and give them nectar and feed them,” says Miller. “Also, I grow species of native plants and what I would consider medicinal herbs that they also like to feed off of or attract the food that they eat—things like purple coneflower, yucca and sunflowers.” 

Research backs these observations up: Lower-intensity practices such as agroforestry and organic farming support higher bat activity levels and diversity compared to more intensive agriculture.

Factors at the landscape level also come into play.

“You should always leave as much natural habitat as possible around your farms,” says Merlin Tuttle, a bat researcher and founder of Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation. “Where pests do the worst damage is where you have huge monocultures, where for miles and miles you have nothing but corn or soybeans or wheat planted. And in those cases, bats and other natural predators can’t survive the off-season. After you harvest the corn or the wheat, there’s no pests out there to eat.” 

In turn, Miller benefits from having bats around.

“I’m using nature, including the bats, to control my pest population,” says Miller. “And bats do a lot of work. They actually pollinate certain crops. They also eat pests that might be an issue and keep those populations under control.”

For instance, bats kill corn earworms, a major pest of popcorn and one of Miller’s main crops. 

“I’m using nature, including the bats, to control my pest population,” says Virginia farmer Stephanie Miller. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Miller)

Pecan protection 

While Miller exemplifies a bat-friendly farmer, she’s not alone. Through Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation and Bat Conservation International, pecan farmers are learning how to cut down on pests by installing bat houses.

One example is John Worth Byrd, owner of a sustainable pecan farm in central Texas.

“We have three moth-born pests here, the walnut caterpillar, the pecan nut casebearer and the hickory shuckworm,” says Byrd. “But the bats, their primary food is moths. So, I thought, well that’s great. Some people in Georgia had done it, put bat houses into their pecan orchards. So, I started putting up bat houses.” 

Byrd has five species of bats on his property. Some forage in wide open spaces away from their roosts, while others dine locally in the orchard canopy. While all the bats suppress pecan pests, the locavores kill the most. 

Byrd uses a couple of strategies to help his bats. Besides putting up bat boxes, he doesn’t spray any pesticides on his property. In addition, if a tree dies in his orchard, he leaves it up. 

“A lot of these bats roost in these old dead pecan trees…” says Byrd.

“The best bats were staying in these cavities, not as many numbers like the [Brazilian] free tails in my houses, but they were doing a lot. They were local feeders instead of feeding in the atmosphere.” 

Unsurprisingly, all this pest-munching is valuable.

“If people could actually see what bats are doing, they’d be lined up to protect them,” says Tuttle. “It’s estimated by our Parks and Wildlife Department here in Texas that consumption of insect pests is saving Texas farmers approximately $1.4 billion annually.”

Aiding agaves

One of Mexico’s most iconic products has also jumped on the bat conservation bandwagon.

Through the Tequila Interchange Project, tequila and mezcal producers are growing bat-friendly agaves. These spiky plants are normally cloned, but letting some of them flower has several advantages. Night-blooming flowers provide nectar for bats, including an endangered species, the Mexican long-nosed bat. By feeding on the flowers, bats also pollinate them.

Commercial farming of blue agave, used for tequila, has eroded its genetic diversity and increased its susceptibility to disease. For instance, in the 1990s, a combination of bacteria and fungus spread through agave fields, and nearly 25 percent of the crop was abandoned.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by agave farmers. 

“They understand that something is happening,” says Irene Zapata Moran, a doctoral student at the University of Wyoming. “They see that there are more diseases in the crops. And people who have been in this industry all their life, they have told me they remember before that the plants used to be bigger.”

A lesser long-nosed bat feeds on an agave blossom in Arizona. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Bat pollination is seen as a solution, because as opposed to cloning genetically identical plants, sexual reproduction brings in new genes. This could also increase the plant’s ability to adapt to climate change.

However, allowing for natural pollination of agaves involves a direct financial hit for farmers. 

Farmers normally cut the flower stalks on the agave to allow the sugar to be concentrated in the core. After harvesting, they use this core for tequila production. 

“They’re completely rivals—you cannot have agaves in bloom and tequila from the same plot,” says Zapata Moran.

One solution could be for tequila producers to charge a premium price for bat-friendly products. Offsetting just a portion of their sunken costs could be an effective way to incentivize farmers who may not be motivated to give up some of their crops in the name of biodiversity.

The vast swaths of cropland and pasture blanketing the globe present a golden opportunity for bat conservation. And, with more than 18 percent of species listed as threatened globally, bats need all the help they can get. While sustainable practices require funding, cost-sharing programs, such as those from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, can help farmers. Plus, the payoff is worth it—bats are an eco-friendly solution for many agricultural woes.

The post Agriculture Threatens Bats. These Farmers Want to be Part of a Solution. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Three years ago, Montoya started the Pollinator Advocates program. In that short time, she’s trained nearly 50 community members in-depth about the importance of native habitat for pollinators and reintroduced thousands of native plants to yards and parks around Boulder. 

“I am positive that [this led to] an empiric increase in the numbers of insects and hummingbirds in our neighborhoods,” she says. “We are currently working with entomologists on setting up surveys across the city.”

Montoya spent decades improving the well-being of people as a physician’s assistant, treating cancer and auto-immune diseases and supporting patient recovery with herbal remedies. But since retiring in 2015, she’s become dedicated to improving the well-being of “our Great Mother.” 

She first stumbled across a native bee house at the library in 2018 on a walk with her grandson. This prompted a research deep dive, learning from local experts and taking courses at the University of Colorado, and spiraled into community activism. 

“The more I read about these native bees and plants and ecosystems, the more I realized that the reason why pollinators were so in decline is because they lost habitat,” says Montoya. She looked around her own neighborhood—densely packed with houses and “dead sod.” An ecological graveyard.

Photography by Adrian Carper.

Native pollinators need the relationships they have with native plant species to survive, like how monarch caterpillars only eat milkweed. We love songbirds, but they need healthy insect populations to thrive. Montoya points out that a pair of chickadees need 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars to raise a clutch of young before they leave the nest. 

In 2019, Montoya started out by giving native plants (donated by Harlequin’s Gardens and Growing Gardens) to neighbors to encourage buy-in. She recruited volunteers to plant in “pocket parks,” small public spaces in densely populated neighborhoods, and would pass along what she’d learned about pollinators. Her Polish and Mexican Indigenous heritage helps her connect with people from diverse backgrounds, building a network of interested community members.

The city-sponsored free Pollinator Advocates (PA) program she launched in 2021 is now “bigger than I could have imagined,” she says. “Time and again, it really keeps me going that so many people are drawn to the work.” The PA program is application-based and open to adults within Boulder, with 20 people per cohort. Organizers try to choose applicants with a mix of backgrounds and experience, to ensure diversity within the group. 

Participants commit to attending a weekly two-hour lecture from June through August with local experts—including professors, researchers and conservationists—who teach about native pollinators and plants, and they spend roughly 15 hours volunteering to plant and maintain pollinator habitat in the city. In the end, graduating PAs receive $150 worth of native plants for their own yards from Harlequin’s Gardens. 

Montoya’s favorite moments are when she’s out with a group of new PAs or volunteers and a bee lands on a flower. In her experience, it’s like watching a baby being born. “You’re gonna think I’m exaggerating,” her face is lit up, joyful, “but everyone goes ‘Ah! Look! It’s a bee! It’s here! It’s working!’ So, there’s little tiny miracles that I never thought I’d get to witness happening over and over again.”

But not everything is miraculous. One of Monotoya’s biggest challenges is that people have major fears of insects. Even nature documentaries “show insects as being these weird, aggressive, pinchy, bitey monsters.” When going into communities to talk about pollinators, she starts with the less anxiety-inducing species: butterflies and hummingbirds. If the conversation is going well, she’ll pull up a picture of a native bee—from the millimeter-long Perdita minima to metallic green sweat bees or a lumbering bumble bee. Seeing these insects in less frightening ways can open people’s minds to the benefits and beauty of native pollinators.

Montoya sees her work as climate action and a way to bring life and biodiversity back to our environment. “It’s a chance to right a wrong as humans,” she explains.

Photography by Adrian Carper.

So, what can we all do to support native pollinators, especially farmers? Talk to your neighbors and advocate for pollinators, plus take these three actions. 

First, stop using chemical pesticides. “You’ll kill the very organisms both in the soil and flying around that you need,” says Montoya. She says that commercial pesticides contain toxins harmful to humans as well. She encourages people to opt for natural pest management options, such as creating a healthy ecosystem or killing invasive pests such as Japanese beetles by knocking them into a bucket of soapy water. For Montoya, the best pest management technique is creating a native habitat, as there are more beneficial insects that can prey on and outcompete harmful ones.

Second, plant regionally native plants around your garden or farm, being sure to have blooms across as much of the season as possible. “Plants that need the native soil don’t really need all the nutrients in a food garden bed,” she says, so she recommends 100 feet to 300 feet between your veggie beds and native plants so they all thrive. 

Third, leave some patches of bare soil—no mulch, no thick cover crop, no plastic—as the majority of native bee species nest in the ground. 

The post Meet the Woman Who Launched a Local Training Program to Save Native Bees appeared first on Modern Farmer.

His new ebook, First Generation Farming, lays out his vision: building co-ops for first-generation farmers that hold resources in common and control a shared supply chain. His first such effort collapsed under the weight of interpersonal conflict four months after its formation in 2021, but he’s now building a cooperative structure in which his and two other farms supply livestock and eggs to a new entity, Blackbird Farms, a commonly held processor and sales distributor. Eventually, he says, Blackbird will buy the individual farm assets and fold those into a holding company. – Jacqui Shine

This interview was edited and condensed. 

JS: I wanted to hear about your book. You say the message is “how to start farming without ruining your life.”

CN: More or less, yes. 

JS: You’ve been writing about this for a long time. Is your sense of “how to do it without ruining your life” different than it was five years ago?

CN: Five years ago, I would have been able to give some general advice about, like, what products to take, what breeds to raise, more technical stuff like that. But what’s happened over time, as I’ve been able to get a better understanding of how food systems work, especially at scale—how the big boys operate—it became clear to me that if people are going to start farming and stay farming, there needs to be a fundamentally different platform for getting people onto the land. It’s way too risky. This [system] where people are going after grants or trying to do these policy things that make it easier for [first-generation farmers] to get themselves onto a plot of land, get themselves trained, start growing stuff and then trying somehow to market it—it’s just way too risky. And there’s too much attrition for it to ever create enough success to challenge conventional agriculture. 

We need to look to more of what conventional agriculture and conventional farmers have done to challenge some of the abuses that they’ve dealt with, which basically comes down to cooperatives, but a cooperative [model] more geared towards first-generation farmers that takes away a lot of the risk, that [is] really well resourced, that [has] land available for people to use and markets for people to sell into. So, you just take out all of this individual risk that goes into it. My book is about how to build those cooperatives and trying to deconstruct and dismantle a lot of the myth-making that’s led us down this path of thinking that small farms are the answer, which they just aren’t.

JS: There’s an existing set of practices for agricultural cooperatives. Is what you’re describing different?

CN: The only difference between what they’re doing and what we’re doing is that we’re trying to build a co-op that can build new farmers. We’re not trying to create a coordinated network of existing farms. We’re trying to bring in people who don’t have land and who aren’t farming right now, and we’re trying to bring them on to a commons. 

JS: It’s using the co-op model as a way to help first-generation startup farmers get into it, because it’s saner and more economically resilient. 

CN: The engineer in me doesn’t like to build things new if there’s something that exists that works, and co-ops work. Whenever you have an issue where there’s an abusive relationship between agribusiness and agriculture, co-ops tend to do—not a perfect job but a fairly good job of making sure the farmers are taken care of while also producing at the scale where the stuff they do is affordable. So, the only twist we’re trying is saying, “OK, how can we leverage the co-op model so that we can get new people into this and do it under regenerative ethics?”

Photo courtesy of Sylvanaqua Farms.

JS: Originally, you referred to yourself as a permaculture farmer. Have you abandoned that term? 

CN: I think a lot of my attraction to “permaculture” was just because of a void of information about how conventional systems work. They’re not as bad as people say they are. And the ones that are bad are bad for utterly fixable reasons and in utterly fixable ways. When it came to permaculture, small farming, it wasn’t like I had this religious devotion to any of these things. But if I see something that makes more sense and if I’m going to learn things about how conventional farming works, how agribusiness works and I’m going, “this just makes an awful lot of sense,” I want to change my mind.

JS: You don’t use small farming world terms such as “permaculture,” but you do still like “food sovereignty.”

CN: The “why” of me getting into agriculture has never changed. This has always been about making sure that people can determine how they are fed and that the systems that feed them are sustainable and durable and workable. “Food sovereignty” is one of those things that’s loosely defined enough to be able to choose your own adventure in terms of how you get there.

JS: What people want is for there to be room in the small farming system for Black and Indigenous farmers. And you say that system doesn’t work.

CN: Yeah, it’s like don’t run off the cliff. You see white [startup farmers] run off a cliff, you see three or four of them pull hang gliders out there and somehow float to safety, but most of them crash, and you never hear the stories of the crashes. The worst thing in the world for me would be for marginalized people who have something special to bring to the table [to run off the cliff]. Black folks, Indigenous folks, they have something we all need. And if we don’t get it, we’re screwed. I don’t want to see our people just follow these other folks off this cliff, because the consequences for us, number one, are worse. I know plenty of white folks got into farming, fucked up, kind of hit bottom, but they’re able to get up. Black folks, Native folks have a much harder time getting up when we crash. The consequences are harder, we fall on sharper rocks.

JS: What is that thing we need?

CN: It’s that outsider perspective. These are people who are not privileged, who are going to come to farming with the idea of, “I need to feed my people back where I came from where nobody has shit.” It’s a completely different perspective and brings a completely different sense of urgency to it. When that post went viral? My DMs were impossible, just full of colored folks: “I want to start my farm,” “help me start my farm, what do I do?” and it’s like, I see [where] you’re getting this idea from, and we may have to stop it right now before we lose a whole friggin’ generation of people who could do a hell of a lot of good if their energy was just directed 10 degrees to the left.

The post Chris Newman Wants to Help You Start Farming—Without Ruining Your Life appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Now ranchers around the country are trialing a new technology, virtual fencing, to manage animals and their land. A Norwegian company called Nofence is one of the first companies making this fence available to ranchers in the United States. There are several other systems also piloting their products, including Vence, eShepherd and Corral Technologies. 

Virtual fencing supplies ranchers with a collar solar or battery charged and uses a web-based app to remotely monitor and control where livestock graze. The rancher can use a smartphone, tablet or computer to draw paddock boundaries, and the collars are equipped with GPS to track the animals’ movements throughout the day. If an animal approaches the boundary, they receive an auditory warning that intensifies as they get closer. When the animal crosses the boundary, it receives an electric pulse that is less intense than that of an electric fence. 

The technology was designed to improve environmental and economic outcomes for livestock operations, while also reducing labor costs for ranchers and maintaining animal welfare. For those trialing virtual fencing products across the country, it’s achieved more. 

“I think it’s the future and there’s a ton of potential,” says Aaron Steele, founder and co-owner of mobile grazing company Goats on the Go. “To be able to do things like graze a small hilltop for four hours and not eliminate all of the vegetative cover, it opens up an opportunity we never had before.”

Environmental benefits

Regenerative grazing—or closely managing where and for how long animals forage—is a farming practice that can improve soil health and plant diversity. Ranchers think virtual fencing helps them be more efficient. Each new boundary drawn by a rancher moves livestock onto a fresh paddock, allowing grazed pastures time to recover as livestock feed in a new location. 

“We can move the goats an unlimited number of times a day if we want to,” says Adam Ledvina, owner of Iowa Kiko Goats and Blue Collar Goatscaping. “In a better world, you move your animals every day. And the more often you can move them, the better you are.”

For conservationists, it may also help a declining habitat. The United States has lost more than 50 million acres of grasslands in the last 10 years, and groups such as The Nature Conservancy and their partners are trialing virtual fences as a tool for conservation and grazing operations. 

Grasslands need stimuli from grazing to encourage plant growth and recycle nutrients into the soil, but the ecosystem also needs time to recover to decrease soil erosion. Virtual fencing enables land managers to be precise and adaptive in their livestock grazing activities so native plants thrive in pastures. 

“That’s one of the definite benefits to the soil, having animals on the land,” says Scott Haase, a farmer from Minnesota. “The livestock impact is what most fields have been lacking for the last 75 years.”

Megan Filbert, an adoption program manager at Nofence, uses the Nofence app with her herd of Kiko goats. The white icons represent each collared animal within the virtual boundary. (Photo credit: Robb Klassen)

Animal benefits 

Physical fences require ranchers to make frequent trips to their fields to check on their livestock and the stability of the fences. The mobile app connected to the virtual fence collars distributes real-time data on the rancher’s herd, providing information on animal health and location. The collar technology makes it so ranchers can see the current status of the animals anywhere and anytime—as long as there is an internet connection. 

“It could be the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night to make sure all the animals are doing their job and everyone is healthy,” says Ledvina. 

Virtual fencing also allows livestock to live more stress free with less human interaction. When animals are exposed to frequent stressors, it can cause an increased susceptibility to disease, decreased feed intake and reduced fertility.

In addition, the technology has even helped save animals’ lives by letting ranchers know when an animal stops moving or a signal is lost. 

“I have already saved animals from death because of the data being transmitted from the collars,” says Steele. “Farmers have a much better idea of the current well-being of their animals at any time of day than they’ve ever had before.” 

Steele recalls an incident that happened with another rancher participating in the Nofence pilot project with him. 

“He was just reviewing the data and found that one of his goats’ activity levels had declined,” says Steele. “He went and caught that goat, and sure enough, it had an injury. He only caught it in time to treat it because of the data.” 

Rancher benefits 

Virtual fencing has helped farmers monitor the status of their animals through a tap of an app, which current users of this technology says offers peace of mind. 

“If there’s a storm and a branch knocks down your fence, you wouldn’t know for a couple days, and this lets you know instantly,” says Ledvina. 

In the past, ranchers have struggled to keep livestock out of certain locations, such as bodies of water. Now, ranchers can create unique boundaries for their difficult terrain and even prevent animals from entering areas prone to flooding and wildfires. 

The fencing also eliminates hours of intensive labor. Building and maintaining physical fences requires a lot of work, including digging fence posts, replacing damaged fencing after storms and driving across pastureland to install more fencing. Ranchers report labor to be their largest expense, and virtual fencing can eliminate some of this labor. 

“I’ve got ponds and terrain to deal with, fallen trees in the wrong place, and all of those things add up,” says Daniel Faidley, operator of a cattle and goat farm in Iowa. “I don’t have piles of time.” 

Goats graze hard-to-fence terrain in Southern California. Ryan and Rianna Malherbe own this herd, and they utilize their goats for targeted grazing and wildfire mitigation. (Photo credit: Robb Klassen)

Room for improvement

Despite the suggested benefits the technology has brought to ranchers trialing virtual fencing, there are still some challenges in making it accessible to mass audiences. 

Some landowners claim virtual fencing is cheaper than investing in physical fencing, but the cost is still higher than they’d like. The individual cow collars by Nofence cost $329 each and $229 for goats or sheep, but that isn’t the rancher’s only expense. They also have to pay a monthly subscription fee that will vary depending on the size of their herd and other factors. Despite the costs, Ledvina says he believes the reduction of labor costs makes it less expensive and, therefore, worth the investment. 

The battery life of the collars is another potential concern. After their initial charge using electricity, some of these collars are charged using solar power, which means that the amount of sun they receive can affect the battery life. In the summer, animals like to seek refuge in the shade. And in the winter, there are fewer daylight hours. Steele says that, although the collars hold their charge for a long time, it can be difficult to get sunlight on these collars at all times. 

Another reason some ranchers are hesitant to try virtual fencing is a reluctance to rely too much on technology. 

“Some people like to think you’re just getting more into your phone, and I get it, I want to disconnect, too,” says Ledvina. “But I wake up every morning and I’m able to check my animals. I do it to check my livelihood.”

A look into the future

Many ranchers consider virtual fencing to be the next frontier. It’s made it easier for farmers to do things they haven’t been able to do before and gives them time to prioritize what they’ve been missing out on.

With the trial’s success, Nofence is currently considering how many collars will be available to the public for 2024, with a priority going to sheep and goat collars. Its cattle collars are expected to launch in 2025. eShepherd, produced by Gallagher Animal Management, will also be available to the public some time this year. 

For those still debating trying out virtual fencing technology, Haase says it’s worth taking a chance. 

“I think once it really takes off, people are going to do creative and surprising things with it,” says Haase. 

Jenny Melo Velasco and Kelly Wilson contributed reporting to this story.

Want to get in line for access to virtual fencing technologies? Farmers and interested readers can register interest or sign up on a waitlist to be the first to receive these collars. Here are links to the major companies on the market: 

• Nofence
• Vence
• Gallagher eShepard
• Corral Technologies

To learn more about The Nature Conservancy and partners’ projects to research how virtual fencing can help managers improve soil carbon storage, biodiversity and economic outcomes, you can read more about it here. 

The post Ranchers Embrace Virtual Fencing for Greener Pastures  appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Gottenborg is working to create a habitat on his ranch that sustains the elk population. The ranch sits on the migratory path of the big animals, and every winter, hundreds of them travel through Eagle Rock looking for food as they move from higher to lower elevations. You could see their presence as a wildlife management success story or a nuisance, depending on how you look at them. Maybe a bit of both. 

“Elk can provide an indicator of how well habitats are functioning,” says Karie Decker, director of wildlife and habitat for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which works to ensure the animals have the habitat they need to thrive. “They have a direct role on vegetation through herbivory and seed dispersal, create wallows and serve as prey and carrion for many other wildlife species.”

According to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, before Europeans settled in North America, more than 10 million elk were roaming around the US and parts of Canada, but due to overhunting and habitat loss, their numbers dwindled to 40,000 at the turn of the 20th century. 

That’s when conservationists and government agencies began efforts to restore elk populations through protected areas and regulated hunting. Today, Colorado is home to 280,000 elk, the biggest population in the world. Despite these efforts, maintaining that population is a challenge.

Every winter herds of elk come through Eagle Rock Ranch in search of food. (Photo courtesy of Eagle Rock Ranch)

Threats to the elk include everything from climate change to manufactured barriers that can stifle their daily and seasonal movements, land development, traffic, increased human recreational activity, fencing and conflicts with human activities.

“In Colorado, elk and many other species had a very challenging winter in 2022-2023, with a deep snowpack for an extended period, significantly reducing the population in northwest Colorado,” says Decker. “Other challenges to elk across various states include development and the loss of habitat, lack of or low-quality forage, drought, disease and social tolerance.”

Eagle Rock Ranch has been in operation, primarily as a cow-calf operation, for more than 150 years, but Gottenborg, who runs the ranch with his wife, Jean Gottenborg, daughter Erin Michalski and son-in-law Matt Michalski, is relatively new to Eagle Rock, acquiring the ranch about 12 years ago. The elk came with it.

“My predecessor fought them for years,” says Gottenborg. “He did probably everything a landowner could legally do to chase elk off the property, with mixed results. He had propane cannons and salt and pepper shells, and he would get into these big arguments with the Forest Service and CPW [Colorado Parks and Wildlife].”

The Gottenborgs are trying to create safe passage and habitat for the migrating elk. (Photo courtesy of Eagle Rock Ranch)

Elk are not small visitors. Males can weigh up to 700 pounds and stand five feet at the shoulder, females up to 500 pounds and 4-1/2 feet at the shoulder. 

“They are very large, determined eaters,” says Kara Van Hoose, Northeast Region public information officer for CPW. “They will devour hay and other grains left outside for domestic animals and livestock. Elk are known to be destructive in their pursuit of food, toppling over containers, ruining fences and other infrastructure and eating large swaths of crops.”

Still, the Gottenborgs decided to welcome the elk, hoping to make them a benefit to the ranch. Since buying the ranch, the Gottenborgs have been working to diversify their income with the goal of keeping themselves and other ranchers on the land and maintaining the open landscapes. They’ve dipped their toes into agritourism with curated experiences, including fly fishing, ranch tours and eco-tours, and they see the elk as another income stream.

Programs such as Elk Rent in Montana, from the nonprofit Property and Environment Research Center, and the USDA’s Migratory Big Game Initiative in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana pay landowners for providing elk habitat. While there isn’t a program set up yet to do the same in Colorado, the Gottenborgs are in talks with organizations that will pay for the elk to have forage access to their pastures in the winter.

During the winter months when the elk are migrating through the property, the Gottenborgs’ cattle are in Nebraska, so the Gottenborgs don’t need to worry about cows and elk competing for food. By the time the cows are back on the ranch, the elk have moved back up to higher ground. To make it easier for the elk to graze without the risk of getting caught in their fences, they’ve started making modifications to make it easier for them to move up and down the valley. 

“The hope here, too, is that my neighbors are watching me. That they’re following what we’re doing and we can expand the concept, so, eventually, there’s 10 or 12 miles of this valley opened up in terms of easier access,” says Gottenborg.

The Gottenborgs are attempting to diversify the ranch’s income with the elk, agritourism tours and more. (Photo courtesy of Eagle Rock Ranch)

Elk-friendly fencing that can be laid down flat on the ground to support seasonal wildlife passage is expensive. Still, the Gottenborgs believe there is enough interest in the forage access that they’ll be able to make more modifications. They’re not laying down all of the fences, but they can easily track the migration patterns of the elk in the snow, so they lay down specific fencing sections while keeping their gates open.

In 2023, the Gottenborgs also installed five large, shallow-pool structures that hold fresh water with pumps powered by solar panels. The drinkers, as the Gottenborgs call them, provide water in the higher elevation pastures during the warmer months and the shoulder seasons where natural water sources aren’t present and help to distribute wildlife across the landscape better. They’re hoping to install additional drinkers this year.

“The elk have been here a long time, and we’re trying to change our approach to make them an asset,” says Gottenborg.

The post Meet the Ranchers Working to Sustain the World’s Largest Elk Population appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Just about every farmer will tell you that dealing with wildlife is a frustrating balancing act. While most people love wild animals and want to see them exist in healthy numbers on the landscape, farmers don’t necessarily want to see those animals enjoying their hard-earned agricultural crops. Yet, as the world becomes increasingly urbanized, more and more wildlife habitat is being taken away and turned into housing developments or converted into farmland. 

The future of healthy wildlife populations may partly depend on our ability to learn how to peacefully coexist with them in close quarters, and this is especially true with farming. Farmers can be immensely important allies for wildlife, with agricultural land creating vital havens of habitat. The question then becomes: How can farmers balance the need for wildlife to live on the landscape with the necessity of producing economically valuable crops? 

I’ve been a rural resident and a regenerative farmer for nearly two decades, currently operating an 81-acre farm in a remote corner of northeast Washington State. During that time, most of my energy has been devoted to learning how to peacefully coexist with wildlife both on and around my property. That is not to say that the path to peaceful coexistence has been smooth. What I can tell you is that it has been enlightening—and the health of my farm has been so much the better for it. 

A herd of deer grazing in a hay field. (Photo: Jillian Garrett)

While the farmer in me may have a difficult time admitting that creatures such as gophers possess anything other than evil intentions in their hearts, deep down I understand that they—along with the other wild animals—all have an important role to play in maintaining a balanced ecosystem. What is imperative to realize is just how much of that also translates to the overall health of the farm: Wildlife biodiversity is far more significant than many people (farmers included) appreciate. 

Most of us already have some understanding of the importance of biodiversity on our property, at least from the perspective of beneficial insects and songbirds. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed installing Audubon-approved nesting boxes around my gardens to increase the populations of swallows that visit each year. They have made an enormous dent in the number of mosquitoes and biting flies that plague me and my livestock during the summer. This is a simple solution for increasing bird biodiversity, but what about when it comes to the larger animals? 

Welcoming birds and bugs onto your land is easy in comparison with wildlife such as deer, elk or even predators such as coyotes. For help on this topic, I turned to my local Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife office, where I spoke to Reagan Harris, a wildlife conflict specialist who assists rural residents and farmers in learning how to coexist with wildlife on their property. 

According to Harris, hedgerows are one of the best ways to increase wildlife biodiversity and habitat as well as direct animal movements away from valuable crops. Hedgerows don’t have to take up a great deal of space either: They can be something as simple as a 20-foot-wide row of shrubs or trees that run along a fence line or a riparian area. Hedgerows can also greatly benefit farmers by serving as erosion control on stream banks or as windbreaks for fields. These hedgerows not only help to create important areas of food and cover for a wide range of birds and other animals, but they also maintain critical travel corridors that help wildlife to move from one section of habitat to another. 

Hedgerows around agricultural lands provide wildlife habitat and travel corridors while funneling animals away from crops. (Photo: Jillian Garrett)

On my own farm, I have incorporated large sections of hedgerows along creeks and strategic fence lines that surround my hay fields. These hedgerows mostly consist of native shrubs that grow well on my property_hawthorn, serviceberry, chokecherry, etc. Over the years, I have learned the real trick with hedgerows is to utilize plants that provide food as well as cover, ensuring that creatures such as deer are more occupied eating hawthorn berries and leaves than they are in my hay crops. I have observed the hedgerows on my farm providing food and habitat for a wide range of wildlife, from cottontail rabbits and ruffed grouse to black bears and mountain lions.

[RELATED: Old Hedgerows are New Again as More Farmers Embrace Benefits]

While hedgerows help direct the flow of wildlife traffic away from agricultural land, Harris still recommends that farmers fence off their most valuable crops whenever possible to prevent conflict. Fencing doesn’t need to be permanent, and there are many ways of utilizing temporary fencing during the growing season. The important part is to make any long-term fencing as wildlife friendly as possible, especially when enclosing large sections of land. 

A good place to start is to spend time observing wildlife movement patterns on a property before beginning fencing projects. According to the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks’s helpful guide on building fences with wildlife in mind (PDF), which I have often utilized in my own fencing projects, this helps prevent the closing off of important travel or seasonal migration corridors. That means that animals are less likely to jump over, damage or become entangled in fencing, which, in addition to preventing wildlife mortality, also saves landowners the hassle of costly and time-consuming fencing repairs. A quick and easy fencing solution that Harris recommends for farmers and rural landowners is called lay-down fencing, which is essentially a section of fence that can be laid on the ground when not in use. This allows wildlife to pass through a field when the area is not in production for crops or being used for livestock.  

Learning ways to direct animal traffic away from valuable crops is an important part of the solution for peaceful coexistence, but that doesn’t mean that farmers and wildlife can’t work together to create a mutually beneficial relationship. An easy way for farmers to do this is by allowing wildlife access to recently harvested or mowed fields. Hay (or grain) stubble provides excellent forage for wildlife, especially songbirds and gamebird populations, which, in turn, can help farmers by devouring insect pests that plague crops. 

One of the many ways I have learned to incorporate this on my own farm is by simply cutting my hay fields a little later in the season to provide crucial habitat and cover for wild turkey poults, helping to keep them safe from predators. Later in the season, once the hay fields are cut, these same turkeys provide welcome assistance in keeping the grasshopper population down (which is hugely beneficial to the health and aesthetics of my vegetable crops). In this way, the wild turkeys and I have figured out how to create a symbiotic relationship where we both come out winners. 

Even something as simple as putting up owl boxes to encourage the presence of owls, which, in turn, eat rodent pests, can be hugely beneficial to farmers and their crops. Owl boxes are something that I have started to incorporate on my own farm, and it has been very helpful in controlling the gophers that plague me every year. There has still been a bit of a learning curve though: At first, the owl boxes were not as successful in controlling gophers as I had first hoped. Then I realized that my outside greenhouse light, which automatically turned on at dusk, was negatively impacting the ability of the owls to hunt in the dark. Once I started keeping that bright light off at night, the gopher population began decreasing as the owls were better able to hunt in my gardens. As a result, I was able to enjoy the starry skies each evening as well as the peace that comes from knowing my pepper plants were being protected by these feathered farm friends. 

Owls are excellent farm friends for helping with rodent control. (Photo: Jillian Garrett)

Learning to live with wildlife also means learning to live with natural predators on the landscape, especially in rural areas where populations of creatures such as rodents and rabbits can be high. While smaller predators such as foxes and coyotes can be beneficial in helping to control everything from gophers to ground squirrels, they can also present a problem for farmers with livestock. Here, Harris recommends a good nighttime shelter to keep poultry and small livestock, such as sheep and goats, safe from predators. She also suggests using hot wire fencing for any livestock pastures, making sure that the fencing is offset from areas of brush or thick timber from which a predator might be able to ambush. 

I have implemented these suggestions on my own farm and, as a result, have been able to enjoy the perks of wild predators with minimal conflict. As a final suggestion for living with predators, Harris suggests incorporating livestock guardian dogs as another excellent option for mitigating conflict, helping to protect domestic animals while still allowing wild ones to exist on the landscape. 

At the end of the day, every farm is different, requiring customized and sometimes creative solutions for living with wildlife. What works for my farm may not work for yours, nor is every attempt to coexist with wildlife always successful. The important point here is the need to try, especially as vital habitat continues to vanish in the onslaught of increasing human populations and development. Farms are in a unique position to help, as well as reap some of the potential benefits, by providing substitute habitat and maintaining essential travel corridors for wild animals—making farmers important allies to the wild creatures that continue to call these places home.

The post I’m a Farmer Who’s Learned to Coexist with Wildlife. Here’s How You Can, Too. appeared first on Modern Farmer.