My uncle's 27-acre pollinator plot 🌻

Read Time: 4 minutes

A few years ago, my uncle planted pollinator plots on two pivot corners of one of his fields, totaling 27 acres. He had planted rye and vetch the previous fall, which his cattle grazed the following spring.

The idea of transitioning some row crop ground to perennial grasses for holistic grazing was taking root and beginning to sprout in his mind.

Squaring Circles or Circling Squares?

Fitting circular center-pivot irrigation into the square plots of farmland across Nebraska resembles the shape-sorting toy babies play with at an early age.

Fitting the circle in the square does work, and the baby sure claps from accomplishing the task at hand, but when overlayed onto farmland, 10-15% of the land remains unaccounted for.

One square mile equals 640 acres.

And a “quarter section” equals 160 acres of land, the typical size for which center-pivot irrigation is used in Nebraska.

So, out of the 160 acres, 20-30 corner acres typically remain unaccounted for.

Of course, unless you add a corner system to the center pivot, which covers most of the remaining acres at a small additional price of ~$75,000+.

These center-pivot irrigation systems are magnitudes more efficient than their gravity-fed predecessors.

And the cost of installing them pays for itself by increasing the evenness and precision of each irrigation pass, which saves water and increases yields.

But still, the corners themselves present an opportunity to add biodiversity to the sea of monoculture that has engulfed the once-diverse Great Plains.

My Uncle’s 27-Acre Pollinator Pivot Corner Plot

The 27-acre pollinator plot teemed with life.

Walking out amongst the 20+ species cover crop mix and feeling the hum of all the insect life was surreal.

Orb weaver spiders weave webs, while honey, native, and bumble bees buzz and pollinate each flower, and barn swallows swoop every dawn to feast on the abundant insect activity.

And across the fencerow, where the neighbor planted corn for silage?

*Crickets* - meaning silence, not actual crickets. Their field was void of life.

And many would ask - Was it worth it? Did it turn a profit? What was the point?

When I asked him, he just enjoyed doing something different. The experiment wasn’t going to make or break the farm, but it offered something fun and new.

He told me he was excited to farm again - for the first time in a long time.

We always joke that once you “see” regenerative, you cannot “unsee it.”

It is a spirit that grips you, one that you become fascinated with.

A desire arises to find ways to work with nature, collaborate with biodiversity, and foster life rather than control and fear it.

For him, this “small” 27-acre pollinator patch fits into a larger vision of a broader perennial-based grazing system.

So it was simply a stepping stone in his regenerative journey on his land.

(Re)Perennializing of the Great Plains

History of the Great Plains & 6-Foot Deep Top Soils

The deep, rich soils of the midwest were partly created due to the relationship between herds of ruminants grazing on perennial grasses, the predators that forced their continual movement, and the perennial grasses responding and receiving time to rest before the next graze.

Millions of American Bison roamed freely across the Great Plains for millennia. They would settle in an area, graze heavily, pee and poo, then, usually through predatory pressures of wolves, be moved to a new area to repeat the cycle.

This heavy grazing, followed by season-long resting periods, allowed the grasses to recover. They extended their roots deep into the Earth to reach nutrients to rebuild the forage the bison previously consumed.

This reciprocal cycle developed some of the deepest, richest soils on Earth.

In the early 1800s, before European settlers plowed the plains and built sod houses, the top soils were upwards of 6 feet deep.

One image I return to that vividly depicts the vibrancy and resilience of the tall-grass prairie is that of early European explorers on horses, who mentioned that “you couldn’t see the man on the horse when he entered them.”

Imagine grasses so high that they engulfed a human being riding a horse!

The tall-grass prairie contains a massive diversity of life.

More than 300 documented migratory and residential bird species thrive in this ecoregion, along with 55 species of mammals, 75 species of fish, and 53 species of amphibians and reptiles that inhabit the streams, rivers, and lakes that thread this landscape.

This ecoregion also created one of the most abundant aquifers on Earth.

And now, where perennials once ruled and life thrived, two annual species bred for mass production reign supreme — King Corn & Queen Soy.

My Uncle’s (re)Perennializing Plan

For the past four years, my uncle has planted cover crops that his cattle graze on. These have mainly been rye and vetch planted in the fall following soybeans.

But he has also dedicated a couple of hundred acres specifically to growing cover crops for grazing outside of the normal crop rotation—warm-season mixes for grazing during the peak of the growing season and cool-season mixes for stockpiling forage during the winter months.

He gets all of his cover crop seed from Green Cover, which is located only 40 minutes away from the farm but ships nationwide. Green Cover creates custom cover crop mixes to fit any context and cropping system imaginable.

My uncle’s goals are to grow all of his cattle’s feed, move them frequently so they are always on fresh forage, and mimic the movement of the historical herds that once roamed that land in order to regenerate and rebuild his soil.

He started with around 40 cow-calf pairs, which he has since grown to over 200. The next step in transitioning to a more profitable and regenerative grazing system by establishing around 200 acres of perennial eastern gamma grass, a warm-season bunchgrass with exceptionally high productive forage value.

But this is not without risk.

The perennial grass needs at least one year to establish, allowing for a single hay cutting toward the fall.

Then, the following year, the root system will be properly established to graze more heavily and begin the process of perennializing permanently to allow for more dense grazing and recovery cycles.

And it begs the question, “Why is this common-sense path so risky?”

The entire success of a perennial grass system relies on time, cattle, water, and sunlight to grow the grass, whereas the current system requires global supply chains to supply inputs from foreign countries, mass transportation, industrialized processing, and commodity markets to function.

So, which system is really more risky?

Why Don’t More Farmers Dare to Farm Differently?

Policies Incentivizing Behavior

The current insurance and subsidy policies give farmers peace of mind by guaranteeing them a baseline payment if they follow certain practices and plant certain crops, especially in the case of a storm that wipes out a crop.

Farming by nature is a conservative occupation, due to nature’s uncertainty.

Innovation and risk come at extreme costs to potentially guarantee nothing in return, so massive gambles are ill-advised without “betting the farm.”

These insurance and subsidy policies have been established for good reason.

They provide risk mitigation, encourage specific practices, and nurture emerging markets, as in the case of ethanol in the early 2000s.

But with the rising costs of inputs, uncertainty in the global market, and regenerative opportunities on the horizon, many farmers face charting the uncertain waters of transitioning their farms to new markets and methodologies in order to stay afloat and eventually thrive.

Definition of Insanity

Farmers are feeling pressure from all sides—global supply chains, war, rising interest rates, rampant inflation, and unpredictable weather patterns, to name a few that initially come to mind.

The question is whether they must take these risks on their own, whether the delayed Farm Bill will encourage innovation and change, or whether forms of private funding will have to save the day and de-risk regenerative transition.

But whatever moves the needle, I am certain that if we keep doing the same thing repeatedly, the land will not regenerate, farmers will not make a profitable living, and consumer health will not improve.

So, let’s dare to do something different.

Change may begin as small as a pollinator plot on some pivot corners of dryland and may lead to (re)perennializing the entire Great Plains.

That’s my hope.

Until next week.

Looking to Dive Deeper?

Explore These Regenerative Resources

• 14 Must Read Books If You Eat Food 📚

• 21 Documentaries to Inspire a Lifetime of Eating 🎥

• New to Agriculture? Start With These 4 Questions 📝

• 10 Must Read Books If You Eat Meat or Care About Animals 🐮

• 5 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Working on a Farm 👨🏻‍🌾

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