[Pollinator] Farm couple takes pollinator conservation to higher level

Mon Jan 6 17:56:43 PST 2014

From: MOSES Organic Broadcaster

http://mosesorganic.org/farming/farming-topics/field-crops/farm-couple-takes
-pollinator-conservation-to-higher-level/

Farm couple takes pollinator conservation to higher level

By Eric Lee-Mäder, Xerces Society

“We want to implement pollinator conservation at the field-level scale.”
I’m having lunch with my friends Doug and Anna Crabtree at a Portland, Ore.
diner where Doug is holding the floor. “Anyone can create a small wildflower
strip, but as we scale up, we need conservation areas distributed across
the entire operation.”

Doug’s vision is not small, nor are Crabtrees’ initial accomplishments.
Farming more than 1,500 acres of dryland organic field crops in northern
Montana, Doug and Anna have already integrated huge, expansive wildflower
buffers between their production fields. Yet if you ask, they’ll tell you
that they’re just getting started.

I first met Doug and Anna at a very snowy organic farming conference in
Washington state in early 2012. They had a strong land ethic and were
working with their local National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)
office to explore different conservation options. Talking with them about
pollinators at the conference however, we began to see a larger model for
ecosystem-based farming unfold.

While it’s true that many of the Crabtrees’ more than 15 crops, such as
black emmer and einkorn wheat do not require insect pollination, others like
flax, safflower, and sunflower benefit greatly from bee visitation,
especially visitation by wild bees.

In fact, in the most ground-breaking and comprehensive study of its kind,
more than 40 of the world’s leading pollination researchers published a
major report in the journal Science earlier this year with the finding that
pollination by native wild bees—such as those supported by the Crabtrees’
habitat—increased yields in all of the crops studied, while pollination by
the domesticated honey bee only increased yields in14% of those same crops.
The report also noted that in crops with demonstrated yield increases by
both groups, wild bees increased yields twice as much as honey bees. More
than 40 crops were reviewed in the analysis.

Working with the Crabtrees, we quickly began to tally up a list of other
benefits that the wildflower habitat on their farm is providing. For
example, one of Montana’s most significant grain pests, the Russian wheat
aphid causes millions of dollars in annual crop losses to the state’s
farmers. Yet, as extensive research now demonstrates, wildflower habitat
near grain fields yields an enormous payoff in natural pest control by
increasing populations of more than a dozen species of tiny parasitoid wasps
that attack the aphid. The Crabtrees’ growing network of wildflower buffers
also provide value by reducing wind velocity for adjacent seedling crops,
reducing overland surface water and sediment runoff, and capturing
wind-blown weed seed before it can settle in production fields—plus, the
buffers themselves are just plain beautiful!

While the Crabtrees’ wildflower buffers are clearly paying dividends today,
early in the design and establishment phase we faced a number of pragmatic
feasibility questions. Specifically, could we establish high quality native
wildflower habitat using only organic methods? Also, what was the optimal
seed mix for the buffer areas—one that would resist weeds and persist over
time? And, when was the ideal planting time for a non-irrigated landscape
averaging less than 12-inches of precipitation annually?

In tackling the first of these questions, we were confronted by the fact
that most successful prairie restoration—which is in essence what we were
doing—is heavily dependent on conventional herbicides to remove the
baseline weedy plant community and create a clean slate for native plants to
grow without competition. And, the Crabtrees’ field edges certainly had
weeds. The most significant of these was a dominant cover of non-native
crested wheatgrass—a rangeland plant initially introduced from Siberia for
its wildly successful ability to completely takeover cold, low-precipitation
landscapes. I knew from experience that simply drill seeding native
wildflowers into the crested wheatgrass would be a waste of time and money.
We had to create a new plan, one without precedent for me as a restoration
practitioner.

After a lot of head scratching with my Xerces Society colleague Jennifer
Hopwood, we worked with the Crabtrees to design a series of replicated
tillage trials to understand which cultivation strategies would be most
successful at suppressing future re-growth by the crested wheatgrass and
provide a clean seedbed for our natives. The trials included wide chisel
plowed swaths to open up bare ground strips that we could re-seed into, as
well as another set of treatments where we used deep moldboard plowing to
invert the entire sod layer and create a totally barren, grass-free surface.
The moldboard treatment worried me a lot, especially with the high
potential for wind erosion on the northern plains. Yet, by summer 2013 it
was clear that the moldboard treatment was an overwhelming success. There
was little to no re-growth by the crested wheatgrass, and without
competition, the native plants grew fast and prolifically enough to protect
the soil.

With some hindsight, I think a key part of our success was a thoughtful
approach to answering another of our initial questions: “What is the
optimal native plant seed mix for this piece of land?” Of course our goal
was a wildflower-rich plant community, but wildflower-only seed mixes are
prone to weed encroachment since native grasses help occupy the space and
the root zone between wildflowers to form a tight living mat that resists
weed invasion. With this in mind, we included several species of low-stature
native grasses at almost 15% of the seed mix—including both warm season and
cool season species to fill any ecological void that a weed might otherwise
occupy.

For the flowers in the seed mix, we looked to the most drought-adapted
Western native species for which we could find seed sources. Lewis flax,
blanketflower, Maximilian sunflower, yarrow, scarlet globemallow, and
others formed the foundation of the seed mix, which we wanted to be
resilient in the face of the toughest climate change conditions that the
Crabtrees might ever face. The inclusion of some annual wildflowers like
plains coreopsis and wild sunflower helped provide immediate beneficial
insect value and rapidly covered the soil to prevent erosion. All of this
was planted in late spring, immediately after plowing, and just before the
area typically receives most of its rain.

The results of this process have been wildly successful. In addition to
having most of the species in our seed mix establish, the buffer areas are
showing little weed invasion, few spaces for new weeds to occupy, and
immediate colonization by beneficial insects, including many species of
wild bees and beneficial predators like soft-winged flower beetles.
Complementing these wildflower buffers, the Crabtrees are using extensive
multi-species flowering cover crop rotations that build soil organic matter,
disrupt pest and disease cycles, and help create seamless corridors for
beneficial species to move throughout the farm. The net effect is a
carefully orchestrated ecosystem that provides its own pollinators, its own
pest control, and its own nutrient cycling.

While we’ve made amazing progress so far, there’s a lot more to do, as Doug
and Anna will readily point out. In addition to wanting to expand their
operation with more land (and hence more habitat), Doug and Anna are
committed to mentoring new farmers through an apprentice program. They see
this type of conservation expertise as one of the core skills they want
their apprentices to gain. Ultimately when those apprentices go on to
establish their own farms, Doug and Anna hope that they will bring these
ideas along, and a new generation of ecosystem-based farmers will take root
all across the northern plains.

Eric Lee-Mäder is an agroecologist and author of the books Attracting Native
Pollinators, and Farming with Beneficial Insects through Storey Publishing.
He is the Assistant Pollinator Program Director at the Xerces Society, and
an Assistant Professor of Extension at the University of Minnesota’s
Department of Entomology. He blogs at agroecologynews.com. 

 <http://www.mosesorganic.org/conference> 25thLOGOEric will present two
workshops at the 2014 MOSES Organic Farming Conference: “Farm Planning for
Pollinators, Beneficials, & Biodiversity” and “Get Started in Native Seed
Production,” and will be available to talk about pollinators in the Ask an
Expert room on Friday morning. To see the complete schedule of experts, go
to www.mosesorganic.org/conference/networking.

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