Bad Results of Good Intentions

Like everyone else I know, I’m cutting as much hay as I can this summer.

I’m trying to save as much forage as possible, protecting it from the grasshoppers and scorching heat.

One of my hay fields sits on top of a hill where the soil is sandy and the wind blows steadily.

My husband, Steve, and I acquired this field when it was in CRP.

CRP – the federal Conservation Reserve Program – pays landowners to plant perennial vegetation where the land used to raise annual crops.

My hay from this field won’t have any nutrition for my sheep and cows, but it will keep them warm when they digest all of this fiber.

The entire field looks green when I look across, but when I look down I see dead, gray grass.

I’m ashamed of the management that has sent this land to the intensive care unit.

The original idea for CRP was twofold – cover bare soil so it would not blow away and provide habitat for nesting upland birds as a bonus.

CRP was the water hose to put out the wildfire of soil erosion.

We had to prevent another Dust Bowl because we all know that once the soil blows away, nothing will grow.

I, for one, like to eat.

Every day.

So CRP was a popular program that covered the soil with plants and required landowners to leave those plants alone.

The CRP firehose put out the erosion fire.

But after a wildfire, the land needs to heal with seeds that sprout and grow, jump-starting all of the biological systems that keep those new plants thriving.

Just like a lawn needs to be mowed or the grass turns wolfy and dies.

Back when CRP was proposed, we didn’t know much about underground systems – we still don’t know much, but we know more.

Now we know that bacteria, fungi and nematodes work with plants to move nutrients up from deep underground and metabolize dead plants to bring water and nutrients down from the surface.

Like a Ferris wheel, going around and around, full of smiling people taking in a spectacular view and swinging back down to earth.

The entire Ferris wheel revolves around the greasy hub of plant roots.

Plant roots grow deeper when its plant leaves grow higher.

So when landowners were required to leave their CRP alone, the plants grew decadent and died, starving the soil microbes, too. 

The goal of CRP was lofty and righteous.

The result of the program is deadly.

When I stand in my field, the soil at my toes is powdery, with no way to hold rain if it ever rains again.

The dead plants are mineralizing – their essence disappearing into the air instead of feeding the soil.

The federal government was paying me to kill.

Last year, I rejected the money and took this field out of CRP.

I’m glad I did.

This field needs the dead plants to be trampled into the ground, needs to be stirred up without stirring so hard that it blows away.

I happen to have the perfect tool for this job.

All of my cows have four hooves, along with an efficient fertilizer spreader.

Some people worry that my four-footed fertilizer spreaders will hurt young birds.

I disagree.

A few years ago, I did some research that showed grazing cattle avoid bird nests -- unless they are frightened into a stampede.

Even the yearling heifers – the teenagers of the bovine world -- left dense rings of grass around every nest.

Cows and birds coexist peacefully.

Public policy has been killing with kindness.

Our federal Conservation Reserve Program needs to evolve just as our knowledge has evolved.