I have often written on how nesting and brood rearing habitat is exponentially more important than food plots or any traditional crops. That is, if you are in the position to choose between farming something or planting it back to native cover. If you are a landowner that needs the rental income or are a producer that depends on farming for your livelihood, you aren’t probably in a position to put everything into grass.
There are things you can do that may not be best case scenario but maybe better than what you currently have going. First, taking the marginal ground out of production can be an easy decision once you learn how unproductive those areas are. A producer has the most obvious gains to be made by not spending money on inputs that don’t return that investment back. How does that translate to a non-operating landowner? If you look at the land as a long-term investment, you want it to keep appreciating in value. Our most impactful marginal ground here is saline, sodic, or saline-sodic soils. This type of problem doesn’t go away, each year it is expanding and decreasing the long-term value of your land.
Getting native perennial plants back into those areas stops the expansion. If you put it into CRP there is value in that contract, or you can rent it out for hay or pastureland. If you are the landowner that wants to balance your income objectives with hunting objectives, then you still have the highest value land in production with the poorer soil providing your hunting habitat. Yes, it is most likely that the CRP rental income (as this is based on soil productivity) or hay rental income would not be anywhere near the cropland, but by taking out the land that the farmer loses money on, there is a scenario here where the land still in production is worth more rent per acre.
Now I don’t advocate for landowners to just look at getting top dollar above all else, if you have a tenant that takes good care of the land that’s worth its weight in gold. Especially if your hunting objective is first or second on your list of importance. I think as a landlord you can take good care of your tenant while they take good care of you. There are things that you can do though that will bolster your habitat, that your tenant may not really want to do. Breaking the corn, soybean, doldrum is one of the biggest of these.
I talked in length last week how adding small grains can be a good option for farmers, especially those that are livestock producers as well. Adding crops in the rotation is better for soil health. Soil health should be important to landowners as this again is tied to your long-term investment. With the small grain followed by a cover crop more roots are growing longer in the soil over a 3-year span than in a corn soybean alternation. There is also the added benefit of less soil erosion.
“Yes man that’s all well and good, but what does that have to do with habitat?” The most significant part of adding small grains to the crop rotation is that you now have exponentially more nesting cover. We aren’t just talking pheasants either, waterfowl benefit greatly from the added nesting acres. If a third small grain crop is permanently added to the crop rotation at a consistent number of acres, then you can count on that much more nesting cover year after year.
I’m not that big on the importance of food plots for hunting (another day another article) but if that is your preference, with the acres from the harvested wheat (or rye or barely) going into a cover crop you have more areas to plan for food plots. You just have to not hay those areas or fence them off if the cover crops are grazed. The plants in a cover crop mix may not be what you are used to hunting but you can have some pretty goods stuff besides just corn or milo.
Adding to our crop rotation can be part of building or retaining our wildlife populations. The decline in CRP acres is only one piece that has led to declines. Swapping out small grains and other crops for soybeans is another. Even the fewer number of livestock farms contributes. The pastures and hay lands were nesting areas that are now part of the corn – soybean system.
The next time before you go on the blame the predator route for lack of pheasants or deer or whatever, think about what our surroundings were in the good ol’ days. What did our crops look like? How many barren spots were there? How many more cows were there? There are a lot of things that have changed over the years but there is nothing stopping us from bringing things back that make sense for the farm, or for the bird.