Systems for Success
By Emaily Lear, Farm Bill Biologist, KS
In Kansas, across the Great Plains, we face the challenge of rapidly dwindling resources: water, productive soils, hunting access, loss of native habitat and wildlife. It’s through a combination of efforts with programs like Corners for Wildlife (CFW) and Sorghum for B.I.R.D.S. that PFQF in Kansas is taking a systems-level approach to address these problems. These incentive programs focus on operational goals, improving profitability for landowners, and tackling many of these growing resource concern issues simultaneously. Corners for Wildlife focuses on creating beneficial habitat on the landscape by planting farmed pivot corners back to a conservation cover mix. In Kansas, we’ve also required enrollment in the Walk-in Hunting Access (WIHA) program to participate in CFW. This gives us a greater return on our investment, creating both wildlife habitat and quality public hunting opportunities. Enrollees also see greater per-acre returns on their corners by stacking programs and receiving payments for WIHA and CFW simultaneously. Big picture, this will also benefit local economies by enhancing hunting tourism.
Black-eyed Susan blooming in a first year Corners for Wildlife planting in NW Kansas.
Sorghum for B.I.R.D.S., which stands for Building Innovative, Resilient, and Sustainable agricultural Systems, focuses on incentivizing a multitude of water quantity, soil health, and wildlife-related conservation practices on sorghum acres. This includes practices like cover crops, field borders, filter strips, enhanced nutrient management, and upgrading irrigation technology. Sorghum irrigators can also stack this program with CFW in NW Kansas to further maximize their returns. To participate, growers are only required to implement a new conservation practice, have sorghum in their rotation on the farmed acres enrolled, and must share data from those acres for three years. The data collected will help us better understand the impacts of the practices implemented in the western Kansas landscape and will help us make better management decisions moving forward. We hope this effort will help us make farms more profitable at the field level and promote long-term adoption of sustainable agronomic practices, which, like CFW, will contribute to supporting our rural western Kansas economy.
Indian Blanket flower blooming in first year Corners for Wildlife planting in NW Kansas – already benefiting pollinators and on it’s way to creating great habitat.
In a record drought year like Kansas has been experiencing, providing steady revenue streams for farmers is more important than ever. By stacking programs, we build farm resiliency, which benefits everyone – even the birds. Despite the lack of rain, the 341 acres seeded through CFW this spring have successfully germinated to provide cover for wildlife. We have an additional 273 acres enrolled in 2022 which will be seeded this fall, and we look forward to seeing their progress!