Now ranchers around the country are trialing a new technology, virtual fencing, to manage animals and their land. A Norwegian company called Nofence is one of the first companies making this fence available to ranchers in the United States. There are several other systems also piloting their products, including Vence, eShepherd and Corral Technologies. 

Virtual fencing supplies ranchers with a collar solar or battery charged and uses a web-based app to remotely monitor and control where livestock graze. The rancher can use a smartphone, tablet or computer to draw paddock boundaries, and the collars are equipped with GPS to track the animals’ movements throughout the day. If an animal approaches the boundary, they receive an auditory warning that intensifies as they get closer. When the animal crosses the boundary, it receives an electric pulse that is less intense than that of an electric fence. 

The technology was designed to improve environmental and economic outcomes for livestock operations, while also reducing labor costs for ranchers and maintaining animal welfare. For those trialing virtual fencing products across the country, it’s achieved more. 

“I think it’s the future and there’s a ton of potential,” says Aaron Steele, founder and co-owner of mobile grazing company Goats on the Go. “To be able to do things like graze a small hilltop for four hours and not eliminate all of the vegetative cover, it opens up an opportunity we never had before.”

Environmental benefits

Regenerative grazing—or closely managing where and for how long animals forage—is a farming practice that can improve soil health and plant diversity. Ranchers think virtual fencing helps them be more efficient. Each new boundary drawn by a rancher moves livestock onto a fresh paddock, allowing grazed pastures time to recover as livestock feed in a new location. 

“We can move the goats an unlimited number of times a day if we want to,” says Adam Ledvina, owner of Iowa Kiko Goats and Blue Collar Goatscaping. “In a better world, you move your animals every day. And the more often you can move them, the better you are.”

For conservationists, it may also help a declining habitat. The United States has lost more than 50 million acres of grasslands in the last 10 years, and groups such as The Nature Conservancy and their partners are trialing virtual fences as a tool for conservation and grazing operations. 

Grasslands need stimuli from grazing to encourage plant growth and recycle nutrients into the soil, but the ecosystem also needs time to recover to decrease soil erosion. Virtual fencing enables land managers to be precise and adaptive in their livestock grazing activities so native plants thrive in pastures. 

“That’s one of the definite benefits to the soil, having animals on the land,” says Scott Haase, a farmer from Minnesota. “The livestock impact is what most fields have been lacking for the last 75 years.”

Megan Filbert, an adoption program manager at Nofence, uses the Nofence app with her herd of Kiko goats. The white icons represent each collared animal within the virtual boundary. (Photo credit: Robb Klassen)

Animal benefits 

Physical fences require ranchers to make frequent trips to their fields to check on their livestock and the stability of the fences. The mobile app connected to the virtual fence collars distributes real-time data on the rancher’s herd, providing information on animal health and location. The collar technology makes it so ranchers can see the current status of the animals anywhere and anytime—as long as there is an internet connection. 

“It could be the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night to make sure all the animals are doing their job and everyone is healthy,” says Ledvina. 

Virtual fencing also allows livestock to live more stress free with less human interaction. When animals are exposed to frequent stressors, it can cause an increased susceptibility to disease, decreased feed intake and reduced fertility.

In addition, the technology has even helped save animals’ lives by letting ranchers know when an animal stops moving or a signal is lost. 

“I have already saved animals from death because of the data being transmitted from the collars,” says Steele. “Farmers have a much better idea of the current well-being of their animals at any time of day than they’ve ever had before.” 

Steele recalls an incident that happened with another rancher participating in the Nofence pilot project with him. 

“He was just reviewing the data and found that one of his goats’ activity levels had declined,” says Steele. “He went and caught that goat, and sure enough, it had an injury. He only caught it in time to treat it because of the data.” 

Rancher benefits 

Virtual fencing has helped farmers monitor the status of their animals through a tap of an app, which current users of this technology says offers peace of mind. 

“If there’s a storm and a branch knocks down your fence, you wouldn’t know for a couple days, and this lets you know instantly,” says Ledvina. 

In the past, ranchers have struggled to keep livestock out of certain locations, such as bodies of water. Now, ranchers can create unique boundaries for their difficult terrain and even prevent animals from entering areas prone to flooding and wildfires. 

The fencing also eliminates hours of intensive labor. Building and maintaining physical fences requires a lot of work, including digging fence posts, replacing damaged fencing after storms and driving across pastureland to install more fencing. Ranchers report labor to be their largest expense, and virtual fencing can eliminate some of this labor. 

“I’ve got ponds and terrain to deal with, fallen trees in the wrong place, and all of those things add up,” says Daniel Faidley, operator of a cattle and goat farm in Iowa. “I don’t have piles of time.” 

Goats graze hard-to-fence terrain in Southern California. Ryan and Rianna Malherbe own this herd, and they utilize their goats for targeted grazing and wildfire mitigation. (Photo credit: Robb Klassen)

Room for improvement

Despite the suggested benefits the technology has brought to ranchers trialing virtual fencing, there are still some challenges in making it accessible to mass audiences. 

Some landowners claim virtual fencing is cheaper than investing in physical fencing, but the cost is still higher than they’d like. The individual cow collars by Nofence cost $329 each and $229 for goats or sheep, but that isn’t the rancher’s only expense. They also have to pay a monthly subscription fee that will vary depending on the size of their herd and other factors. Despite the costs, Ledvina says he believes the reduction of labor costs makes it less expensive and, therefore, worth the investment. 

The battery life of the collars is another potential concern. After their initial charge using electricity, some of these collars are charged using solar power, which means that the amount of sun they receive can affect the battery life. In the summer, animals like to seek refuge in the shade. And in the winter, there are fewer daylight hours. Steele says that, although the collars hold their charge for a long time, it can be difficult to get sunlight on these collars at all times. 

Another reason some ranchers are hesitant to try virtual fencing is a reluctance to rely too much on technology. 

“Some people like to think you’re just getting more into your phone, and I get it, I want to disconnect, too,” says Ledvina. “But I wake up every morning and I’m able to check my animals. I do it to check my livelihood.”

A look into the future

Many ranchers consider virtual fencing to be the next frontier. It’s made it easier for farmers to do things they haven’t been able to do before and gives them time to prioritize what they’ve been missing out on.

With the trial’s success, Nofence is currently considering how many collars will be available to the public for 2024, with a priority going to sheep and goat collars. Its cattle collars are expected to launch in 2025. eShepherd, produced by Gallagher Animal Management, will also be available to the public some time this year. 

For those still debating trying out virtual fencing technology, Haase says it’s worth taking a chance. 

“I think once it really takes off, people are going to do creative and surprising things with it,” says Haase. 

Jenny Melo Velasco and Kelly Wilson contributed reporting to this story.

Want to get in line for access to virtual fencing technologies? Farmers and interested readers can register interest or sign up on a waitlist to be the first to receive these collars. Here are links to the major companies on the market: 

• Nofence
• Vence
• Gallagher eShepard
• Corral Technologies

To learn more about The Nature Conservancy and partners’ projects to research how virtual fencing can help managers improve soil carbon storage, biodiversity and economic outcomes, you can read more about it here. 

The post Ranchers Embrace Virtual Fencing for Greener Pastures  appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Gottenborg is working to create a habitat on his ranch that sustains the elk population. The ranch sits on the migratory path of the big animals, and every winter, hundreds of them travel through Eagle Rock looking for food as they move from higher to lower elevations. You could see their presence as a wildlife management success story or a nuisance, depending on how you look at them. Maybe a bit of both. 

“Elk can provide an indicator of how well habitats are functioning,” says Karie Decker, director of wildlife and habitat for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which works to ensure the animals have the habitat they need to thrive. “They have a direct role on vegetation through herbivory and seed dispersal, create wallows and serve as prey and carrion for many other wildlife species.”

According to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, before Europeans settled in North America, more than 10 million elk were roaming around the US and parts of Canada, but due to overhunting and habitat loss, their numbers dwindled to 40,000 at the turn of the 20th century. 

That’s when conservationists and government agencies began efforts to restore elk populations through protected areas and regulated hunting. Today, Colorado is home to 280,000 elk, the biggest population in the world. Despite these efforts, maintaining that population is a challenge.

Every winter herds of elk come through Eagle Rock Ranch in search of food. (Photo courtesy of Eagle Rock Ranch)

Threats to the elk include everything from climate change to manufactured barriers that can stifle their daily and seasonal movements, land development, traffic, increased human recreational activity, fencing and conflicts with human activities.

“In Colorado, elk and many other species had a very challenging winter in 2022-2023, with a deep snowpack for an extended period, significantly reducing the population in northwest Colorado,” says Decker. “Other challenges to elk across various states include development and the loss of habitat, lack of or low-quality forage, drought, disease and social tolerance.”

Eagle Rock Ranch has been in operation, primarily as a cow-calf operation, for more than 150 years, but Gottenborg, who runs the ranch with his wife, Jean Gottenborg, daughter Erin Michalski and son-in-law Matt Michalski, is relatively new to Eagle Rock, acquiring the ranch about 12 years ago. The elk came with it.

“My predecessor fought them for years,” says Gottenborg. “He did probably everything a landowner could legally do to chase elk off the property, with mixed results. He had propane cannons and salt and pepper shells, and he would get into these big arguments with the Forest Service and CPW [Colorado Parks and Wildlife].”

The Gottenborgs are trying to create safe passage and habitat for the migrating elk. (Photo courtesy of Eagle Rock Ranch)

Elk are not small visitors. Males can weigh up to 700 pounds and stand five feet at the shoulder, females up to 500 pounds and 4-1/2 feet at the shoulder. 

“They are very large, determined eaters,” says Kara Van Hoose, Northeast Region public information officer for CPW. “They will devour hay and other grains left outside for domestic animals and livestock. Elk are known to be destructive in their pursuit of food, toppling over containers, ruining fences and other infrastructure and eating large swaths of crops.”

Still, the Gottenborgs decided to welcome the elk, hoping to make them a benefit to the ranch. Since buying the ranch, the Gottenborgs have been working to diversify their income with the goal of keeping themselves and other ranchers on the land and maintaining the open landscapes. They’ve dipped their toes into agritourism with curated experiences, including fly fishing, ranch tours and eco-tours, and they see the elk as another income stream.

Programs such as Elk Rent in Montana, from the nonprofit Property and Environment Research Center, and the USDA’s Migratory Big Game Initiative in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana pay landowners for providing elk habitat. While there isn’t a program set up yet to do the same in Colorado, the Gottenborgs are in talks with organizations that will pay for the elk to have forage access to their pastures in the winter.

During the winter months when the elk are migrating through the property, the Gottenborgs’ cattle are in Nebraska, so the Gottenborgs don’t need to worry about cows and elk competing for food. By the time the cows are back on the ranch, the elk have moved back up to higher ground. To make it easier for the elk to graze without the risk of getting caught in their fences, they’ve started making modifications to make it easier for them to move up and down the valley. 

“The hope here, too, is that my neighbors are watching me. That they’re following what we’re doing and we can expand the concept, so, eventually, there’s 10 or 12 miles of this valley opened up in terms of easier access,” says Gottenborg.

The Gottenborgs are attempting to diversify the ranch’s income with the elk, agritourism tours and more. (Photo courtesy of Eagle Rock Ranch)

Elk-friendly fencing that can be laid down flat on the ground to support seasonal wildlife passage is expensive. Still, the Gottenborgs believe there is enough interest in the forage access that they’ll be able to make more modifications. They’re not laying down all of the fences, but they can easily track the migration patterns of the elk in the snow, so they lay down specific fencing sections while keeping their gates open.

In 2023, the Gottenborgs also installed five large, shallow-pool structures that hold fresh water with pumps powered by solar panels. The drinkers, as the Gottenborgs call them, provide water in the higher elevation pastures during the warmer months and the shoulder seasons where natural water sources aren’t present and help to distribute wildlife across the landscape better. They’re hoping to install additional drinkers this year.

“The elk have been here a long time, and we’re trying to change our approach to make them an asset,” says Gottenborg.

The post Meet the Ranchers Working to Sustain the World’s Largest Elk Population appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Just about every farmer will tell you that dealing with wildlife is a frustrating balancing act. While most people love wild animals and want to see them exist in healthy numbers on the landscape, farmers don’t necessarily want to see those animals enjoying their hard-earned agricultural crops. Yet, as the world becomes increasingly urbanized, more and more wildlife habitat is being taken away and turned into housing developments or converted into farmland. 

The future of healthy wildlife populations may partly depend on our ability to learn how to peacefully coexist with them in close quarters, and this is especially true with farming. Farmers can be immensely important allies for wildlife, with agricultural land creating vital havens of habitat. The question then becomes: How can farmers balance the need for wildlife to live on the landscape with the necessity of producing economically valuable crops? 

I’ve been a rural resident and a regenerative farmer for nearly two decades, currently operating an 81-acre farm in a remote corner of northeast Washington State. During that time, most of my energy has been devoted to learning how to peacefully coexist with wildlife both on and around my property. That is not to say that the path to peaceful coexistence has been smooth. What I can tell you is that it has been enlightening—and the health of my farm has been so much the better for it. 

A herd of deer grazing in a hay field. (Photo: Jillian Garrett)

While the farmer in me may have a difficult time admitting that creatures such as gophers possess anything other than evil intentions in their hearts, deep down I understand that they—along with the other wild animals—all have an important role to play in maintaining a balanced ecosystem. What is imperative to realize is just how much of that also translates to the overall health of the farm: Wildlife biodiversity is far more significant than many people (farmers included) appreciate. 

Most of us already have some understanding of the importance of biodiversity on our property, at least from the perspective of beneficial insects and songbirds. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed installing Audubon-approved nesting boxes around my gardens to increase the populations of swallows that visit each year. They have made an enormous dent in the number of mosquitoes and biting flies that plague me and my livestock during the summer. This is a simple solution for increasing bird biodiversity, but what about when it comes to the larger animals? 

Welcoming birds and bugs onto your land is easy in comparison with wildlife such as deer, elk or even predators such as coyotes. For help on this topic, I turned to my local Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife office, where I spoke to Reagan Harris, a wildlife conflict specialist who assists rural residents and farmers in learning how to coexist with wildlife on their property. 

According to Harris, hedgerows are one of the best ways to increase wildlife biodiversity and habitat as well as direct animal movements away from valuable crops. Hedgerows don’t have to take up a great deal of space either: They can be something as simple as a 20-foot-wide row of shrubs or trees that run along a fence line or a riparian area. Hedgerows can also greatly benefit farmers by serving as erosion control on stream banks or as windbreaks for fields. These hedgerows not only help to create important areas of food and cover for a wide range of birds and other animals, but they also maintain critical travel corridors that help wildlife to move from one section of habitat to another. 

Hedgerows around agricultural lands provide wildlife habitat and travel corridors while funneling animals away from crops. (Photo: Jillian Garrett)

On my own farm, I have incorporated large sections of hedgerows along creeks and strategic fence lines that surround my hay fields. These hedgerows mostly consist of native shrubs that grow well on my property_hawthorn, serviceberry, chokecherry, etc. Over the years, I have learned the real trick with hedgerows is to utilize plants that provide food as well as cover, ensuring that creatures such as deer are more occupied eating hawthorn berries and leaves than they are in my hay crops. I have observed the hedgerows on my farm providing food and habitat for a wide range of wildlife, from cottontail rabbits and ruffed grouse to black bears and mountain lions.

[RELATED: Old Hedgerows are New Again as More Farmers Embrace Benefits]

While hedgerows help direct the flow of wildlife traffic away from agricultural land, Harris still recommends that farmers fence off their most valuable crops whenever possible to prevent conflict. Fencing doesn’t need to be permanent, and there are many ways of utilizing temporary fencing during the growing season. The important part is to make any long-term fencing as wildlife friendly as possible, especially when enclosing large sections of land. 

A good place to start is to spend time observing wildlife movement patterns on a property before beginning fencing projects. According to the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks’s helpful guide on building fences with wildlife in mind (PDF), which I have often utilized in my own fencing projects, this helps prevent the closing off of important travel or seasonal migration corridors. That means that animals are less likely to jump over, damage or become entangled in fencing, which, in addition to preventing wildlife mortality, also saves landowners the hassle of costly and time-consuming fencing repairs. A quick and easy fencing solution that Harris recommends for farmers and rural landowners is called lay-down fencing, which is essentially a section of fence that can be laid on the ground when not in use. This allows wildlife to pass through a field when the area is not in production for crops or being used for livestock.  

Learning ways to direct animal traffic away from valuable crops is an important part of the solution for peaceful coexistence, but that doesn’t mean that farmers and wildlife can’t work together to create a mutually beneficial relationship. An easy way for farmers to do this is by allowing wildlife access to recently harvested or mowed fields. Hay (or grain) stubble provides excellent forage for wildlife, especially songbirds and gamebird populations, which, in turn, can help farmers by devouring insect pests that plague crops. 

One of the many ways I have learned to incorporate this on my own farm is by simply cutting my hay fields a little later in the season to provide crucial habitat and cover for wild turkey poults, helping to keep them safe from predators. Later in the season, once the hay fields are cut, these same turkeys provide welcome assistance in keeping the grasshopper population down (which is hugely beneficial to the health and aesthetics of my vegetable crops). In this way, the wild turkeys and I have figured out how to create a symbiotic relationship where we both come out winners. 

Even something as simple as putting up owl boxes to encourage the presence of owls, which, in turn, eat rodent pests, can be hugely beneficial to farmers and their crops. Owl boxes are something that I have started to incorporate on my own farm, and it has been very helpful in controlling the gophers that plague me every year. There has still been a bit of a learning curve though: At first, the owl boxes were not as successful in controlling gophers as I had first hoped. Then I realized that my outside greenhouse light, which automatically turned on at dusk, was negatively impacting the ability of the owls to hunt in the dark. Once I started keeping that bright light off at night, the gopher population began decreasing as the owls were better able to hunt in my gardens. As a result, I was able to enjoy the starry skies each evening as well as the peace that comes from knowing my pepper plants were being protected by these feathered farm friends. 

Owls are excellent farm friends for helping with rodent control. (Photo: Jillian Garrett)

Learning to live with wildlife also means learning to live with natural predators on the landscape, especially in rural areas where populations of creatures such as rodents and rabbits can be high. While smaller predators such as foxes and coyotes can be beneficial in helping to control everything from gophers to ground squirrels, they can also present a problem for farmers with livestock. Here, Harris recommends a good nighttime shelter to keep poultry and small livestock, such as sheep and goats, safe from predators. She also suggests using hot wire fencing for any livestock pastures, making sure that the fencing is offset from areas of brush or thick timber from which a predator might be able to ambush. 

I have implemented these suggestions on my own farm and, as a result, have been able to enjoy the perks of wild predators with minimal conflict. As a final suggestion for living with predators, Harris suggests incorporating livestock guardian dogs as another excellent option for mitigating conflict, helping to protect domestic animals while still allowing wild ones to exist on the landscape. 

At the end of the day, every farm is different, requiring customized and sometimes creative solutions for living with wildlife. What works for my farm may not work for yours, nor is every attempt to coexist with wildlife always successful. The important point here is the need to try, especially as vital habitat continues to vanish in the onslaught of increasing human populations and development. Farms are in a unique position to help, as well as reap some of the potential benefits, by providing substitute habitat and maintaining essential travel corridors for wild animals—making farmers important allies to the wild creatures that continue to call these places home.

The post I’m a Farmer Who’s Learned to Coexist with Wildlife. Here’s How You Can, Too. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

At the time, Corse was working off farm, while her parents transitioned their dairy into an organic operation. Corse, panicking, called her parents to find out that a fire had ripped through their barn. Luckily, they were able to move their animals out in time, but the recovery period was brutal. Corse’s parents settled their 100-head herd with a neighbor, driving the 20 miles each way twice a day, for months, to milk and care for the cows. Corse and her siblings had heart-wrenching discussions about if the barn was worth rebuilding, as her parents were getting close to retirement. But Corse didn’t want the farm to disappear. So, she rebuilt the barn and took over the operation, the sixth generation to run the Vermont dairy. 

As a dairy farmer, Corse has to prepare for fires, floods and all sorts of extreme weather disasters that can impact her animals and her business. She’s seen lightning strikes, 90-mile–per-hour wind storms and hurricane-level rain. “From a farmer’s perspective, there’s an incredible breadth of challenges that are coming because of extreme weather. And they’re incredibly unpredictable,” says Corse. “As you’re structuring your cropping and the livestock rotations, you’re having to actively adapt, sometimes daily, to deal with the weather conditions.” In order to deal with those challenges, Corse does have some contingency plans in place. She has a trailer that can fit some of her animals and enough pasture that she’s hopeful she’ll be able to find space for her cows. But the trauma of that fire stays with her, even now. “If that happened right now, I don’t know that I could continue,” says Corse. “I cannot overemphasize the strain from holding all of this stuff coming at you as a farmer.” 

Photography by Leitenberger Photography/Shutterstock

The impacts of extreme weather events and disasters on agriculture have been nearly unbelievable in some areas. Wildfires in California burned up more than 4.2 million acres in 2020 and, in 2017, damaged the wine grape harvest, resulting in an economic loss of roughly $75 million for the state. The 2021 heat dome that covered British Columbia saw temperatures rise as high as 121 degrees Fahrenheit, or nearly 50 degrees Celsius. The oppressive heat caused roads to buckle and more than 500 deaths across the region. Across farmland in the lower parts of the province, producers dealt with the deaths of thousands of animals, including more than 630,000 chickens, while 2,500 acres of blueberries wilted. Hurricanes in Florida have wrecked orange groves, causing losses of more than $247 million to the economy. 

As we reckon with the impacts of climate change, these extreme weather events will happen more frequently and with more intensity. Experts say we can expect to see more extreme cases of both flooding and drought, storms with higher winds and fires start and spread more rapidly. This has impacts on the health of soils and coastal waters, both of which are critical to the health and prosperity of our food supply. 

The stress and strain of an emergency evacuation can be a lot to think about head on. It’s painful to think about the potential losses of an emergency or how you might manage hundreds of animals in your rush out the door. But no matter your situation, the best thing you can do, says Ragan Adams, the veterinary specialist for the Colorado State University extension, is to make a plan and practice it, to get your livestock used to the motions. Animals, says Adams, are “aware of something changing in nature and around them. If they’re domestic pets, they’ll usually pick up from you if something’s wrong and begin to worry…There’s this saying in the world of animals that the slower you go, the faster you get things done. The slower you go, the less stressed you seem, the easier it is for the animals.” Also key in an emergency, says Adams, is a steady communication source that isn’t a cellphone (those towers can go down in a storm) and a reliable method of transportation that is gassed up and ready to go. Learn more about preparing for an emergency at the farm here.  

A 2011 paper from the USDA estimated that, at the time, the roughly 90 extreme weather-related disasters in the previous 30 years had resulted in more than $700 billion in normalized losses. “Droughts, floods, hurricanes, severe storms, heat waves, freezes and wildfires pose serious challenges for farmers and the agribusiness community,” writes author Raymond Motha. “Socio-economic costs of some of these natural disasters are far-reaching and long-lasting. The enduring changes in climate, water supply and soil moisture necessitate mitigation measures and adaptation strategies to cope with these changes in order to develop effective long-term risk management plans.”

Livestock producers and ranchers have a lot to deal with during a disaster, but crop farmers face a range of long-term impacts from weather events. Extreme precipitation, meaning heavy amounts of rain or snow falling in a short period of time, can cause crop damage and soil erosion. It can also lead to an increase in flooding, while runoff from all that water can add to pollutants in the streams and water supply. During droughts, soils can dry out, and heavy winds can strip or rearrange placements of that protective layer of topsoil. Building up that top layer of soil by cover cropping, or practicing no-till farming, can help protect the soil’s structure, but with more frequent wind and storm events, it’s getting harder to maintain that solid foundation.

Fire burns on the northwest side of Mount Shasta in Siskiyou County, California. Photography by Trevor Bexon/Shutterstock.

A colleague of Adams’s, Scott Cotton, has dealt with weather emergencies for close to 30 years. Now retired, he still consults with the Extension Disaster Education Network (EDEN), which developed after devastating floods in Mississippi and Missouri in 1993. The group now works with educators and citizens to prepare for emergencies and learn from them. 

One of the best things ag producers and farmers can do in advance of an emergency is work with the local agency in charge of disaster management, says Cotton. Whether that’s Emergency Medical Services, fire services or law enforcement, Cotton says their initial tendency in disasters is to shut down roads, limit access to areas and prioritize public safety. For a livestock producer who has poured his whole life and career into building his herd, he may not want to hear that he has to leave the animals behind. “That’s his life. It means everything. It’s his identity, his economic flow,” says Cotton. He’s seen those same producers, then, ignore directives from law enforcement and try to go around a blockade or cut a fence to move around it. Without proper communication with local agencies, those farmers can get stranded or stuck on a washed-out road or behind the fire line. Conversely, though, when producers and agencies make evacuation plans together ahead of time, it can make everything run smoother. “It takes the weight off of the emergency manager, because there is a team out there that knows what they’re doing,” says Cotton. “Nobody knows the landscape better than producers. So, when [EMS] needs a secondary access point in the area, and how to get around a blockage, producers know the way. If they’re in communication, it makes a difference.”

No matter how prepared you are, though, it takes a long time to recover after a disaster. There are four basic stages: preparation, mitigation (where teams work to reduce possible impacts), response and recovery. The weather event itself might have been a single day, but Cotton says the timeline of a disaster can run 10 to 12 years. 

Cotton recalls an historic blizzard in 2013, where nearly five feet of snow fell on much of South Dakota over three days. “We had 496 producers, across 200 miles. And it was sheep and cattle and horses, most of them.” Cotton and his local team started sending out emergency road crews to open up main arteries and get in touch with producers to find out where their livestock was and how many they’d lost. It took weeks to get to everyone, and then snow was so deep that it took excavators to clear paths to bury animals that didn’t make it through the storm. One producer, Cotton recalls, an 82-year-old rancher, lost the majority of his sheep and cattle. “We brought in a plow and dug a big trench, and then we piled all of his dead cattle up and rolled it into the trench with the snowplow….The trauma of his family standing here watching this, putting their entire life in a ditch, is really extreme.” That’s why Cotton says the first thing to think about once the disaster has cleared is counseling. There are psychological burdens that go along with weather disasters, especially for farmers and producers who can watch their livelihoods get wiped out in an instant. 

“We have producers who go out of business, not because they can’t refinance things, just because the emotional toll is so high from one or two events that they can’t handle it,” says Cotton. That’s what Corse was considering after the barn fire at her Vermont dairy in 2007. Ultimately, she decided to keep going, but she carries that trauma and stress with her every day now, and she sees it getting worse. “In a situation where, literally day to day, you’re having to adapt your entire plan as a farmer because the weather is changing that quickly…we’re not ready for this moment.”

The post When Natural Disasters Strike the Farm, the Effects Linger appeared first on Modern Farmer.

That’s why Ragan Adams, the veterinary specialist for the Colorado State University extension, recommends thinking through possible emergency scenarios before they occur, so you can have a full picture of what you might need. Different operations will have different priorities, and living on a flood plain versus a fault line will change your preparations accordingly. 

“If you have a dairy farm, there’s not many places you’re gonna move 1,000 cows and be able to milk them the next day,” says Adams. “So, people tend to put their emphasis on being able to shelter in place, be independent. In the beef industry, if you’ve got a cow-calf operation, oftentimes your benefit is land, so you move them to other pastures. Or in a hurry, if it comes up fast on you, you would cut fences and open gates and let them run for it.” 

While there are different strategies for individual operations, there are some principles to keep in mind when devising an emergency plan. 

Make a plan and practice it

It’s not enough to come up with an escape route or a plan in the abstract; you have to put it to the test. That means in the case of an evacuation, does your family know how to safely get off of the property and what to bring with them? There are resources, such as this Red Cross worksheet, that can help you work through every step of an evacuation. The Extension Disaster Education Network (EDEN) has resources for most every emergency you can encounter, from Tsunamis to swine fever. 

On a farm, think about everyone that might be on site. If you have employees or seasonal staff, emergency training with clear instructions is a must. Everyone should be aware of what to do in the event of an emergency and where to safely meet up afterwards. For a large staff, it’s a good idea to designate a team captain or leader who can be briefed on specific instructions and shepard folks along. 

And don’t forget about your animals. Get them used to being loaded into trailers, carriers or whatever mechanism you use to transport them. If you have the option to let them out to a further pasture, practice running out to the fencing or guardrails to ensure the livestock can safely move where they need to go. “If you have a trailer, but you haven’t put your horse in it in three years, when there’s all this excitement and everybody’s worried, those animals can get very worried. So, it’s important for their owners to practice getting them used to it,” says Adams. She recommends running through a drill yearly, to keep everyone up to speed. 

Have a buddy

What if you’re out of town when disaster strikes? Or if the emergency is too big to handle alone? Farmers tend to look out for one another, and this is no different. If there are several producers in your area, consider developing a phone tree or other communications plan if there is adverse weather in the forecast. 

And, says Adams, include your buddy in your planning session. “I know of a group in Colorado that has annual days in the spring, they’ll get a whole bunch of people together and practice loading their horses, so that everybody gets [comfortable],” says Adams.

Stay in contact

Make sure you have a reliable source of communication that is not a cellphone. Cell towers and service can easily go down in inclement weather, or signals may be jammed. Even landlines aren’t foolproof in certain situations. “The more reliant you are on one source of communication, the more you need backups,” says Adams. 

Adams suggests keeping a radio on hand, so you can get alerts and information as needed. She keeps a solar-powered ham radio on her property, which also allows her to radio out in case she needs assistance. Some municipalities or counties also have designated channels or feeds for emergency alerts. You can often sign up for alerts through your local emergency management office or private services like this one. Keep in mind, however, that you don’t want to solely rely on a cellphone or internet services. 

Keep your vehicle prepared

The final piece of the escape plan is ensuring that your vehicle is prepped and ready for transportation. That means ensuring that it’s gassed up and roadworthy. It could also mean keeping copies of printed maps handy in the vehicle—if those cell towers are down, GPS signals aren’t going to work well. 

Make sure that any attachments to the vehicle, such as trailers or flatbeds, are in good condition and easy to work with. Make sure that all tires are full and patched and that everyone knows how to operate any machinery they may have to work with. 

In the event that your area loses power, are you able to manually open fences, garages, gates and locks? Practice using these manual options, and make sure any electrified fences or gates have an override option in the event of power outage. Keep flashlights and other safety equipment in areas with easy access, so if lights go out, you’ll be able to see what you’re doing in the dark. 

The post How to Evacuate Your Animals in an Emergency appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Livestock is responsible for anywhere from 11.1 percent to 19. 6 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, the majority of which come from cows raised for meat and milk products. Cows belch methane, a potent greenhouse gas that stays in our atmosphere for a much shorter time than carbon dioxide, about 12 years compared to thousands of years, but has much greater warming potential. One cow, for instance, burps about 220 pounds of methane in a year. As the planet warms, everyone from the IPCC to consumers to farmers and food producers is asking how to reduce those emissions—but what does that really mean? 

Photography submitted by Organic Valley.

“When you hear the term carbon neutral, that relates to industries that have carbon dioxide emissions,” says UC Davis professor and head of the agricultural research organization CLEAR Center at UC Davis Frank Mitloehner. “The cows are eating carbon-rich feed; they digest it, and when they digest it, they convert it to methane, and then they belch it out. So, what matters is that we manage methane and find ways to reduce it … Methane is only a problem if we don’t manage it and let it go into the atmosphere.” 

In other words, to reduce emissions from the agricultural sector, many companies and scientists believe the answer is to capture or reduce methane and nitrous oxide, the other significant greenhouse gas from the farming industry. Yet, measuring how much methane and nitrous oxide to reduce is a source of debate—in part because we don’t have a good understanding of these terms and labels. 

“One of the issues is the imprecise use of language many are interchanging between carbon-neutral and climate-neutral,” says Caspar Donnison, the author of a paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, on climate neutrality claims in the livestock sector. 

Donnison says that, in order to have alignment with the Paris Agreement (keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius), there need to be significant methane reductions in the livestock sector, around 50 percent between 2020 and 2050. In contrast, the methane reductions proposed by some, such as studies he and his co-author scrutinized in their paper, are insufficient. Even with a proposed cut of 23 percent, livestock sectors would remain a source of very high emissions, sustaining a warming impact that is too high. 

“It is a misleading use of the term ‘climate-neutral’ that is used in these studies, since under their definition the sector would still be causing global warming,” says Donnison. To actually maintain neutrality, Donnison says, the sector has to reduce enough to offset all the greenhouse gasses and other emissions for which it is responsible. 

According to Donnison, there are large opportunities for the food sector to lower emissions, but they involve dietary shifts to plant-based foods, especially in areas with high meat consumption, and increased efficiencies in livestock production. 

Photography submitted by Organic Valley.

“About five years ago, I gave our sustainability director a goal for the farm to be carbon-neutral by the end of 2022 and expand that to the rest of the other farms that supply us by 2030,” says dairy farmer and president of Straus Family Creamery Albert Straus. The Straus family farm has been operating for more than 75 years, tucked along the coastline of Northern California. In 1994, Straus dairy farm became the first certified organic dairy farm west of the Mississippi River, and it was the first 100-percent certified organic creamery in the country.

The farm didn’t make its goal of carbon neutrality by 2022, but it is still working toward it. It has started testing a feed supplement with red seaweed, which has demonstrated a reduction in cow’s enteric methane emissions (which occur via cow burps) an average of 52 percent and as much as 90 percent, although there have been delays with availability recently. The Straus farm is one of a growing number of dairy companies, including Organic Valley and Neutral, which are trying to be climate-neutral and vying for sustainability motivated consumers in the process. But they each have different ways of going about it. 

Along with the seaweed supplements, Straus has implemented a few new pieces of tech, including a methane digester that captures methane emissions from on-farm manure that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere and converts it into electricity. They are also working with other farms that supply the creamery; in 2023, Straus launched an incentive program to incorporate the practices he experimented with and perfected on his farm, so the whole dairy creamery supply chain can be carbon-neutral by 2030.

“I think it is essential for us to create a positive environment where our farms … can address climate change, can address healthy organic food for the local populations and regional populations, and help revitalize rural communities as well,” says Straus.

Start-up Neutral, which launched in 2019 in Oregon and Washington before expanding nationally in 2021, uses carbon offsets. Carbon offsets (when a company or individual calculates its carbon footprint and then funds projects that offset climate change, such as tree planting) have become controversial over the past few years because they rely on hard-to-verify data and tend to put the burden of fighting climate change on projects occurring in the global south. Still, for Neutral, it was a way to be climate neutral from the start while working with its suppliers to reduce emissions on farms.

“Our goal is to use fewer offsets as we implement more of our carbon reduction projects,” says ​​Jake Schmitz, carbon reduction manager at Neutral Foods. “With a growing portfolio of emissions reduction projects, our goal is to cover as many reductions as possible through our own projects, resulting in a reduced use of offsets.”

To do that, Neutral is working with its farms to supplement cows’ feed with Agolin, an essential oil blend that the company says increases feed efficiency by more than four percent and reduces those burps by more than 8 percent. As Agolin helps farmers feed less, it should reduce N2O from crop production. It is also working to change the manure systems to separate solids and liquids, allowing farmers to distribute the manure more efficiently to cropland. 

Photography submitted by Organic Valley.

Organic Valley, a 1,600-farmer-owned cooperative, decided carbon offsets weren’t right for it.

“If we wanted to be carbon neutral tomorrow, we would have to buy carbon offsets because that’s how you get a lot done quickly,” says Nicole Rakobitsch, director of sustainability at Organic Valley. “Buying the carbon offsets from outside of your supply chain, though, means money goes to those projects that are not related to your commodity or the products that you’re making.”

On the facility side, Organic Valley has already pivoted to renewable electricity. Organic Valley, which has plans to be climate-neutral by 2050, decided to go with an approach called carbon insetting, which, according to Rakobitsch, means that, instead of purchasing offsets, it is using that money to invest in its suppliers and farmers.

Thanks in part to a USDA Climate-Smart Commodities grant, Organic Valley started a pilot program to provide technical assistance to farmers who want to implement a new practice, such as agroforestry, but don’t know where to start. Organic Valley pays its farmers annually per ton of carbon reduction to incentivize the farms. 

There are pros and cons to all of these reduction methods; the methane digesters that are part of Straus’s and Neutral’s work to be climate-neutral have been touted by the Biden administration as a critical part of methane reduction, but there are questions about how effective they really are. 

As the climate crisis intensifies, dairies who reduce their emissions are helpful, but only one part of an agricultural solution. As consumers look for more climate-friendly options, Donnison says to pay attention to the language companies use, to help avoid greenwashing. “It’s important to understand how companies are defining climate-neutral, and how they have calculated their emissions, as it can be misleading.”

The post Can Milk Be Climate-Neutral? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The heat dome was not typical for the region, to be sure, but high temperatures are becoming ever more normalized due to climate change. Other parts of the country see birds dealing with heat stress more often. Earlier this year, the Arizona Republic reported notable incidences of bird stress in Tucson. In California’s Central Valley, drought can endanger migratory birds who look for water sources and find scarcity instead. These heat-related catastrophes are especially frightening in context: Over the last 50 years, the number of birds in the US and Canada has dropped by a startling 29 percent.

These occurrences in urban areas are scary, but heat stress can affect birds in more rural spaces, too, and farmland is no exception. Two recent studies looked at how birds interact with agricultural lands and how changes in water, heat or aridity can throw off the balance in this delicate equation. 

Raptors and water tanks

Many ranchers are familiar with making sure their livestock have access to water sources—whether that be stock tanks, overflow areas or earthen tanks. But it turns out that birds, specifically raptors, depend on these water sources, too.

“Certainly the livestock use them, but the overflow areas, you have all kinds of small mammals come in and use them,” says Clint Boal, PhD, professor of wildlife biology at Texas Tech University. “And so they kind of function as de facto oases in this very arid landscape.”

Boal was interested in how raptors interacted with water sources, because it is a common assumption that raptors—birds of prey including hawks, falcons and barn owls—don’t need to drink water to survive because they can get their water from their prey. They may use these water sources to cool off, but they aren’t necessarily there to drink it. Using cameras that had been set up at these ranch water sources across west Texas for another study, Boal and his team began their work, which was later published in BioOne.

Livestock stand near a water tank. (Photo: Shutterstock)

They found that the raptors increased their visits to water sources when it was either exceptionally hot or exceptionally dry. (Sometimes, in the winter, the temperatures are lower but it’s still arid.)

Eggs and juveniles are particularly vulnerable, due to their dependency on their parents for temperature regulation.

“Even if we have water resources that adults can access, if heat continues [in] the direction it’s going, and aridity—probably even more importantly—continues [in] the direction it’s going, those nestlings cannot survive,” says Boal.

For every raptor you see, there are countless other species also benefitting from these water sources. A lot of migrating birds, such as songbirds, use them as well. 

Aboveground tanks have a drowning risk—animals and birds sometimes have trouble getting out. But this risk can be mitigated by installing simple escape ramps. Shallow water sources low to the ground can be particularly beneficial for birds.

“From a wildlife perspective, having these earthen tanks, or seeps that they set up, or just overflow areas where enough water is overflowing out of the tank, to be accessible to wildlife … can be really beneficial to virtually every species out there,” says Boal.

Stress in the nest

Birds nesting near agricultural lands may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of heat, says Katherine Lauck, a doctoral candidate in ecology at UC Davis and the lead author of a paper published in Science that examined the effects of heat stress on birds. Lauck used 23 years of data from NestWatch, a bird camera program from Cornell University, to retrieve information about bird fledgling success from 58 species across the country. This abundance of data allowed them to trace trends across time and space.

One of Lauck’s biggest findings was that fledgling success was lower near agricultural lands. Fledgling success is how many birds make it to adulthood. While this study didn’t investigate why this is, Lauck hypothesizes that it has something to do with lesser canopy cover—the amount of shade the birds could access—in agricultural areas.

“We were really excited to be able to key in on reproductive success as a proxy for fitness,” says Lauck. “And the lower the fitness of a population of birds is, the more likely that population is going to decline and eventually go extinct.”

Reproductive success is closely tied to whether a population of birds is going to be able to persist in agriculture, more so than simply looking at the abundance of birds in agriculture, says Lauck.

Temperature stress can affect fledgling success in the egg and chick stages. Adult birds thermoregulate their eggs by keeping them warm, but it’s harder to keep them cool. Once a chick hatches, all of their water is obtained through food, because they cannot yet fly to a water source. If it’s too hot to survive without supplementary water, the chicks may not make it to adulthood.

Baby birds depend on their parents for sustenance and thermoregulation. (Photography: Shutterstock)

“A huge important factor for thermoregulation in birds is water availability,” says Lauck. This is significant for birds in agricultural areas that are also water-stressed, such as California and along the Colorado River.

Heat can decrease the fledgling success of birds, and Lauck’s next research project will look into how this happens. 

“If we figure out what the mechanisms are, that leads us directly to concrete conservation interventions,” says Lauck.

At the farm level, Lauck recommends certain actions that can help birds deal with this heat stress. Maintain existing trees, even if they’re isolated. Allow for riparian buffers between fields—anything to foster shade. “We think that even small patches of forest are useful for providing these microclimate refuges for birds living in agricultural landscapes. It can allow birds to access a little bit of that extra water that seeps from your land,” says Lauck.

It should also be noted that climate change is the reason these warm conditions get warmer, and mitigation must be viewed from that perspective, too.

Trees adjacent to farmland can provide critical canopy to wild birds. (Photo: Shutterstock)

There are almost three billion fewer birds in the wild in the US and Canada now than there were in the 1970s. Besides this being tragic just for the sake of the birds, Lauck says this also impacts humans.

“We’re losing the value that those birds bring to our working landscapes,” says Lauck. “They inspire us, they drive this massive bird-watching industry, but they can also benefit farmers by eating pests and pollinating crops. And so I think people can see that there is value in birds. And they just need to know ‘what do I do?’”

Farmers have an important role to play, says Lauck. Across the globe, nearly half of all habitable land is used for farming. But this paper can provide some insight into how to co-manage agricultural land for bird species that are trying to live on despite climate change and habitat destruction.

“If we want to maintain a resilient, biodiverse biological community that will continue to provide us with ecosystem services … but also the sense of a connection to the natural world and the sense of belonging you feel when you see a familiar organism living around you,” says Lauck, “we need to manage agriculture for more than just production.” 

***

Learn more about the benefits of birds on farms: We’ve written about this before. Check out this story about how birds help out agricultural lands.

Want to make your farm more bird-friendly? The National Audubon Society has some ideas. Check out its Conservation Ranching program for more information.

If you live in an urban area, then we’d recommend reading this piece in the Arizona Republic, which offers some guidance on what to do if you see a young bird that’s fled the nest due to heat.

The post Birds are Vulnerable to Heat Stress, Even on Farms appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“In this business, you have to wear a lot of hats and be ready to jump in when and where you’re needed,” says Mosser, a principal at Seven Hills Food, an independently owned, USDA-inspected meat-processing and packaging plant in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia.

The company processes about 150 cattle per week and partnered with dozens of area cattle farmers to launch a state-branded line of grass-fed beef, Virginia Beef Co., in 2018. It got an early shot in the arm when the nation’s second-largest retail grocery chain agreed to pilot flagship hamburger blends at a handful of local stores. Rave customer reviews and pandemic-related beef shortages fueled rapid expansion: The truck Mosser is helping load will deliver meat to about 100 Kroger Company stores in Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee. 

Dalton Mosser (right) and production manager Donta Coleman (left). (Photo courtesy Seven Hills)

That means customers can walk into their local grocery store and buy grass-fed, regionally sourced ground beef—and for about 20 cents cheaper per pound than the current national average.

Experts call both the relationship and option rare exceptions. 

“It’s rare to see [regionally sourced meats] on shelves at large chains, even at the local level,” says Rebecca Thistlethwaite, director of the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network (NMPAN), a nonprofit that helps support small processors with marketing, applying for state and federal grants and more. Most ground beef consumed in the US travels hundreds, if not thousands of miles before it hits grocery shelves—Kroger’s organic Simple Truth line, for instance, is raised and slaughtered entirely in Uruguay.       

That, says Thistlethwaite, is due to extreme consolidation in the $67-billion US beef industry. 

Market share for the country’s four biggest meat-packing companies—Tyson, JBS, Cargill and Marfrig—has skyrocketed to 85 percent today from 25 percent in 1977. The Big Four, as they’re commonly known, now have plants that can process more than 5,000 head of cattle a day. And of those, a dozen accounted for nearly half the total US beef supply in 2022. 

“These companies are so big, they play by economic rules that don’t apply to other processors,” says Thistlethwaite.  

Automated equipment saves time and maximizes output while slashing labor costs. Fewer plants and minimal competition lowers prices paid to ranchers for cattle. Cornered supply chains create advantages when negotiating contracts with prisons, school systems and mega-retailers such as Walmart. 

Unable to compete, more than half of the country’s small and midsize processors have shuttered operations in the past 20 years alone. 

“At this point, [the Big Four have] surpassed any efficiencies associated with economies of scale,” says Thistlethwaite. Now, the focus appears to be on manipulating the marketplace. 

The Department of Justice launched an ongoing price-fixing investigation into the Big Four in 2020. It has since faced an onslaught of civil suits and most—like JBS’s $52.5-million, 2022 agreement with Minnesota grocery stores and wholesalers—have resulted in large settlements. A group of small Illinois distributors filed a similar suit this past October, claiming the companies “exploited their market power … by conspiring to limit the supply of beef sold to purchasers in the US wholesale market” from 2015 through at least 2021. 

The Four argue that supply and demand factors, not anticompetitive behavior, determine the price of beef and cattle. But the White House and Congress seem to agree with the plaintiffs. 

The USDA implemented the first phase of efforts to crack down on anticompetition in November. The measures come in addition to a 2022 executive order allotting $1 billion in American Rescue Plan funds to help independent processors expand capacity.  

“When dominant middlemen control so much of the supply chain,” reads a related White House update, “they can increase their own profits at the expense of both farmers—who make less—and consumers—who pay more.” 

The announcement cited Federal Reserve stats showing the inflation-adjusted cost of ground beef rose by about 30 percent since the early 1980s and reached record highs in 2021. While ranchers’ share of consumer dollars spent on beef has fallen by more than a third since 1973, the Big Four have seen soaring profits—especially since the pandemic. 

Consolidation also puts the nation’s food supply at risk. 

For instance, COVID-19 infections led to shutdowns at major plants, disrupting supply chains and fueling shortages that helped Seven Hills, the Lynchburg processor, nab its deal with Kroger. Cyberattacks closed JBS plants in 2021, putting 20 percent of US processing capacity on hold.           

Seven Hills Food is an independently owned, USDA-inspected meat-processing and packaging plant based in Lynchburg, Virginia. (Photo courtesy Seven Hills)

About $450 million in federal grants has been distributed so far. Como, Mississippi’s Home Place Pastures was among the recipients and received $500,000 to increase cold storage and processing capacity. 

“It’s been a gamechanger,” says owner Marshall Bartlett. But the grants only cover 20 percent of project costs and having to borrow $2 million in match-funding “is what’s keeping me up at night,” he says.  

Bartlett started sustainably raising pigs on a portion of his family’s 1,800-acre, fifth-generation row crop farm in 2014. Frustrations around securing reliable USDA-inspected processing and packaging inspired him to build a small plant two years later.  

“I’d gotten some orders from Memphis chefs, but the closest slaughterhouse was booked for months,” says Bartlett. Even then, he says, “I had to drop off my animals, wait a few days, come back and pick up the carcasses, drive them 50 miles to the nearest butcher shop for processing, then convince them to let me use [their co-op room] for packaging. It was insane.”   

The plant, which was partly funded by state grants, brought dramatic expansion. Bartlett went from raising 15 to about 600 pigs and has added around 200 head of cattle. Home Place does custom processing and labeling for dozens of small area farms and partners with 11 on a direct-to-consumer line of meats. It now has 30 full-time employees and processes about 1,500 pigs and 500 cattle per year in addition to sheep and goats. There’s also an onsite butcher shop, farm store and restaurant.

Bartlett says business is thriving and plans to continue to scale up over the next decade. But he doesn’t see chain grocery stores as part of the plan. 

Without major legislative changes, “processors like us will never be able to compete at that level,” says Bartlett. Looking to the future, his focus is on educating more consumers about the benefits of eating locally raised sustainable meat and finding innovative ways to bring in more direct sales.

“This is a niche market,” says Bartlett. “Realistically, if we can pick up even a fraction of the regional market share, that would be a huge win.” 

MIssissippi-based Home Place does custom processing and labeling for dozens of small area farms. (Photo courtesy of Home Place)

Mosser, the Seven Hills president, has applied for millions in USDA grants. He says a $500,000 infusion could outfit the company with equipment that would easily increase processing capacity to 500 cattle a week. With double that amount, he could ramp up to more than 1,000. Over time, profits from the expanded capacity could be reinvested in sister plants and establishing Virginia Beef type product lines in neighboring states. From there, he could branch out to poultry, pork, bison and lamb.   

“That would go a long way toward creating an affordable and sustainable regional food system,” says Mosser. “What’s so frustrating is that the demand is there and we’ve proven we have a [competitive model]. All we need is a little help to get us to that next level.”  

He worries that too much government money will go to boutiques and startups versus proven midsize plants that could cumulatively impact competition and keep more locally raised meat in regional food systems. Thistlethwaite, the NMPAN director, partly shares his concerns. 

“I do worry we’re going to see a lot of these new plants fail over the next few years,” she says. Seventeen have or are being built in Montana alone. “This is a tough business to break into. If you don’t have those end consumers lined up, you’re not going to make it.”  

Thistlethwaite says that small and midsize processing capacity should be expanded at all levels and that the government needs to do more to prop up plants. Legislation and stronger antitrust regulations can help redistribute market share. Institutions such as  schools, prisons, hospitals, universities and government agencies can provide readymade customers. 

“Look, this is an immensely complex problem,” she says. It took decades for consolidation to occur and “unfortunately, there is no magic bullet that’s going to fix it overnight.” 

The post Small Processors Face Big Obstacles in Ultra-Consolidated Meat-Packing Industry appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The boat belongs to Rose Piccinini, the Tribes’ Sanpoil district wildlife biologist. She is part of a team that manages the herd of bighorn sheep that the Tribes’ wildlife department reintroduced beginning in 2009. She also leads the Tribes’ efforts to restore lynx populations back into the ecosystem here.

The animals who shared this landscape were once fully integrated into every aspect of tribal members’ lives. They harvested bighorn sheep and other game for food, tools, and clothing. Intricate myths, legends, and teachings about the animals were passed down by elders to descendants and bound them to who they were—and who, as a result, their descendants came to be.

But then American settlers brought domesticated European sheep and goats, and with them, diseases that bighorns weren’t able to recover from. The succession of disease exposures, against which bighorns had no defense, significantly reduced their numbers and made them more vulnerable to other impacts they might have otherwise withstood. Save for a few small pockets in secluded locations, the bighorns died off, and the herds disappeared from the landscape and the lives of the tribes.

As we crane our necks and squint our eyes upward in the hot midday July sun, shadows reveal more than a dozen bighorn sheep on the north side of the canyon, less than 100 feet above the reservoir. Ewes and lambs weave paths through stalks of mullein, leaving their crescent-shaped tracks in the sand, all the while feeding on shrubs that dot the hillside and scree. Their sharp horns curl back from their heads as their amber eyes attend to their surroundings. Two of the animals walk onto a sandy section of the slope, licking at minerals. They kick up dust and cascades of sand, which form rivulets and accumulate into plumes, slowly fanning down the sandy slope to the shoreline below.

For the 12 tribes of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville, whose reservation is located in north-central Washington State, their ecosystem isn’t complete without the animals and plants who have long inhabited the land alongside them. Maintaining these relationships of reciprocity in modern times involves the protection and reintroduction of native species, as well as the restoration of their habitats, an ambitious effort that the Tribes’ wildlife department has been leading since its inception in the 1970s.

As the Tribes work together to restore more native species like bighorn sheep and salmon to their lands and waters, they bring collective healing with them. This healing is felt by the people who have long endured cultural trauma from the forces of European and American colonization. It further strengthens their enduring resilience.

Bighorns were among the Tribes’ first relatives to be extirpated from the region, but the world-shattering impacts of colonization only intensified henceforth.

Salmon have always been at the center of the Tribes’ culture and, until the mid-20th century, their diet and economy. The fish fed the people and the land with, among other things, the nutrients stored in their bodies. The fish consumed sea life and later carried this sustenance upstream in their migratory journey inland. Tribal representatives cite reports of 20,000 salmon per day, weighing on average 35 pounds each, swimming up the Columbia. With their death and decomposition, the nutrients brought by the salmon in their flesh and bones nourished the forests, prairies, and riparian areas, as well as the coyotes, deer, elk, bighorn sheep, lynx, pronghorn, buffalo, wolves, eagles, and innumerable other beings interconnected within these systems.

But in 1942, the U.S. government built the Grand Coulee Dam and “ended a way of life,” according to a documentary produced by the Tribes. The dam blocked 1,400 miles of salmon spawning habitat and flooded 56,000 acres of land, as well as the ecosystems that supported whole communities of animals and people. This included critical winter habitat for deer and elk, and areas the Tribes relied on for native food and medicinal plants, all of which were drowned by the government’s dam construction.

No fish passage was built then, nor since.

For the Tribes, the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River “ended a way of life.” (Photo: Shutterstock)

“Overnight, it was shut off,” says Richard Whitney, a member of the Sinixt band of the Colville Confederated Tribes and the Tribes’ wildlife department manager, who assumed leadership of the department in 2014. All at once, salmon, who were the Tribes’ staple food and the foundation of their culture and economy, were gone.

To survive, the Tribes turned to other species native to the ecosystem, and started a decades-long effort to restore wildlife populations in the area. By 1975, the Tribes had established a wildlife management department with funding from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in accordance with the Bureau’s trust responsibilities to the Indigenous peoples with whom it had signed treaties. Elk, Whitney says, have, “stepped up to offer themselves so [the Tribes] could persist.”

Today, thanks to the Tribes’ reintroduction efforts, their elk herds are strong, going from 481 total elk counted in 2002, to more than double that in 2022. Whitney says elk numbers on the reservation are at a 20-year high, which gives Tribal members additional opportunity for harvest.

With elk reintroduction efforts underway, the Tribes next turned their attention to sharp-tailed grouse in the late 1990s, bighorn sheep in 2005, pronghorns in 2014, followed by lynx, salmon, and buffalo.

Although they have not reintroduced wolves, the Tribes have allowed wolves to recolonize their lands, since evidence of the canines was first identified in 2008. Wolf packs are now managed here at a stable level.

The Colville Confederated Tribes’ plan to re-establish bighorn sheep began with six translocations that ultimately brought 136 bighorns back to the reservation. Although the herds have continued to suffer from diseases carried by domesticated goats and sheep—which are worsened by drought as it concentrates animals around smaller watering areas—Whitney says the population has since grown to more than 250.

As Whitney assumed leadership of the wildlife division and took over the restoration of bighorn sheep, it was suggested to him that the Tribes sell licenses for trophy bighorn hunts to non-tribal hunters to help pay for more staff. Some state fish and wildlife departments sell hunting licenses via auction or raffle for a number of species considered to be trophies to the highest bidder to generate revenue. For example, in Washington this year, one bighorn sheep hunting license generated $181,460, while a similar license was auctioned for $370,00 in Oregon.

Whitney was adamantly opposed to the idea, and his reasoning provides insight into the approach he takes to wildlife management: “That animal is worth more to me than a biologist position. That animal has value and it’s not in dollars,” he says. With so much wildlife management reliant on hunters paying license fees, which in turn fund conservation and management, Whitney says the priorities are off. “If it just comes down to money, then you guys are in the wrong business. You’ll never get it right.”

In addition to providing sustenance for tribal members, the restoration of native species serves to restore a community of species of which people are an integral part. “There’s a harmony there, and anything that’s missing breaks that balance,” Whitney says. “There’s still a harmony, but it’s missing a note here and there.” With each member of the ecological community Whitney’s wildlife department restores, the whole community sings fuller-voiced.

This story was originally published in YES! Magazine. It is the first in a three-part series produced in partnership with bioGraphic, an editorially independent magazine about nature and conservation powered by the California Academy of Sciences. Read part 2 here and part 3 here.

The post Bringing Back the Bighorn appeared first on Modern Farmer.

It can be quite a problem sharing your land with deer when they’re eating up your profits, especially when, as Vance points out, they’ve adapted to humans and become fearless. Vance keeps a garden on the farm, which the deer routinely destroy. Deer also get into the feed his neighbor stores for his calves. And then there’s the cornfield, which his cousin Scott Stickley planted for livestock feed. “The crop insurance people will not give him insurance next year unless he gets kill permits,” says Vance, referring to the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) licenses to hunt so-called nuisance deer year-round. 

For farmers with a deer problem, there’s a time-honored solution: hunting. Hunters can mitigate the damages to crops and property caused by the animals, whether it’s tearing into hay bales or damaging fence lines. Hunters can secure permission to pursue deer and other wildlife on private land and offer their services free of charge, relishing opportunities to hunt away from public land crowds. 

Deer-damaged crops in Larry Vance’s cornfield in Strasburg, Virginia. (Photo: Heidi Chaya/Modern Farmer)

Like many farmers, Vance views hunting on his land as a privilege that must be earned. “They’ve got to prove to me they’re going to make use of the deer. It’s not target practice with a live target.” Making use of that deer has another benefit: The annual tradition puts meat on the table—and for food-insecure communities, game meat can make a big difference.

Hunting, for the hungry

The VA nonprofit organization Hunters for the Hungry (H4H) accepts donations of game—mostly deer—and coordinates distribution of the meat to people in need. “In the last five years, we’ve averaged 214,154 pounds and that’s over 850,000 servings annually to men, women, children, the elderly, the homeless and veterans that are facing food insecurity,” says Gary Arrington, director of H4H. Since its inception in 1991, the program has donated nearly 8 million pounds of venison (deer meat).

H4H is just one of many programs of its kind around the country that have become increasingly relevant in the wake of the pandemic, which has exacerbated issues of food affordability and access. H4H covers the cost of processing, storage and logistics for donated game, and food pantries and other facilities receive the meat at no cost. “[H4H] really helps to sustain the already strained budgets of these feeding programs, and it allows them to have this essential high-protein red meat for their clients, so they can also have healthy diets,” says Arrington.

Farmers provide a large percentage of H4H’s donated deer—often taken under DWR kill permits. And while Arrington adds that the DWR only requires that hunters properly dispose of nuisance deer—which can mean simply burying them or throwing them away—H4H’s network ensures they’re not wasted. “[Farmers] are really excited when they can call us, and that affords them the ability to harvest those deer, protect the crops and their livelihood, and we get those deer and use them to feed people,”  says Arrington.

Benefits of hunting

Hunted nearly to extinction in the early 1900s, a decline in apex predators has helped deer populations in the US rebound to approximately 35 million to 36 million. Overpopulation puts deer in increasing contact with humans, sometimes with negative consequences. Deer account for a slew of fatal wildlife encounters every year, including vehicular collisions driving millions of auto insurance claims. Tick-borne diseases can be transmitted from deer to humans, and too many deer can allow bovine tuberculosis and Chronic Wasting Disease to spread readily.

Hunting can help reduce disease by managing deer population and unwanted human-animal interactions. It’s also vital to wildlife and habitat conservation. Hunters spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on the pursuit. State and national wildlife organizations rely on these funds—derived from license fees and portions of the sales of equipment such as  firearms and ammo. Hunting also drives tourism in many destinations, which in turn bolsters local economies. “Think of the investments that people make to hunt deer. [Venison] must be good. They put a lot of effort, resources and money into it,” says Vance. 

“They’ve got to prove to me they’re going to make use of the deer. It’s not target practice with a live target,” says Virginia farmer Larry Vance. (Photo: Heidi Chaya/Modern Farmer)

And it is good: It’s high in protein, omega-3s and B vitamins and low in fat, with a broad appeal to consumers seeking healthier, more sustainable meat options. Wild game meat airs on the climate-friendly side, too. “The big carbon cost is however much it costs you to drive your car to your hunting spot and back,” says Nicole Meier, hunter education program coordinator for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department (VFWD). Game meat doesn’t need to be fed, housed or shipped. Often, dinner comes from just outside the hunter’s door.

Connecting a community

“The community culture of knowing where your food comes from is a huge thing,” says Meier. “It’s a real sense of pride to be able to directly provide for your family in such a concrete and real way. That’s an important piece to our connection to the landscape, the food system, to what we’re putting on our plate.” 

An interest in self-sufficiency and food sovereignty motivates the fastest-growing segment of emergent hunters, millennials and women, says Meier—who herself began hunting after graduating college. Plus, it offers an opportunity to spend time outdoors. “I know that when I go into the woods, I feel better when I come out, whether or not I harvest something. It’s just healthy to be outside.”

The view from a hunting blind overlooking a field in Virginia. (Photo: Heidi Chaya/Modern Farmer)

State-run programs continue to prove effective in recruiting and retaining new hunters. The VFWD hosts Learn to Hunt workshops that offer hands-on instruction in firearms safety, basic survival skills and mentored hunts. “The Learn to Hunt programs are really crucial,” says Meier, “because, generally, new adult hunters don’t have any kind of support system to talk to about hunting, to ask questions—or just to reinforce that hunting is good and that you should be doing it.”

The VFWD also runs Women in the Outdoors events with the National Wild Turkey Federation and Vermont Wild Kitchen, a collaboration with the agricultural nonprofit Rural Vermont that features cooking workshops with locally grown and wild-sourced ingredients. “Because food is so universal…it’s really easy for us to use the Vermont Wild Kitchen program as an entry point to conversations about hunting, fishing and trapping, their importance in the food system and why wild food is local food,” says Meier.

Deer-hunting season across the country coincides with the winter holidays, which reinforces for some that hunting is about giving, not just taking life. 

Back in rural Virginia, Adrian Guerrero, who’s been hunting private land for years, is already busy preparing venison jerky and tamales: gifts of gratitude. “To me, the most important part is to treat the land, animals and property with greater care and respect than as if it was yours. Become friends and not just the person the landowner sees during hunting season, and give back to the land owner or his family,” he says.

“We’re blessed to share,” says Arrington of H4H. “For every deer that we receive, we’re going to make a difference in somebody’s life.”

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Learn more: For people looking to educate themselves about becoming a hunter, the US Fish & Wildlife Service’s Hunter Education Program funds state fish and wildlife agencies to provide instruction in firearm and archery safety, wildlife management, conservation, ethics, game laws, and wilderness survival and first aid. The quickest way to find a program in your area is to do a web search for “hunter education program” and the state or province you’re in. 

Get involved: If you’re a hunter looking to donate meat, Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry is a faith-based organization that maintains a database of deer and elk donation organizations and participating butchers.

Read next: The Struggle to Contain, and Eat, the Invasive Deer Taking over Hawaii

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