Sustainable Land Stewardship ©

"Sustainable land stewardship" is a term currently being used to describe sustainable agricultural techniques that accomplish three goals:

1. Profitable operations
2. Environmental health
3. Quality of life

Since our inception in 1994, the Corporation for the Northern Rockies (CNR) has worked in partnership with ranchers to implement and monitor a variety of practices to achieve these goals. Over the years, CNR has discovered that sustainable ranching increase profits while at the same time improving the health of grassland and riparian resources.

The financial benefits are achieved by decreasing operating costs, increasing production capacity and improving livestock health. Sustainable practices generally reduce expenditures for chemical inputs and farm equipment. They also increase the productivity of rangelands providing better nutrition for livestock. If ranchers do not feed their animals antibiotics or use hormones to stimulate growth, they can sell their livestock into the growing natural foods niche market which often pays premiums. Ranchers report that sustainable management increases profitability by 15 to 25 percent.

These same practices also ensure the integrity of soil, water and air quality, grasslands, and riparian areas. As a result, the abundance and diversity of living organisms are sustained. Sustainable methods improve the health of natural processes, such as the water, mineral and energy cycles and enhance biodiversity.

Ranchers who use these practices report that their quality of life also improves. The planning aspect of this approach creates more cooperation, thus efficiency, among family members and workers on an operation. Because sustainable management often curtails levels of farming and/or hay production, ranchers have more time off to spend with their families. The economic benefits common with sustainable management also help producers keep their land in production instead of selling parcels to developers. This not only helps family ranchers stay in business, it also maintains the economic diversity of rural communities and important public benefits such as open space.

Sustainable Ranching Practices
While it is not always possible to incorporate all practices at once, the methods suggested below are techniques producers can build into their farming and ranching system whenever possible and where appropriate.

• Develop management plans that included grass management, drought contingency strategies and financial projections
• Select livestock and crops species adapted to the natural conditions of a farm or ranch operation
• Practice time-controlled grazing to match grazing times and livestock numbers to the condition of the grassland resources
• Fence livestock away from sensitive areas such as riparian zones
• Develop upland water sources to provide water to livestock and wildlife and to protect riparian areas and water quality
• Use herd techniques to concentrate livestock and move them regularly to better utilize grasslands and protect riparian areas
• Prevent livestock waste from contaminating surface and ground water
• Use humane and low-stress animal handling techniques to move livestock to desired locations and maintain animal health
• Provide livestock with outdoor access, fresh water, suitable shelter, proper handling facilities, and balanced feed rations
• Use animal husbandry and nutrition practices to eliminate the need for hormone implants to increase weight gains and subtherapeutic antibiotics to control disease
• Use green manure and organic fertilizer as alternatives to synthetic fertilizers
• Use livestock grazing, biological control and other nontoxic means to control unwanted plant, animal and insect species as part of integrated pest management
• Use guard animals (dogs, donkeys, llamas), electric fences, suitable pasture location, noise deterrents and live trapping whenever possible to protect livestock from predators
• Time calving and lambing to more closely mimic wild ungulates birthing cycles and grass growth to reduce supplemental feeding costs and health problems with young animals
• Graze crop stubble and standing forage to reduce the amount of winter supplemental feeding and hay production costs
• Windrow hay crops for feeding, where appropriate, to reduce the amount of winter supplemental feeding
• Regularly monitor resource health and adjust management strategies to achieve environmental and financial goals
• Become certified by an independent third-party to verify that production methods comply with natural and organic market requirements

Benefits of Sustainable Management

Increased ranch profitability

• Increased value of livestock (health & weight) through improved animal husbandry and more nutritional forage conditions
• Reduced expenditures for expensive chemical inputs such as pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers
• Decreased expenditures for expensive farming equipment and fuels by reducing or eliminating conventional hay production and nonessential farming
• Decreased labor and supplemental feeding costs by calving or lambing later in the spring to more closely match nature's production cycle.
• Reduced property loss through soil erosion
• Increased access to lucrative niche markets within the natural foods industry

Improved rangeland resources

• Reduced sediment runoff into surface waters
• Reduced chemical and organic waste contamination of ground and surface waters
• Increased water infiltration of soil by reduced soil capping
• Increased diversity of plant, animal and insect species through healthy wildlife winter range, birthing grounds and migration corridors, and aquatic habitat

Increased quality of life

• More free time by reducing the level of intensive farming
• Decreased stress levels through management plans that increase efficiency and plan for drought
• Decreased stress levels through realistic financial projections
• Increased inter-farm/ranch communication and ranch efficiency by involving all relevant people in management planning