The Farm as Natural Habitat 209importance of preserving biodiversity by protecting natural areas and proposes
that we substantially increase the worldwide network of biodiversity reserves and
preserve large blocks of land in native ecosystems.
This report was not produced by CAST for the purpose of rerouting agricul-
ture from the direction trends are leading. However, if followed, just one recom-
mendation would lead us toward a landscape of farms that are natural habitats:
Increase the capacity of rural landscapes to sustain biodiversity and ecosystem services
by maintaining hedgerows/windbreaks; leaving tracts of land in native habitat; planting
a diversity of crops; decreasing the amount of tillage; encouraging pastoral activities and
mixed-species forestry; using diverse, native grasslands; matching livestock to the pro-
duction environment; and using integrated pest management techniques.The six farmers who participated in the Land Stewardship Project’s monitoring
project use many of these practices and have created more natural diversity on
their land. Just by converting cropland to pasture they created new habitat for soil
microbes, insects, birds, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals. Species that
would have been adversely affected by chemical pesticides and fertilizers used on
crops found a more favourable environment in the pastures.
Because of the emphasis on diversity and biological monitoring in holistic
management, farmers in the project became advocates of diversity and astute
observers of wildlife. A newsletter distributed to monitoring team members con-
tained the following notes in a column called ‘Farmer Observations’:
Mike saw first red clover blossoms on June 6. Mike saw a hummingbird on clover in his
extended rest pad. He suggests that each farmer photograph their rest areas and notice
the smell intensified by flowering plants. Ralph saw two baby bobolinks on July 14. He
noticed the young are bunching up and may move soon. (Land Stewardship Project,
1995)These farmers are not conventional in any sense of the word. Mike and Jennifer
Rupprecht pay meticulous attention to erosion control and species diversity in
their pasture, getting excited when they find native prairie species on their land.
Ralph Lentz likes to show people the prairie grasses in his pastures and to talk
about how he has used managed intensive grazing to improve the stability of stream
banks on his land (DeVore, 1998). Dave and Florence Minar began working with
a local monitoring team, after the original LSP monitoring project concluded, in
the area of Sand Creek, the tributary that dumps the most sediment into the Min-
nesota River. Art Thicke is ecstatic when he talks about the birds he sees while
moving cattle – birds that were not there when those pastures were planted to corn
and soybeans (King and DeVore, 1999).
The increase of grassland birds was not just a phenomenon on Art’s farm or on
the other five farms in the monitoring project. Other farmers in the Upper Mid-
west report that they see more grassland birds such as bobolinks (Dolichonyx