210 Agroecology and Sustainability
oryzivorus) and dickcissels (Spiza americana) since they replaced row crops with
grass pastures. The Agriculture Ecosystems Research Project in the agronomy
department at the University of Wisconsin has been comparing continuously
grazed dairy pastures with rotationally grazed pastures, and preliminary results
show that many more birds and more different species use rotational pastures than
use continuous pastures (Paine, 1996). The increased acres of permanent grass in
pasture, combined with conservation reserve land that has been in grass for several
years, has created large areas of habitat for game birds also. Additional habitat is
created where trees are allowed to grow again along drainages in pastures that were
formerly tilled fields.
The farmers actively engaged in the Land Stewardship Project’s monitoring
project, and many others practising monitoring as a result of studying holistic
management, are protecting or restoring diverse colours and textures in the ‘warp
and woof of the land use fabric’. To nurture the diversity of wildlife they have come
to appreciate, and the wildlife they have begun to understand as indicators of eco-
system health, these farmers are developing and protecting more habitat niches in
wood lots, along roadsides, on orchard and pasture edges, and along streams and
ponds. They are leaving areas in their pastures ungrazed during the nesting season
for grassland birds and removing low areas in fields from cultivation to restore
wetlands.
The important point is not that these farmers have become naturalists. The
natural habitat they are creating on their land is not because they set out to entice
native plant and animal species to reinhabit their farms. Their management deci-
sions and farming practices are turning their farms into a natural habitat for
humans, crops and livestock, and wild plants and animals too. Then, as they make
the connections between biological diversity, the economic health of the farm and
the quality of their lives, farmers have begun consciously to make decisions to
encourage even more biological diversity on their farms. Such farms should be the
model for agriculture in the 21st century. To make that happen, a large group of
constituents are needed who understand the possibilities for farms to be natural
habitats and to transform rural landscapes.
Building a Constituency
Aldo Leopold wrote that no government conservation programmes with their sub-
sidies for farmers could cause landowners to take good care of the land unless they
felt an ethical responsibility for it. The ultimate responsibility for conservation was
the farmer’s (Leopold, 1991). From the latest agricultural census, we can see that
less than 2 per cent of the US population are farmers (USDA, 1997), and not all
of them are the family farmers Leopold had in mind but include large-scale farm-
ers managing thousands of acres, often on behalf of investors or on contract with
corporations. There are not enough private landowners on farms to rescue the