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Yeah, that's a question I've gotten a lot over the years and everyone wants his magic grass that

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they can graze as hard as they want, manage however they want, and that grass is going to

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live forever and be productive and not to disappoint anyone, but that grass doesn't exist.

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Welcome to the 346th installment of Ear to the Ground, the Land Stewardship Projects podcast on

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family farming, regenerative agriculture, community food systems, and local democracy.

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I'm Brian DeVore, editor of the Land Stewardship Letter. Jeff Duchenne estimates he's helped set

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up rotational grazing plans in well over half of Minnesota's 87 counties over the past 17 years.

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That means, as a state grazing land specialist for the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service,

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he's walked a lot of pastures and potential pastures ranging from the driftless region

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of southeastern Minnesota to the flat former prairies in the western part of the state.

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And he's yet to stumble upon that legendary forage that produces well no matter what the

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weather conditions, the quality of the soil, or how hard livestock hit it. But what's become clear to

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Jeff is that having the best grasses in the world doesn't matter without good management. In other

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words, there may not be magic grass, but there is magic management. And good management starts with

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developing a plan that takes into account a farmer's overall goals, the resources on hand,

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and even the market that's available for the livestock one hopes to raise on pasture.

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Fortunately for farmers and ranchers interested in jumping into or expanding a rotational

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grazing enterprise, there are more resources available than ever to help get them going.

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Besides NRCS grazing specialists and soil and water conservation district service technicians,

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who can provide first-hand advice, there are now rotational grazing funds available through

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climate mitigation and watershed improvement initiatives. Such NRCS programs like the

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Environmental Quality Incentives Program can use this funding to help livestock producers set up

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fencing and watering systems, as well as to seed down former crop ground and convert it to managed

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pasture. During a recent driftless grazing school LSP held at the Jordan and Rochelle Meyer farm in

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southeastern Minnesota, Jeff led a pasture walk during which he provided a tutorial on plant

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identification and ways to monitor pasture health. By the way, I'm sorry to report that no magic grass

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popped up during that session. Jeff also shared with grazing school participants information on

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some of the resources available for folks who want to either improve their usage of current pastures

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utilizing adaptive rotational grazing or want to convert row cropped acres to perennial forage

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systems that they can graze. At the end of the first day of the two-day school, I talked to Jeff

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about the increased interest he's seen in rotational grazing over the years, how it can serve as a

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gateway into farming for beginners, and key questions one needs to ask when considering

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setting up a grazing plan. The trend seems to be increasing, increasing interest in grazing

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management and it really started back probably even as early as you know 2010, 11, in that era

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when crop prices were high. What really started was there's a lot of pasture that got plowed up.

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Well the people that had livestock and still had pasture really needed to do a better job on the

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land they still had in pasture so that was really the jumping off point for increased interest in

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grazing management and it's just ever since then it just seems to have gotten more and more and more

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especially now with you know soil health has gained a popularity in regenerative agriculture.

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There's a lot of producers that are I mean it's just opened up a lot of management options

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you know and there's a lot more you know discussion on intensive rotations and cover crops and

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integrating livestock onto crop land and it's really gotten a lot of producers I think just

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more interested in management with just all these the different options and different information

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coming out now about these management tools. That's a really good point about the soil health thing

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because I don't think that would have been when you first started maybe was the focus so much. I

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mean people knew that it had these positive impacts on soil but the soil health movement

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per se maybe wasn't the big thing that people were talking about. No that's right you know 15

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to 20 years ago there was very little talk about that and you and you look at a lot of the farm

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magazines there wasn't hardly any articles about grazing in general now you look at them and they're

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just about every issue has at least something about grazing management in there. Yeah it really

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wasn't until kind of the late 2000s where you started to hear a little bit more about that and

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now you know you hear a lot about it. Some of the farmers I talked to who were early grazers they

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were like well the incentive for me is it's a lower cost production system if I'm a beginning

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farmer the inputs aren't as the infrastructure costs aren't as much healthier cows that kind of

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thing but I didn't yeah I didn't really hear about soil health being talked about so much

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and like you said that opens up a lot of opportunities in that there's seems like

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there's just more funding available because you can say oh if you put in this grazing particular

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grazing system it's going to build soil health and people are interested in building carbon

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sequestering carbon keeping runoff you know reducing water quality problems that kind of thing so it

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sounds like it does open up a lot of more opportunities that way. Yeah I think so and

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you know with the inflation reduction act for for NRCS anyway we we had a you know an influx of

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funding for our programs like environmental quality incentives program and you know and of course one

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of the core practices there's many but one of the core practices is grazing management with that

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prescribed grazing yeah so I think that's really helped producers implement uh improve management.

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It's kind of helped the environmental community kind of maybe uh take a different view of livestock

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on the land too it sounds like. You hear a lot of the negative side of livestock you know of course

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there's a lot of buzz around methane and that but there's also a lot of positives too that don't

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really get talked about a lot you know you think about you know there's a lot of producers I've

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worked with have converted cropland into pasture so that would have been row crop or would still be

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row crop if there weren't livestock on the farm but not only the pasture side the winter feed needs

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they're they're growing a lot of perennial forage for hay and without livestock that would be gone

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and so how are they going to manage that crop land I mean is it going to be conventional tillage and

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and all that or yeah so I think just getting from a uh you know environmental water quality

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standpoint there really isn't anything better than having perennial vegetation on the landscape so

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anything we can do to promote perennial vegetation I think is a good thing. Yeah it's I've always

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seen grazing as if you can make money at it it's an incentive to have perennial plants on the

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landscape and that should be I mean that's such a key piece of the ecology in the upper Midwest

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since we've wiped out the tall grass prairie we need some kind of a perennial system and if you

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just tell farmers to plant perennials and there's no economic incentive you know why should they do

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that but this gives them that incentive to kind of go the perennial route. Yeah and with you know with

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a really well managed pasture there is economic opportunity there I think you know just with you

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know if you do a good job managing your pasture you can really grow a lot of forage and I've

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always thought of grazing management as one of those kind of win-win situations it can be really

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good for the environment and also be really good economically just with on the production side just

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being able to grow more forage and be able to graze more days or or carry a few more head those

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those types of things. The other thing that strikes me and this is a good example here with

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Jordan and Rochelle Meyer it can help give beginning farmers or farmers who don't have a

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lot of resources access to land that's not considered top crop ground like it's a way to

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add value to marginal farmland and maybe get it at a lower cost or it's something nobody else wants

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to farm or it's not farmable it's too highly erosive but value can be added to it through

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a good rotational grazing system. Yeah I agree with that and you know livestock are have a good

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gateway into farming I think because you can keep your input costs lower you know if you're

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going to start in row crop farming now you have a lot of expense and equipment where in livestock

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you can minimize those expenses and like you said just keep that land costs down you know and there's

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some some creative ways there too you know like now with obviously we're getting a lot of solar

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farms in in Minnesota and I think I think they can provide a good opportunity for a beginning

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farmer to start out in small ruminants like sheep and be able to graze under solar panels so I'm

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excited to see that to see grazing on on some of these solar fields now and I hope that continues

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to expand in the future. I talked to three farmers today at the Green School who are doing that

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grazing sheep under solar panels so it's when I see three things happen at the same at the same

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event I think it's a trend so that is that's a really interesting one. Do you have a rough idea

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of what percentage of the grazing plans you helped set up are these this was already in some kind of

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a perennial system either it was pasture or maybe it's even wooded country or whatever and how much

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of it is this is crop land there was corn soybean ground that was converted to grass completely

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they completely changed the system. Land currently in perennial vegetation I would say the vast majority

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of those operations have existing pasture now a lot of that was farmed at one time and

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generally was really marginal poor crop land so it's been seeded back you know and that might

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have been decades ago it's been seeded back or it could have been relatively recently but a lot of

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a lot of farms in addition to their existing perennial base they're interested in maybe taking

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a few acres of crop land and adding into you know it might be a marginal edge of a field or

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you know something that's kind of wet or or highly erodible you know really steep and they might need

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a few more acres of pasture anyways so that's one thing we really work with them on is bringing up

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some of those ideas and a lot of times they're thinking about that already but we have had uh

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over the years I've worked on a number of projects where they're just maybe they're new to farming

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altogether or or they have a a grain farm and they're looking to add livestock so they're

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totally bringing on some perennial forage from scratch. I would think that innovations in

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lightweight fencing we saw some of those today watering systems uh now people are talking about

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gee I know one guy that was here today he's experimenting with GPS collars the the fence

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list system that must just I mean I mean that this adds a whole another area of excitement around

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this and it makes it so you're able to graze areas you weren't able to graze before and makes it much

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more economically viable. Yeah the technology we have in fencing and water today is I mean it just

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gets better all the time better materials with with permanent materials or even temporary materials

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with like fencing and things like that and even temporary water sources that really makes it a

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lot easier to manage when you have good equipment and and now with the GPS collar is on fence and

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I'm excited to see where that that goes in the next five years seems like every year that

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technology is getting better and better and better and yeah so it'll be exciting to see

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the improvements that keep happening with that. So if somebody approaches you about a grazing plan

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what are some of the first questions you kind of guide them through about what they should be

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thinking about if they're setting something up? Probably the number one item to think about is

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what your goals and objectives are I mean that that's a big one what are you trying to accomplish

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because that helps from a planning standpoint helps you know kind of determine what your plan

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is going to be if you know what you want to do like just overall management goals that's a big

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one to big one to think about and the other side of that is also be realistic with expectations on

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you know where your farm's currently at productivity wise and where it could get

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get to with good management and and try to balance that stocking rate really you know because if you're

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if you're really over stocked it's going to be hard to manage well so kind of be thinking about

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those things too. The big one though is really thinking about the goals and objectives and where

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you want to go with it what your context is. Maybe rather than saying I want to be a grazer think

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think about why do I want to be a grazer what is it that that what am I going to get out of grazing

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that I wouldn't get out of a different system? Yeah I mean what are your what are your land

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management goals what are your your livestock production goals those are big factors that come

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into how you lay things out and how you how you're going to manage the pasture and then just even

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beyond the land and the livestock just your you know what's the right word maybe worldview of things

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or what your overall concept is are you are you wanting to manage organically are you wanting to

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be low input manage regeneratively I mean you know all those things come into play with how you're

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going to implement management. I suppose also quality of life like how much do you have a full

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time town job do you how much time do you have? Yeah that's a big one and that's one thing I

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you know when we do staff training and things I spend a spend some time on as an example I've

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worked with some producers that you know they work on the road five to six days a week and they may

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only be home one or two days well moving every day or every few days isn't going to work for that

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operation you know okay so we might set up a you know a weekly move in that situation that may be

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the best they can do within their their situation where you know the next person might be around

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you know their their farming's their full-time job and they're depending on the livestock for

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a significant amount of income so they may have the ability to manage much more intensively and

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you know labor resources are a big one too I mean if you have to balance that out a little bit with

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how much time they have and how much they can devote compared to other other things they have

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going on on the farm or or even if they just work local in town yeah I mean that's a some big

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considerations there. So can you take us through what the natural resources conservation service

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what resources they have available they have grazing specialists like you but they also have

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financial resources like through the environmental quality incentives program I know you talk a

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little bit about some of what's kind of available and maybe what's available too through some other

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other agencies or other groups. So of course we we help provide planning assistance and we have

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a we have several grazing specialists with NRCS and we also have partnerships with a number of

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other organizations for grazing specialists and so we have kind of grazing specialists that cover

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the entire state so kind of start there and once we get some plans put together we have

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you know some funding sources so equip environmental quality incentives program that's our main

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one for you know setting up a grazing system installing fence installing water maybe you know

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pasture seeding those those types of things you know if that's something you're interested in

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you know you can sign up at any time for that or receive assistance at any time you know just

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stop into your local office for that so that's kind of our main our main program and typically

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we have a sign up deadline and in the fall usually and then we also have conservation stewardship

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program which I kind of think of as maybe in an overly simplistic view it's more of like a

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management program you're already doing some things management wise but maybe you want to do

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a little bit more so that program kind of takes into account what you're already doing and maybe

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identify some areas where you could make some improvement from the conservation side and then

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there's a whole list of of activities you could choose from to try and address some of those that

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would fit your your management so that's another option we have and other agencies there's getting

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to be a lot more funding available just in general from a lot of other conservation agencies so

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local soil and water conservation districts have been working on a kind of watershed based

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planning through one watershed one plan and so once they have those plans developed they typically

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get implementation dollars to help fund conservation practices and that may vary how that looks from

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watershed to watershed based on what the resource concerns are there but that could be another good

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source to look at and they also have state cost share that can help out with some things and they

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may also do some other grants so you know your local soil and water conservation districts have

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some good funding opportunities now now through uh you know some of the climate smart commodities

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and opportunities through usda there's several organizations now that have funding coming

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available for conservation practices well and it seems like you could tie those in say say you got

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some um a popular thing is to get cost share to put in cover cropping so you put in a cover crop

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even though that's an annual but then if you then could set it get money through a crip to set up

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a grazing system you could graze that cover crop yeah exactly yep yep so there there's a number of

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organizations providing some money for for the cover crop planting and and equip could come in

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and help with fencing and water and things like that so this is an unfair question but what's the

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craziest or what's the most challenging grazing plan you've ever set up can you think of anything

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that was just like wow i don't know if this is going to work and then it ended up kind of working

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or yeah you know we were we were uh talking a little bit about one today that was a challenge

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we need to go uphill 135 feet with water and so that was kind of a challenge getting water pushed

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uphill that far and make sure we have enough pressure to do that and and that's a you know

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kind of a challenge in the southeast part of the state but you know generally we can figure figure

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a way out to do those things is it going back a little bit to the if you're converting completely

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converting a corn soybean ground into grazing that must be the soil must it must be a shock to the

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system almost that must be a real challenge is it compared to if you're just trying to do some

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rehab vamping of a existing pasture that kind of thing i mean that must be because there was a

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couple people here today who have that's what they're they are seeding down corn and soybean

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ground in there taking those first steps to trying to to actually eventually use it make that into a

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perennial system yeah and it's very situational site specific you know we've done several of those

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projects and sometimes it works really well and sometimes it it's a bit of a struggle and it kind

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of comes down to a couple of things you know if it's heavily eroded that creates some challenges

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more marginal land you know coarse textured soils that can be a bit of a challenge and then just

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you know depending upon what the herbicide program is you know sometimes that comes into

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play sometimes that's not not too big of an issue but we've had some seedings that really look good

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and the pasture comes on strong and some other ones that leaves you scratching your head and

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trying to backtrack like okay what happened here in past management and the soil erosion that's one

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where you walk in and there's been evidence of heavy past erosion you typically those you kind of

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know are potentially more challenging well you said one question you get asked a lot is what's

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that one magic grass that'll do everything i want and you have a good answer to it yeah yeah that's

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a question i've gotten a lot over the years and everyone wants is magic grass that they can graze

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as hard as they want manage however they want and that grass is going to live forever and be

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productive and not to disappoint anyone but that grass doesn't exist yeah yeah the the real silver

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bullet is management you know managing if it's an existing pasture trying to manage what you have

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to allow those forages to be more productive and if you're seeding converting cropland into pasture

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really matching the species to the soils and also matching to your management style and kind of what

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kind of animal performance you need out of those livestock and that's really the the big silver

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bullet there yeah there's no magic grass but there is magic management in a way yeah exactly right

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so if somebody was just getting and i assume there are grazing specialists in other states as well

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like that so what's the one place should they just go to the local nrcs office or what's the one

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stop shop where they can kind of get started on in this process where would they start yeah i would

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stop into your local nrcs office and they'll be able to some of our local staff have good technical

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knowledge on grazing and if they don't they'll they'll bring in other staff that do have that

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knowledge to help you out

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for more on building soil health profitably see the podcast page for ear to the ground episode

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346 at landstewardshipproject.org there you'll also see links to nrcs grazing resources as well

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as other podcasts in our 2024 driftless grazing school series if you have comments or suggestions

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about this podcast contact brian devore at bdevor at landstewardshipproject.org or you can call

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612-816-9342 by the way it helps us greatly if you can give ear to the ground a rating on

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whatever podcast platform you utilize and word of mouth is the best way to spread the news about our

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podcast if you like what you hear tell at least one person about lsp's ear to the ground thanks to

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loa borgendell a western minnesota musician for your ear to the ground's theme music and a special

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thank you to all of land stewardship projects members who make initiatives such as this podcast

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possible if you're not a member visit landstewardshipproject.org to learn how you

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can support lsp thanks for listening