Sometimes change means putting South Dakota back the way we found it before we wrecked it. Such is the good horticulturalist extraordinaire W. Carter Johnson is doing for us at Good Earth State Park. His non-profit organization, EcoSun Prairie Farms (which I featured on my 2014 Blog Tour!), is working for the state, thanks to a grant from the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation, to restore 106 acres of former farmland to native prairie grass:
The restored prairie ground will add the opportunity for park visitors to walk through expansive fields of tall grasses and shorter flowers. This will also provide areas for wildlife such as monarch and skipper butterflies, native bees and prairie birds such as bobolinks, meadowlarks and grasshopper sparrows.
According to a news release announcing the grant, prairies benefit the ecosystems through providing fish and wildlife habitat, pollinating crops, soil health, erosion control, flood attenuation, groundwater recharge, water protection and purification, carbon storage, climate protection and biodiversity of all classes of organisms [Ariana Schumacher, “Native Prairie Grasses to Take Root at Good Earth State Park,” KELO-TV, 2021.04.27].
Reëstablishing this plot of prairie grass near Sioux Falls will help South Dakotans old and new to understand how much our ag-industrial complex has changed South Dakota and how much we can improve our economy and our environment if we change our land-use practices to restore a healthy prairie environment:
“The project will certainly enrich the park visit experience by offering visitors the chance to learn about and enjoy the beauty and the diversity of wildlife and plants found in this heritage landscape,” [EcoSun Prairie Farms board member Pete] Carrels said. “Visitors will not only have a chance to learn about prairie and its history; they’ll also learn about its value and its potential — the bounty of a tall grass prairie can yield a significant economic benefit.”
The tall grass prairie addition to Good Earth will also distinguish Sioux Falls as the only city in the Midwest to “have as large a prairie so near its boundary. It will be an extremely attractive location for the people who live here,” Carrels said.
Beyond its economic potential, restoring tall grass prairie also offers a long list of ecological benefits, Carrels said.
“Prairie is a biological, ecological element of the landscape and it was once the predominant ecosystem of North America,” Carrels said. “It’s truly an endangered ecosystem today.”
Restoring prairie is considered a type of regenerative agriculture. That’s because prairie helps to reverse the effects of climate change by building and rebuilding soil continuously. In doing so, it adds to the overall fertility and vitality of the soil by storing carbon [Kelly Sprecher, “Grant Will Support Effort to Restore Tall Grass Prairie at Good Earth State Park,” Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation,” ].
The state and the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation deserve credit for acting as change agents and supporting prairie restoration.
Cory, I must take strong exception to your statement that we have wrecked
the land.
The tall grass prairie is indeed interesting to study and look at but the farmland
in the Sioux Falls area will, with modern farming practices, produce much more,
provide food for many more people, than the tall grass prairie ever will.
According to google research mankind has been farming for approx. 11000 years
which probably started in what is now referred to as the fertile crescent (Israel and Jordan).
There some evidence that some farming began much earlier (23000 years ago).
Farming is what allows for civilization, meaning that mankind can live in one place
rather than constantly following the herds of buffalo or moving their flocks to where
there is grass. (hunter gatherers)
I spent the summer of 1974 looking for small relic prairies in Minnehaha County. I found very few, and most were less than an acre in size. There were some larger known areas near the Palisades, near Tuthill Park and along what is now the bike path in Sioux Falls. There were others that I “discovered.” One 40-acre former pasture that had never been plowed and hadn’t been overgrazed near Wall Lake. I pushed to get that one preserved by The Nature Conservancy, which it was a few years later. Another was on a hillside near the Sioux Falls waste water treatment plant on city land. We got a verbal commitment from the city commissioner in charge that there would be nothing done to disturb that area, but several years later I discovered that it had been partly disturbed. I don’t know the condition of that plot now.
Relic native prairie is exceedingly rare today, so restoration is the only way to bring back example of what dominated the landscape when white people came to expropriate the prairie from the Dakota.
In 1974-75
You can’t restore Tall Grass prairie. It took over 16,000 years for the native (what I call old growth) prairie to evolve, once the ice sheets (glaciers) retreated. A typical acre of Tall Grass prairie could have as many as 500 varieties of grasses and forbs, with forbs outnumbering grasses 4 to 1, even though 90% of the biomass was grass. The root systems on some tall grass prairie extended 14 feet deep. https://tallgrassprairiecenter.org/prairie-roots-project We humans can take a stab at trying to restore what it took mother nature to create in 16,000 years, with its mix of warm and cool season grasses and multitude of native forbs, but it will never be the same. Humans seem to be the only specie on earth that is efficient, and perfectly willing to destroy our natural habitat.
Prairies will create more butterfly life than all modern farming practices combined. Prairies heal themselves after fires without chemical fertilizers.
Edwin, do you measure the quality of the land purely in terms of its ability to function as a factory for commodity crops? Do monoculture factory fields provide the same amount of food and habitat for all species as prairie grass? Do they replenish the soil has much as prairie grass?
Well…its a wonderful idea if for no other reason, that our collective memory of tall grass prairie is dim if not forgotten.As slim points out it was stunningly remarkable. It was not prime buffalo environment as the grass was so tall that predators like wolves could easily ambush calves in the six foot grass. The primary large animal were Elk and there were thousands of them.Antelope and buffalo preferred short grass though they did occasionally (during drought or winter) come into the tall grass.It was a very complex eco-system and while its probably impossible to replicate, it would be noble (and fun) to try.
Richard Manning published the book Grassland in 1995. Anyone that feels they have a stake in our environment should read it. The North American great plains are probably beyond the tipping point environmentally, although the prairie is very resilient. Depletion of huge groundwater aquifers to irrigate corn for cattle feed will turn the central USA into a desert within 200 years. Smaller water deposits will become polluted as we continue using nitrogen fertilizer and farm chemicals. One farmer told me that he had to triple the amount of chemical on the same piece of land in a five year period as the weeds mutated and grew resilient. Invasive species are rampant, with no end in sight. The native prairie grasses are wonderful for foraging livestock, but take a bit longer to put the weight on the animal, something our marketing system will not allow. I have watched what has taken place in northwestern South Dakota in the last 40-50 years. I am confident that future generations will get BIG AG out of the equation. Other country’s are doing it. There was a time when populations depended on the American farmer to feed the world. As these other country’s evolved and mechanized and began producing more, we are not as relied upon as we once were.
Like it or not, Cory, the demand for commodity crops is huge and world wide.
Like it or not, man is the dominant species on this planet.
Like it or not, the law of the jungle still prevails. Reality is what it is.
Sion, other countries are adapting intensive farming practices, and those
countries are becoming more food independent.
Oh Edwin, time is on my side. The vast majority of South Dakota isn’t farming country, get used to it.
In 1967, as a 14 year old, hired hand on a farm east of Waverly, I plowed under 40 acres of virgin soil.
“The boss made me do it. I knew no better.”, said the Nazi’s at Nuremburg.
The owner couldn’t bring himself to do it.
That night was a silent, sad dinner among the family and me.
Slightly salved, I’ve unloaded my embarrassment within a context that all, except Edwin, understand.
We have and continue to wreck our dirts, soils, and top soils. Look around at the alkali.
Prairie grass attacked Buffalo to fertilize the grounds. They were more pure, without heavy needs for pesticides and chemicals. Look up the farmer in ND a making a difference with cover crops, beets, and cattle. Very easy to do. Chemicals cost more and more every year, there is a reason environmental farming isn’t happening ….profits.
Without profit, farming is not sustainable. Farming has evolved to where it is
because it seems to be working. Nostalgia for the way things used to be is
understandable.
A compatriot of mine and I were discussing how things used to be over a beer
perhaps two weeks ago. He said, “yup, we would drop mom off at the grocery
store, then we’d take the cream and eggs to the creamery. They’d test the cream and count
the eggs and we would get the check. Then we’d go back to the grocery store and the check
would pay for the groceries with a little left over.” Those days were good days,
although they may not have been as much fun as they seem to be now. The little town
where I graduated from high school no longer has a school of any kind. I still go
to the same church I went to as a boy. Back then there were generally 100 or so people
every Sunday, now there 15 to 25. Those were good days, but those days are not
coming back. You can cry about it, or you can face the reality and make the best you
can out of the reality. I could go on but you get the idea.
Some land should be farmed, some land shouldn’t. If you can’t figure out which is
which, market forces will eventually tell you.
I’m not as pessimistic as sdslim about prairie restoration. Restoration of tall-grass prairie has a long history of success, even on damaged soils. There is a lot of research over the last 80 years on prairie restoration. There has been a lot of expertise and a lot of seed sources all over the middle section of the country. It’s not that difficult to do.
Edwin Arndt Modern farming practices in Eastern SD produce almost no food for people beyond steroid modified meats, poultry and dairy products and maybe a little flour. Go to any grocery store in the state and see if you can find ONE other SD grown/produced product to those.
Good luck.
Edwin Arndt – There is very very of the land that is known as “the fertile crescent” in “(Israel and Jordan)”. It lies almost ENTIRELY within Egypt, Iraq and Iran, with by far the most of it including its cultural source in Iraq. There are also small bits in what today are Turkey and Iran.
Like it or not, Edwin, selfish overexploitation of the land leads to a collapse of the biosphere and no profitable or edible crops for anybody.
And you ignored my questions: is monoculture sustainable? Does it provide for the same soil health as more diverse land use?
Richard, there is huge demand for the ag products produced in eastern SD.
If the demand wasn’t there those crops would not be produced. Corn and soybeans
and cattle and hogs do well in eastern SD. Lettuce and tomatoes do better in other
parts of the country. When you go into the grocery store you have a tremendous
variety of food to choose from. If people did not buy this stuff it wouldn’t be
in the stores.
Cory, what is your definition of monoculture? Monoculture is generally considered to
be the growing of the same crop year after year. The corn soybean rotation used
in eastern SD seems to be quite resilient. It has been used in the I states (Iowa, Illinois, Indiana)
for many years. To this point, at least, science has been able to solve whatever problems
that have come along. There has been, and I suspect, will always be, debate over which
farming practices work best. Farming has evolved to where we are now because what we
are doing now is working very well. As time goes on, I’m sure there will be new seeds, new
methods, new practices. Some will work and some will not. The fact is that the system we have
right now is providing food for way, way, way more people than tall grass prairie will.
This will debate, as many others, is likely to go on as long as there are people who eat.
This debate will; sorry
Edwin, monoculture is when we look at a field and see only one type of plant growing on it. Rotating crops each year is good, but it does not change the fact that, each year, vast swaths of land contain just one factory crop struggling up from ground that has been essentially destroyed, blasted to prevent the growth of any other plant species than the one desired by the market.
Science has not been able to solve every problem. Your statement is like looking at a terminally ill patient, pointing to the ventilator and IV lines and defibirillator and saying, “See? Science has solved all of his problems.”
How is what we are doing now working really well when we can’t swim in the Big Sioux, when our soil washes down to New Orleans and clogs the delta with sludge made toxic with all of our chemical runoff, and when the only way to survive, in your conception of farming, is to make farms into factories so big that their operating costs put the tenants into perpetual servitude to the banks and ag corporations?
And keep in mind, Edwin, EcoSun Prairie Farms isn’t a bunch of zero-population-growth hippies trying to take all land out of production. Carter Johnson’s other big demonstration field is as much about conservation as it is about using the prairie to produce a more sustainable and diversified business model for South Dakota farmers. Grass, grass-fed livestock, and other prairie products can satisfy market needs and pay farmers if we adjust our mindset. You’re not the sole defender of making a living off the land. Prairie restoration is about making it possible to continue living off the land, with fewer chemical industrial inputs, letting the land and its flora and fauna do more of the work for us. What’s wrong with that?
Cory, good luck to EcoSun Prairie Farms. If they can make their business
model work, good for them.
Respectfully, Mr Arndt
I have not seen anything in your observations about how the federal subsidies support your “high rates of productivity”.