Conservation practices are on the rise on Minnesota farms and across the U.S. Here's why

Photo Credit

Dave Schwarz, St. Cloud Times

This story by ESI Journalism Fellow Nora Hertel was originally published for The St. Cloud Times, where it appears with additional photos and resources.
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By Nora Hertel

ST. AUGUSTA – Sunflowers bloomed between rows of corn because Daniel Janski ran out of cover crop seeds and grabbed a pollinator mix to fill in the rest of the field.

Four years ago, Daniel's brother introduced cover crops to the farm that has been in their family for four generations. Each year since, Daniel and his cousin Tyler Janski have learned more about regenerative agriculture and experimented with those practices on their 4,000 acres.

At first, Daniel thought his brother's idea sounded crazy.

"And you hear of older farmers that said, 'That's not something that works. People have done that in the past. They were unsuccessful,'" Daniel said about that first year with the cover crops. "And for us it was the complete opposite. … It was very successful."

Now the Janskis are using more cover crops across their land. They've reduced their tillage. And they allow their cattle to graze on some of their fields, which provides benefits to the land through the animals' hooves, saliva and manure.

Cover crops and reduced plowing are becoming more common in Minnesota and across the U.S., especially as carbon market brokers start to offer new incentives for practices that draw carbon dioxide from the air and lock it into the soil.

The science of soil carbon sequestration is still in development, but the benefits of soil health practices are often touted by farmers themselves and those practices are likely here to stay. Whether they lock in carbon credits or not, farming practices including the use of cover crops, limited tilling and grazing livestock on crop fields can provide benefits to soil, yields, water quality and biodiversity.

Soil health practices on the rise

"When I first started in 2005 I got almost no calls about cover crops, and now over half the calls I take are asking about cover crops," said Mark Lefebvre, conservation planner for the Stearns County Soil and Water Conservation District in Central Minnesota.

Minnesota farms had 580,000 cover crop acres in 2017, a nearly 42% increase from 2012, even as the number of farm operators using cover crops declined by 6%. In 2017, 3.6% of Minnesota farm acres had cover crops and that number has likely increased since then.

Cover crop acres in the U.S. rose from 10.3 million in the 2012 U.S. Census of Agriculture to 15.4 million acres in the 2017 census, which is the most recent report.

In 2017, 37% of U.S. acres were no-till, an increase of 8 million acres from 2012, according to a Soil Health Institute analysis of U.S. Census of Agriculture data.

"You do hear of a lot of people that want to try it, that are getting in on it," said Tyler Janski.

"You're seeking more of it, but it's not at the level everybody hopes or wants it to be at," added Daniel in mid-August.

Tyler thinks visible benefits will convert new adopters to these soil health practices over a number of years

The Janskis have seen better water retention on the land, an increase in organic matter in the soil and a marked increase in their earthworm population — signs of higher carbon levels. They've done soil tests every other year for four years which have shown an increase in organic material in the soil.

That's the kind of anecdotal evidence Lefebvre has seen to back the assumption by many that cover crops draw carbon from the air and no-till practices help keep it sequestered in the soil.

Emerging agricultural carbon markets are banking on that, even as existing soil tests haven't fully backed it up. Part of the challenge is that there's not much historic data on soil carbon.

Carbon is one component of soil organic matter. The more carbon in the soil the less there is in the atmosphere, but that carbon needs to stay locked in the soil for it to be considered carbon sequestration.

Farmers who've been cover cropping and limiting their tillage for 10 or 15 years have increased their organic matter in the soil, Lefebvre said. "So that's an indicator to me that there is carbon being stored because that's a measure of carbon."

Lefebvre is helping implement a carbon credit pilot program in Central Minnesota.

"In my opinion, it can't happen fast enough because it's going to be the icing on the cake I think for some of these guys and maybe and hopefully a tipping point," he said.

Here are insights from three producers who adopted cover crops and soil health practices early, without the promise of carbon credit payments. They do it to be good stewards of the lands they manage, and they say they have seen benefits firsthand.

Amending the soil

"It's something that all of our ancestors practiced at some point before the creation of tractors or steel implements. We all had a form of regenerative agriculture," said Jessika Greendeer, seedkeeper and farm manager for Dream of Wild Health, a Native American-led nonprofit with a farm just outside the Twin Cities.

Greendeer raises heirloom plants to collect seeds, along with a range of vegetables that include dark purple Roma tomatoes, climbing spinach and the spinach-like orach, which is very attractive to the deer. There are also sunflowers and sorghum, which Greendeer handles affectionately on a tour around the farm's original 10 acres. It added 20 acres in 2020.

Cover crops and biochar help build up the soil at Dream of Wild Health. Biochar is an indigenous farming practice in which burned wood similar to charcoal is added to improve soil health and sequester carbon.

"Whatever we're taking from the Earth, we're trying to put back," Greendeer said about the cycle of carbon.

Healthy soil leads to healthy plants. Healthy plants lead to healthy people. And healthy people lead to a healthy planet, Greendeer said.

"Here we talk about our relationship to the Earth. And you can think about it in a spiritual context — we're having a relationship with the Earth," she said. "We're being gifted with this bountiful harvest, but what are we giving back? Thinking about it in that way — the better we take care of the Earth, the better she is going to take care of us."

Cattle and trees on the land

Tyler Carlson and Kate Droske have a yard full of ducks, quail, goats and pigs. And their sheep and cattle have a special job out in the wooded pasture.

The cattle move regularly between stretches of grass, separated by rows of berry bushes, young trees and a forested hill that Carlson is returning to oak woodlands, which are a little denser than the oak savannah common in parts of Minnesota, southern Wisconsin, southern Iowa and northern Illinois.

The 200-acre farm belonged to Carlson's grandfather, who used it for hobby farming and as hunting land. Carlson came to farming through his studies at the University of Minnesota. He zeroed in on silvopasture and agroforestry, agriculture and ranching practices that incorporate trees, as he came to learn that the food system was driving some land degradation, habitat loss and climate change.

When Carlson determined beef cattle could help remediate the land and provide revenue for his family, his wife was still a long-time vegetarian. Now she'll eat meat raised by their family and others who use similar practices.

"The bison and the elk and things that used to be here for tens of thousands of years co-creating these prairies and oak savannah systems are gone now. So how do we reintroduce that?" Carlson said. "It seemed like we were not achieving very great potential with restoration because those forces were missing."

The Sauk Centre farm was included in a study that showed their practices did increase the carbon content in the soil, but Carlson is not banking on that and doesn’t think others should either.

Agriculture has been a net source of emissions for years as trees have been cleared and soil turned over. It’s not realistic to expect land practices to take back in all of the excess carbon from the atmosphere, Carlson said.

"We need to do those practices for a lot of different reasons. And we should be doing what we can to continue to learn and research and understand how we can optimize our farming systems for sequestering carbon," Carlson said. "But really, even if we can get our farming systems to stop releasing carbon, that's a moonshot effort alone."

A complicated picture, but still moments of joy

Each industry, agriculture included, has a responsibility to reduce its own emissions, said Jessica Kochick, a policy organizer for the Land Stewardship Project.

"Should a fossil fuel company get to offset their pollution because someone planted a cover crop? No," Kochick said. "But it still matters. And even if it's a very temporary, minimal carbon sink, it is climate mitigation. It's making that land more resilient to flooding, more resilient to heat waves."

Some farmers in the Land Stewardship Project are involved with voluntary carbon markets and others have no interest, Kochick said. There are many reasons not to engage with carbon markets and many reasons to still use soil health practices anyway.

Carbon markets have failed in the past, when credits flooded the marketplace and carbon prices plummeted, she said. "We need to flip the script and have the government invest in a transition to sustainable agricultural systems that can be part of the solution. But that doesn't mean that other industries don't also need to reduce their emissions."

The Janskis have decreased their fuel use because they're tilling less. But with all the changes they’ve made, cousins Daniel and Tyler estimate a similar cost and return. They aren't factoring carbon payments into their equation. Carbon is not an additional crop for them, as it could become for some operations.

They try new things all the time, things they learned by talking with other producers on Facebook groups and through books like Gabe Brown's "Dirt to Soil" and Timothy Egan's "The Worst Hard Time," about the Dust Bowl.

There is concern in parts of Central Minnesota that conventional agricultural practices fail to lock down the soil and allow for erosion that resembles a small-scale dust bowl.

The Janskis tried interseeding this season for the first time, planting cover crops between rows of corn that will remain after harvest and become forage for their cattle.

They like pursuing their curiosity and experimenting on the land. They like seeing improvements in their soil, seeing something green in the ground all year round.

Daniel Janski brought in more than 100 chickens and a pen of pheasants that he’s learning from now, too. He's also a new father.

"This has been a great journey for us. We enjoy it. Our family loves to farm. We've always loved to farm," Daniel Janski said. "I hope that I leave this land better than I found it. And I hope that someday, maybe the next generation can do the same and leave the land better than they found it."