The Prairie Star: Montana Ag Newspaper

BISMARCK, N.D. - Standing in the midst of a field of lush green cover crops, the smell of fresh soil and growing plants was more than evident to this group of outdoor writers June 20.

On the first day of summer, the cover crops were already thriving at the Gabe and Shelly Brown seedstock cow/calf operation east of Bismarck, N.D.

Gabe Brown, a Burleigh County Soil Conservation District supervisor, spoke to the group about how managing the soil and developing an active soil conservation and grazing management program turned out to be the best of both worlds for their farm/ranch.

Not only did it keep the operation viable after several years of crop losses, it also revived the soil to a point where organic matter was teeming in the fields.

The soil and the grass will now be left in better shape for future generations than it was when the Browns began their management program in the mid-1990s.

“We leave more grass today than we ever grew before,” Brown said. “With it, the wildlife has flourished and increased exponentially. I can't tell you how much wildlife we have today compared with how many we had in 1991.”

To prove his point on soil health, Brown stuck a shovel into the middle of the field, unearthing a large clump of soil where root systems were prolific and large earthworms pushed to the surface.

He says organic matter has doubled or tripled in the soil through the use of practices such as no-till, which leaves residue on the surface, and cover crops that he uses throughout the ranch.

In such soils, macro- and micro-organisms multiply, giving the soil nutrients that plants thrive in, even in drought years. This kind of nurtured soil has enough organic matter that fertilizer costs can be cut down.

“Normally, we would not have this field planted to a cover crop this time of year. But I planted this cover crop, what I call a soil improver, to show you,” Brown said.

His cover crop is a combination of Everleaf oats, red clover, peas, sweet clover, hairy vetch, radishes, sugarbeets and lentils. “The more diverse the crops, the more roots we are putting in the ground and the healthier the soil is going to become.”

The Brown operation was one of two stops for this afternoon tour of outdoor writers, Natural Resource Conservation Service staff members, a handful of producers, and Arlen Lancaster, NRCS chief in Washington, D.C. The tour was part of the Outdoor Writers Association conference in Bismarck.

“My family and I are conservationists,” Brown said. “We make our living from the resources provided to us. That's our whole focus - the natural resources. Sometimes people like to be referred to as farmers or ranchers. We like to be referred to as conservationists. That's what we are, that's what our passion is, and that's how we make our living. It's our job to take care of these resources, and pass them on to the next generation. We hope to be able to improve these resources.”

The land the Browns farm was originally purchased by Gabe's father-in-law in 1956. Shelly's parents farmed it until 1991, when the Browns purchased it.

It's a bit of a career change for Gabe, but not a dream change. Growing up in Bismarck, Brown lived in the city but liked to work on farms in high school. He says his dream was always to ranch on his own someday.

At Bismarck College and NDSU, he earned degrees in agriculture. That's where he met Shelly and the couple later married and made a decision to begin their own business when the opportunity arrived.

Today, Brown said they ranch and no-till farm nearly 4,000 acres, half cropland and half native and tame range and pastureland.

Originally, they began with five pastures on the unit and a small grain farm, supporting 65 cow/calf pairs and 20 yearlings.

That has increased to 66 pastures in 2008, supporting 250 cow-calf pairs and from 50 to 250 yearlings, Brown said.

“We rotate cattle pretty much every day or every other day and we have several different cells,” he said.

It has been an upward climb to where their operation is now, with a lot of learning curves in between.

“We were farming zero-till, small grains, spring wheat, barley and very little diversity and not much of a rotation. 1995 came along and the day before we were going to start combining 1,250 acres of wheat, we lost 100 percent of our crop to hail with no insurance,” Brown said. “That was a real tough thing.”

In 1996, they had a few other crops besides spring wheat but got hailed out 100 percent again.

“It was tough on the pocketbook, and as a young family just starting out, we were going backwards pretty fast,” he said.

In 1997, a drought hit and they never combined an acre, he said. But he began planting more legumes and further diversifying the operation. In spite of the drought, they saw some good things happening.

“1998 came along and we lost 80 percent of our crop to hail again. So we hadn't had much of a crop in four years,” Brown said.

Yet he says he now tells folks who tour his ranch or during his numerous talks to other producers at conservation conferences, that those four years were the best thing that could have happened to them because it changed their way of thinking toward a different management strategy.

“We realized we could no longer put high inputs into the operation. We had to become more sustainable and that's been our focus ever since then,” Brown said.

They began to focus on soil health in earnest. In addition to small grains, they began experimenting with more legumes and many varieties of cover crops, along with cover crop mixtures. All of these type of crops add to organic matter and use significantly less inputs.

“We're now using less than 10 percent of the commercially prepared fertilizer inputs we used in the early '90s, and we're using less than 25 percent of the herbicides we did then,” Brown said. “At the same time our yields have increased substantially.”

Except for alfalfa, they always have another crop growing with the main crop. When they grow corn, they interseed legumes with it. “We're still able to harvest it. They make cleaners,” he said, adding Dr. Kris Nichols, at ARS research laboratory in Mandan has shown them how the corn mycorrhizal will “feed off” the legume roots, and how each will interact and supply nutrients to each other.

That increases production. He said that last year, they produced a bushel of corn for $1.19 a bushel, and they average 127 bu-shel corn yields on this dryland farm.

Brown credits the technical expertise and and cost-share assistance of the Burleigh County SCD and the NRCS with providing the help they needed to expand the operation to where it is today.

Now, he doesn't worry so much about the first year of drought. With prolonged drought, the Browns know to “immediately make adjustments” on their operation.

Yearlings are easy to market in poorer grass conditions, so the yearling numbers might change but the cow numbers stay the same. When the forage is great, the Browns will custom graze yearlings to increase profitability.

With better management strategies and a rotational grazing scheme, the Browns have been able to increase the amount of cattle their pastures can handle.

“Rotational grazing simply put is a matter of rest and recovery,” he said. “We let these cattle in for a short amount of time, let them take one bite off of the forage and then we move 'em off. It's smaller paddocks for a shorter amount of time.”

Keeping the soil and resultant grass and cover crops in better condition has increased wildlife, including deer and pheasants, on the ranch. Sharp-tailed grouse, a native species to North Dakota which have been decreasing in numbers, are actually increasing at the Brown ranch.

“When the cattle are moved, the plants start to regrow. It offers high nutrition, high feed value, very good nesting cover, very good rearing cover for the young,” Brown said. The Browns are active in the community and in their SCD and participate in a youth hunting program, so young people can learn about the outdoors and the outdoor heritage, he added. “One thing we're pretty focused on is that when these young people come to our land, they are also going to get a lesson on soil health and why ranching is important,” Brown said.

He added they had several tracts of expired CRP and they have turned them into grazing lands. They put in pipeline, a well, water tanks and built perimeter and cross fences. “They are much better wildlife habitat now than when they were in CRP,” he said. “The reason is in central North Dakota, much of the CRP ground is primarily smooth brome. It's pretty much a monoculture, no diversity.”

With no diversity, it doesn't attract insects. Without insects, there is nothing for the birds to thrive on. Now, their pasture is expanding in diversity. This spring, they added 250 acres of land to their grazing system that came out of CRP last year. Ducks Unlimited has partnered with them, and bird habitat has increased.

“We've come to the realization that we really need to focus and improve on the resources,” Brown said.