Wildlife Enhancement and Education as a Catalyst in the Widespread Implementation of Sustainable Agriculture Practices (Also listed as LS95-065)

Wildlife Enhancement and Education as a Catalyst in the Widespread Implementation of Sustainable Agriculture Practices (Also listed as LS95-065)

Summary

Objectives
This project explores the feasibility of incorporating critically needed wildlife habitat on a landscape scale, with water quality benefits, into production agriculture in eastern North Carolina and Virginia. Working with cooperating producers, including both traditional family farms and corporate farms, a team of wildlife ecologists, integrated pest management specialists, agronomists, and economists has been assembled to implement field border systems around crop fields in several agronomic regions. Field border systems consist of fringe areas of early successional, non-woody vegetation maintained around all the cropped fields on experimental farms. The total area of these systems for any farm unit approximates 5 percent of the cropped acres.

Approach
Project scientists and their graduate research assistants are utilizing Geographic Positioning Systems and Geographic Information Systems to map and analyze how crop yields, pest populations, wildlife populations, and water quality vary within and across study farms. The test farms are located in the Upper Coastal Plain of North Carolina and Virginia, and the Tidewater of North Carolina. Tidewater farms are dedicated to grain production on drained wetlands, with clearly delineated drainage ditches and canals, on which field border systems have been or will be established. Upper Coastal Plain farms in North Carolina produce grain crops, tobacco, cotton, and peanuts.

The farms in Virginia incorporate grain production into dairy operations. In each agronomic region, control farms or farm units of comparable size and characteristics, but lacking field border systems, have been identified. Each experimental unit exceeds 1,000 acres, making this research truly a landscape scale experiment. This scale is necessary due to the mobility of wildlife within the agroecosystem, as well as the cumulative impacts of field practices on water quality.

Results
In this, the second full year of work, we censured wildlife on experimental and control farms. The data are being analyzed for theses and technical papers. Preliminary inspection of the data indicates that field borders in their second growing season may support more songbirds and quail than systems in their first year. Our protocols for Integrated Pest Management and water quality work have been established. Measurements in these areas began with the 1997 growing season. The economic implications of field border establishment are being investigated through field measurements of crop yields at crop field edges on farms with and without field borders.

Maintenance cost for field border systems is being evaluated by comparing mowing to herbicide treatment via the new Weed Sweep machine, adapted especially for this project. These data will be entered into agronomic models of crop production to generate net profitability estimates for farm units with and without field borders. Also, we are conducting an economic analysis of the demand for high quality bobwhite quail hunting to generate possible returns to the producer for establishing and maintaining field border systems.
Knowledge of this project has been spread by word of mouth through the agricultural community in eastern North Carolina and Virginia, which is likely the most convincing way to interest non-cooperating producers and public agency professionals in the region. This has been supplemented by articles in local newspapers and articles in state magazines. The work is well known among professional wildlife biologists in the southeastern United States for its innovative approach to establishing productive wildlife habitat on intensely farmed lands.

Impact of Results
These early results indicate that this project will have significant implications for agricultural sustainability. It may be demonstrated here that establishment of critically needed wildlife habitat that also fulfills water quality objectives may be economically feasible.
Economic feasibility will depend upon consumer demand for high quality quail hunting, least cost establishment and maintenance of wildlife habitat, and availability of public support for water quality protection. The data from this study should provide all the information needed for producers and public agency administrators to make well informed decisions on a farm by farm basis.

Plans for remainder of project (Extended to 1998)
Plans for the project include continuing to measure wildlife response to field border systems, water quality measurements, IPM measurements, and analysis of economic feasibility. Part of the project deals with understanding in detail the interests and reservations of producers to establishing field border systems.
In 1997, we conducted a series of personal interviews with producers to characterize their perspectives in each of the agronomic regions. We began to script and film our project video in 1997. Approval was attained from the NCSU Department of Agricultural Communications to use their facilities and staff to produce the video. In 1998, when the measurement data is in hand, we will summarize what was learned for reports, scientific publications, extension publications, producer meetings, and professional meetings, as well as for use by the press. We anticipate the high interest this work has generated to intensify when the data is available, and we plan to be ready to make best use of these opportunities.