Using Farmer Experience and Vegetation Surveys To Inform New Technical Guidance for Brush Management in Conservation Reserve Program Plantings

Commodities

Practices

Trees and brush gradually invade uncultivated ground such as Conservation Reserve Program acres and pasture. If not addressed, brush invasion can burden farmers with costs of removal, plugged tile lines, fire risk (with red cedars), and diminished hunting value. The ideal approach, prescribed fire, requires skilled labor, and commercial service providers are scarce. Required, one-time mid-contract management in CRP does not address the problem. Available technical guidance for farmers comes from public land managers with different goals and management capacity.

We will interview 3-5 corn-soy farmers in eastern Iowa with whom we have previously worked, about their experiences with brush management, particular challenges and successful strategies. We will survey woody vegetation on their CRP sites, plus five pollinator CRP sites that we have previously surveyed for pollinator resources, ranging in age and brush invasion. This information plus published literature will be synthesized to help farmers judge their own susceptibility to woody encroachment and assess their current management strategies. This project lays the groundwork for future on-farm experiments and a planned series of technical guides directed toward farmers.

We will publish two technical guides and share results through website, social media, presentations and field days. Cooperators will be compensated.

We will document brush invasion on a variety of native CRP plantings in eastern Iowa, illustrating the  challenges associated with field age, proximity to woodlands, and management history. We will also document the experiences and observations of three to five farmer cooperators who have prairie strips or other native plantings through the CRP. 

Guided by an advisory committee that includes farmers, conservation professionals and farm managers, we will publish and distribute the first two of a planned five-part series of technical guides on brush management that are written for farmers, filling a significant information gap in the NCR.