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This Month
Autumn is officially here, which means it’s the perfect time to install hedgerows and other conservation plantings that will support the farm with a myriad of benefits like pest control, pollination and carbon storage in the soil and aboveground. In this newsletter, we are pleased to release our latest video about the advantages of hedgerows for supporting beneficial organisms across the farmscape. We also invite you to join us for tomorrow’s webinar, Optimizing Beneficial Insects and Their Habitat, to learn more about habitat from researchers in the field. We share an article featuring our work supporting beneficial birds, and findings from a study evaluating impacts of NRCS’s voluntary conservation practices on pollinator habitat nationwide. Finally, we highlight soil health on-demand webinars from Organic Farming Research Foundation, invite you to join the Farmland Flyways Trail and ask for your continued support of our programming for growers.
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Enjoy this Month’s News From the Wild!
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Hedgerows on Farms Support Beneficials Across the Farmscape
Phil Foster first experimented with hedgerows by planting two mixed native hedges on opposite sides of their organically managed vegetable fields in the mid 1990s. After observing insect predators and parasitoids on the newly planted natives, he knew the experiment had paid off. Today, Phil has hedgerows along many field edges and insectary habitat interspersed within much of their crops.
Our newest video features Phil and his wife Katherine discussing the benefits of habitat alongside Dr. Tara Pisani Gareau of Boston College. Tara shares her research about the distance from hedgerows that beneficial insects will travel on farms, and which native plants they particularly like.
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Whole Farm Sustainable Pest Management Webinar Course
Wild Farm Alliance is pleased to offer a free 12-lesson virtual course for PCAs, CCA, scouts, growers and other agricultural professionals about whole farm pest management. Covering the latest research, the sessions are given by experts in entomology, plant health, plant pathology, microbial pest control, ecology, avian pest control and whole farm management.
The first lesson, Optimizing Beneficial Insects and Their Habitat, is coming up TOMORROW, September 24. Start Time is 11:00 AM Pacific Time.
Presenters: Nathan Haan, University of Kentucky and Houston Wilson, UCCE and UC Organic Ag Institute.
The lesson has been approved for 1 CE credit from California Department of Pesticide Regulation and 1 from the American Society of Agronomy.
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Retro Pest Control:
Inviting Birds Back to the Farm
Article in Ambrook Research featuring Wild Farm Alliance by Emma Castleberry
There’s a new movement afoot, encouraging farmers to create bird habitats on their land. It provides natural insect control while mitigating the massive bird losses of recent decades.
A 2019 report by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology found that North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970 — as in, nearly 30 percent of the total population of breeding adult birds has vanished in the last 50 years. Farming — specifically the large-scale, mechanized monoculture that’s become more prevalent in the last half-century — is a major contributor to this crisis.
“Agriculture’s footprint is taking out habitat and water resources,” said Jo Ann Baumgartner, executive director of the Wild Farm Alliance (WFA). “Then there’s the pesticides that harm birds, and those pesticides also harm the food source: the insects that birds eat and the plants that support birds.”
The WFA is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing biodiversity by expanding the idea of wild farming, a practice that both supports and benefits from untamed nature. The WFA promotes the presence of flowers, native trees, shrubs, and wildlife on farms. It also encourages farmers to keep as much soil as possible covered in plants to control erosion, provide habitat for wildlife, and promote the build-up of carbon in the soil.
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 Wildlife habitat planting. Photo Credit: Jessa Kay Cruz, The Xerces Society
First-of-its-Kind Study on NRCS Conservation Practices and U.S. Pollinators Provide Three Key Findings
Native bees, honey bees, birds, bats, and other animals pollinate more than 100 U.S. crops and are critical to our food supply. USDA’s Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) and Virginia Tech collaborated on a first-of-its-kind study to evaluate the impacts of NRCS’s voluntary conservation practices on pollinator habitat nationwide.
“We know the loss of grasslands, shrublands, forests, and other seminatural habitat is a major driver of pollinator declines,” says Dr. Elissa Olimpi, a lead author on the study. “No previous assessments have synthesized the nationwide impacts of NRCS pollinator conservation efforts, so we first worked with experts to identify and rank 51 practices that benefit pollinator habitat by increasing the availability of floral and nesting resources.” Of these, 11 “core and supporting practices” are specifically designed for pollinators or are frequently used to supplement pollinator resources.
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Soil Health On-Demand Webinar Series
Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), in partnership with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), has co-created a webinar series focused on soil health and organic farming. This series is facilitated by Jennifer Ryan and Lindsay Haines of NRCS and Thelma Velez and Mary Hathaway of OFRF. Each of the webinars is led by Mark Schonbeck, OFRF’s Research Associate. Topics covered in this series include soil health, nutrient management, weed management, cover crops, plant genetics, water management, conservation tillage, and climate resilience. Each webinar shares organic farming practices and research findings, and many share stories of farmer experiences in organic farming as they pertain to the topic of the specific webinar in the series.
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Get your Farm on The Farmland Flyways Trail Map
We need your help to grow the number of farms participating in the trail and inspire others to support beneficial birds!
The Farmland Flyways Trail highlights farms across the country that support beneficial songbirds and raptors with the installation of nest boxes and perches. It also helps to track our progress towards our 2050 vision goal of inspiring 10% of U.S. farms to install an average of 5 nest boxes and/or perches each, leading to 1 million structures.
Putting up perches and nest boxes gives songbirds and raptors more places from which to hunt pests and to nest in the spring. And having a variety of pest-eating bird species on the farm is always a plus, because they consume different kinds of prey.
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Support New Grower Resources
WFA’s latest video and our new Whole Farm Sustainable Pest Management course shared in this newsletter are just a few examples of the many tools that we offer growers and other land stewards to increase diversity on the farm, and the abundance of beneficial wildlife that can make a difference to the bottom line. We rely on individual donations to fund our work and the creation of new materials. Help us continue to create and distribute new resources for farmers and ag professionals with a donation today!
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