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MYRTLE BEACH, SC – An international coalition announced a $19 million research project aimed at understanding how a farmer or rancher’s grazing management decisions impact soil health on pasture and rangeland (commonly called grazing lands) and – in turn – how soil health can positively impact a producer’s land and well-being.

Entitled Metrics, Management, and Monitoring: An Investigation of Pasture and Rangeland Soil Health and its Drivers, the project was announced today at the National Grazing Lands Coalition triennial meeting. The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research awarded Noble Research Institute a $9.5 million grant to lead this critical research that is improving soil health on grazing lands. Noble Research Institute is providing $7.5 million to this project with additional financial contributions by Greenacres Foundation, The Jones Family Foundation and ButcherBox.

Pasture and rangeland soils contain about 20 percent of the world’s soil organic carbon stock but have largely deteriorated in many regions due to poor management, fragmentation or conversion to cropland. As soil health decreases, the land loses its viability to grow healthy plants, maintain flood- and drought-resilience or filter water.

For decades, farmers and ranchers who have implemented soil health principles have improved the overall health of their land and have experienced more profitable operations, however, these observations have – to this point – been largely anecdotal. This research is quantifying these observations and examining how management decisions on grazing lands are connected to the overall health of the ecosystem, including the social and economic well-being of the farmer, rancher and land manager.

“Enhancing soil resilience and productivity necessitates a major investment in research that provides farmers and ranchers with the best tools and information to make informed decisions benefitting their operations, said FFAR Executive Director Dr. Sally Rockey. “FFAR is proud to fund this audacious research that supports thriving farms and ranches while improving overall environmental health for the betterment of society.”

The project brings together researchers from 11 nonprofit organizations, for-profit businesses, private research institutes and public universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. Led by Noble Research Institute, Michigan State University, Colorado State University and the University of Wyoming, collaborators include Oregon State University, National Grazing Lands Coalition, USDA-ARS (Maryland, Colorado and Wyoming), Savory Institute, Snaplands LLC,  The Nature Conservancy and  the UK’s Quanterra Systems.

The project will provide farmers and ranchers tools that simply and accurately measure outcomes of soil health in grazing land environments to guide management decisions and quantify the impact of intentional management. Measuring soil health requires techniques that are often site-specific and costly for ranchers.

“Our focus is to develop strategies to increase the value of measurement, reduce the labor and cost of measurement, and increase our understanding of soil health beyond a single site to the ranch as a whole,” said Rhines president and CEO of Noble Research Institute. “This information – in conjunction with working directly with land managers – will help us better understand the drivers that inform producers to adopt and implement soil health-focused management practices.

The study is unique in that it will focus on the soil health of grazing lands. Most soil health initiatives explore cropland, failing to address the hundreds of millions of acres of degrading pasture and rangeland. These acres are best suited for livestock production and are incapable of sustained production of crops for human food.

Pasture and rangelands are among the largest ecosystems on the planet, covering 70 percent of the world agricultural area. There are 655 million acres of pasture and rangeland in the United States. This is 41 percent of the land usage in the continental United States, making it the single largest use of land in the nation – more than row crops, cities and timberlands.

“Improving the ecological management of these hundreds of millions of acres, farmers and ranchers can be catalysts for sequestering carbon, better managing fresh water, reducing typical greenhouse gas emissions and building soil health, which all benefit society at large,” said Dr. Jason Rowntree, professor of Sustainable Agriculture at Michigan State University and project co-lead. “In addition, applying these core agricultural principles also helps producers be more sustainable and profitable, ensuring they can leave a legacy of healthy land and brighter futures for their children. It’s a win-win.”

The project is exploring why some producers adopt soil health building principles, such as adaptive grazing management, while others do not. It is also examining social and economic sustainability (commonly called producer well-being), which have rarely been studied in agriculture, or in particular, livestock agriculture. Anecdotally, producers report that their profitability and/or quality of life improve when they adaptively manage their assets, including the soil, plants and grazing animals, according to Rowntree.

MEDIA INQUIRIES:

Colleen Klemczewski
Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research
Phone: 574.386.0658
Email: cklemczewski@foundationfar.org

Adam Calaway
Noble Research Institute
Phone: 580-224-6209
Email: jacalaway@noble.org

Flower production on our farm started small in 2019, as a pilot project by Sam Dunbar, Aesthetic Garden Coordinator, when she was a farm intern. Now in her second full season of production, our flower program has grown by leaps and bounds. At Greenacres, we seek to encourage biodiversity, grow organically, and provide quality experiences for our guests – flowers bring together these fundamental tenants of our farm in the most beautiful way. “Most of our vegetable crops rely on pollinators to produce fruit, and interplanting flowers among the vegetables is one of the best ways to encourage pollinators to visit.” says Dunbar, “We plant more flowers than we will harvest, ensuring there’s plenty left for our pollinators to enjoy. Honeybees from our onsite hives are a common sight, busily working away.”

We also plant flowers of different shapes – round, trumpet, umbel shape, etc., encouraging many different kinds of pollinators to visit and build biodiversity. Each species of insect searching for nectar or pollen is seeking a flower shape that suits its specific anatomy and preferences. Hummingbirds like trumpet shapes, bees like round shapes, and wasps prefer umbel shapes. These specific preferences are something our education staff can share with students who visit our gardens.

As with everything in our gardens, our flowers are grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides, or non-organic fertilizers. Flowers from a florist or grocery store may be grown using a wide array of chemical inputs, most of which are detrimental to our environment and pollinators. They’re also typically grown on farms far away and transported thousands of miles to their final destination. Seeking out local flowers can sometimes require a bit more effort, but are well worth the benefits. Customers take home gorgeous flower bouquets while our pollinators and gardens benefit from the increased plant diversity. We’re looking forward to refining and expanding flower production as we enter our third growing season!

Our 2021 summer season revealed the true magic that camp brings. It seemed even nature itself cheered when little boots, water bottles and tie dye shirts arrived in June! Once Upon a Camp, Fun on the Farm, Nurture Nature, Arts in the Natural World, Gone Fishin’… all camps sold quickly and the waiting lists filled up.

Education Administrative Coordinator, Katie Brown explained, “After the 2020 pause, the heightened interest in Greenacres Summer Camps became clear. Even so, we did commit to maintaining small groups with an average of one Greenacres Educator to five children, putting the safety of our families first.”

With camps returning, it was a great opportunity for local high schoolers to once again build their leadership skills over the summer. 31 local high-school student volunteers for the Greenacres Leaders-in-Training (LIT) Program. Under the guidance of the same Greenacres Educators that host thousands of children for field trips each school year, our LITs learned valuable skills on how to safely run a camps, helping ensure that over 290 children enjoyed a safe and magical summer.

Greenacres has officially acquired Michaela Farm from the Sisters of St. Francis of Oldenburg. Conversations and visits between the Sisters and Greenacres began in 2019 and it quickly became apparent that the missions of both parties were very much aligned, eventually leading to formal contract negotiations beginning in 2020 and the closing being finalized this past week.

“We’re excited for what’s next,” says Carter Randolph, Greenacres president. “When working on a project with so much history in the community you want to make sure things are done the right way. For us, that meant taking our time working with the Sisters, learning the values of the organization, and the things that make it so special. As we work to incorporate our mission in Oldenburg, we want to make sure that we preserve those ideals too.” says Randolph.

Now that the sale is official, Greenacres will begin the process of evaluating the property and what it will need in order to begin field trips for local school children potentially as early as spring of 2022. This means looking at things like improved school bus access and accessible trails for all visiting children. Currently, Greenacres serves about 30,000 students in Cincinnati and hopes this acquisition will help expand their ability to educate surrounding communities.

In addition to the education enhancements, Greenacres will maintain the traditions of the farm using generative practices to produce healthy, sustainable products to offer in the Farm Store. “Knowing that the farm will continue to thrive with an agriculture system that we believe in is everything we could have asked for,” says Daniel Wilds, Greenacres Michaela Farm Manager. “We hope our customers stick with us through the transition, as we will still have the products they have come to love and we are thrilled to be able to expand those offerings in coming years,” says Wilds.

Being good neighbors is a key component of the Greenacres mission, so community engagement will also be a top priority. As part of this process, Greenacres will continue to work with the Sisters of St. Francis to learn about the relationships that built Oldenburg and Batesville. “We feel blessed to pass on these sacred acres to a non-profit organization that will honor our farm’s 167-year history and enhances our vision and hopes for its use. The influence of Michaela Farm will expand as its treasures will be shared by a growing number of people, both students and adults, who visit there.” says Sister Delouise Menges, OSF.

Greenacres Foundation was founded in 1988 and was Louis and Louise Nippert’s gift to the community. Combining their love of the land and farming with their appreciation of Cincinnati’s classical arts, Greenacres provides educational programming to over 30,000 local students annually while preserving and generatively farming over 1,200 acres in the Greater Cincinnati area.

The Sisters of St. Francis, Oldenburg, Indiana are the modern legacies of the 800-year-old Franciscan traditions. They are part of a worldwide community of over one million vowed and secular Franciscan men and women who live and pray with us and around us. In 1851, they began an educational endeavor—the foundational seed of the Oldenburg Academy of the Immaculate Conception, and later Marian College—as a way to fulfill the mission and requirement to provide education to the community.

For more information please send inquiries to: mail@green-acres.org.

Spring at Greenacres is an exciting time. Not only are we welcoming new animals to the farm, but our pastures are being “reborn” as well. Grasses that have sat dormant through the cold of winter have started to green up and burst forth with new and vigorous growth. How this early growth is managed will set the stage for the rest of the growing season. It might seem counter-intuitive as it appears the grass is just being established, but the key to maintaining healthy nutritious stands of forage is to move the herds quickly over the land allowing them to take the “first bite”.  “Because grass has a single purpose, which is to reproduce, when it reaches maturity it will start to lose nutritional value and begin to die back.  Moving quickly and keeping animals in a tight group, every square foot of pasture is impacted, while maximizing the nutritional quality for our animals.” says Jonathan Gabis, Manager of Livestock Operations. Hooves help return decaying material back to the earth where it can be utilized by insects and soil microbes while grazing encourages regrowth, root development, and lengthens time in a vegetative state, allowing the grasses to capture as much solar energy as possible leading to improved soil and animal health. 

Two years ago our Compost Manager, Nate Bundy, began to explore ways Greenacres could be more self-sufficient with our onsite garden needs, while reducing the amount of waste we produce. His research led him to a compost system developed by Green Mountain Technologies, which can process up to 1000 tons of waste products a year. Not only does this technology speed up the time in which great compost can be made because of its ability to maintain temperatures around 145° F, it also allows materials like meat and dairy products to be used as compost material which are typically hard to break down. This high heat system has another benefit in that it will destroy any weed seeds and plant pathogens that might be present. 

After years of planning and research,  Nate’s vision became a reality earlier this year as our first batch of compost was processed in our new Green Mountain facility. “This system provides us an amazing educational asset that will hopefully inspire students to learn more about how their food is grown and what happens to waste when they toss it in the trash” says Bundy. His projects the system will divert more than 2500lbs of employee food waste from local landfills in the first year alone. This number will increase as children return for field trips and we have a full season of events and weddings. This is a great step towards our commitment towards making sure we live up to the “Green” in Greenacres.      

Last spring, as COVID-19 began to impact education systems everywhere, including Greenacres, we quickly realized that we would need to shift our talents to meet this challenge. With the busloads of students visiting Greenacres on pause, we started to translate our lesson concepts into scripts for video production and exploring other ways we could continue to educate.