For custom grazer Steve Kenyon, every form of life on the land plays a role in successful production
When most people see dozens of dung beetles crawling around in a pile of cow manure, they see a mess. When Steve Kenyon sees dozens of dung beetles crawling around in a pile of cow manure, he sees profit potential.
At Greener Pastures Grazing Management, a custom grazing operation located south of Barrhead, Alberta, everything from the wildlife in riparian areas to the manure on the pasture to the billions of organisms under the ground are viewed as playing essential roles in the production process. To Kenyon, this is the definition of "all-natural" farming — capturing the value of the land's natural resources without resorting to chemicals, commercial fertilizers or other inputs.
"Running an all-natural farm requires a recognition of the biodiversity of the land," says Kenyon. "If I can capture that biodiversity, I save money. Take dung beetles for example. Every farm has them, but chemicals and commercial fertilizers eventually kill them off. But they play a huge role in breaking down manure and recycling the nutrients in the soil. That means they help me save money on input costs in the short term and help sustain the soil over the long term."
The key is choosing the farm management practices which preserve the soil's natural assistants to production. For Kenyon, that means avoiding the use of chemicals, preserving riparian areas on his land, good wintering site management and, above all, continual learning.
The payoff of these efforts sometimes comes sooner than expected. "You start seeing the savings when you don't get a manure hauling bill in the summer because you've already managed your manure by wintering your cattle. And the benefits you get from maintaining shelter for wildlife go on forever."
The primary benefit of dung beetles is their role in eating manure and recycling the nutrients in the soil. "This is an important natural process," says Kenyon. "Without dung beetles and various other bacteria breaking it down, the nutrients from the manure gas off into the atmosphere or run off into water.
"The problem is that over time, exposure to commercial fertilizers and chemicals can reduce their population. It may take three or four years of not using chemicals and fertilizer to get a healthy population again. Over that time your productivity may be lower, but I believe it's more profitable and sustainable in the long run."
Kenyon's video of dung beetles at work has stirred interest among the agricultural community. "The funny thing is that most guys have them on their farms, but either don't know it or don't realize their potential," he says.
Kenyon is not a purist when it comes to taking his riparian areas out of grazing. "I don't fence them off 100 per cent because there's a lot of production in riparian areas," he says. "If you never graze them, I think you waste them, so I let the cattle hit them once or twice a year."
Riparian areas can also be an insurance policy against dry years, says Kenyon. "In a year of severe drought, a riparian area that is protected and well taken care of will get you out of a bind. In 2002 I had to put the cattle on my riparian areas four times because of drought — the areas always quickly recovered."
Proper management of riparian areas is the key to grazing that not only sustains but improves the properties of the area, says Kenyon. "I use a short grazing period with a high stock density," he says. "Basically, I get them in, I get them out, and by a month and a half later you would never even be able to tell they had been in there because the grass will be so overgrown."
Kenyon wanted to better disperse cattle throughout his land, and that required fencing for shelterbelts, windbreaks and portable panels. Shelterbelts provide a natural windbreak, play a role in recycling nutrients in the soil and provide a habitat for wildlife. He sees shelterbelts as providing protection to his acres in production.
"If a particular bird species is the predator of the grasshopper, the birds need a habitat so you can use them to cut down on the grasshopper populations," he says. "They don't feel safe if they're out in the middle of nowhere unprotected."
Kenyon's goal is to turn 40 percent of every quarter into dedicated shelterbelt as a long-term investment in his operation. "The treeland and bushland is not for production. It's for protecting the rest of the land," he says.
The use of portable panels has made the wintering process easier. "When we're swath grazing at a site away from the farm, we need some way to manage the cattle. With the panels, I just stack them up six at a time on an old drill transport, move them to another site and set them up. That's a huge benefit — having those portable facilities is a great way to disperse manure across the land, especially considering that we don't have all of our land in one block."
Kenyon's solar powered, portable watering system has also presented a great advantage to his wintering program. "I don't have a good well here, so I can't use a pipeline. I have to rely on dugouts and creeks, and to transport the solar system to access them was a process that could take hours," he says.
"I had to do something. I thought back to an old rock picker that was sitting on the farm back in Saskatchewan. It even had a bucket on it that could work as a trough. Now it only takes 15 minutes to move it. I leave a hose at every site so all I have to do is pull the pump out of the water, disconnect it, set up the rock picker and go."
It's also proven itself a very cost-efficient solution. "A rock picker costs $75, while buying a trailer from the solar panel company complete with a trough costs $3,500. And it only took me a few hours to put it together."
The only drawback is that the 150 gallon trough does not have much reserve capacity. "But if it gets too low I can always gravity feed to a bigger trough, which I'm already set up to do."
Underpinning all of these efforts is a desire for lifelong learning. He and his wife Stacey are constantly budgeting for seminars, books and courses. It was in that same spirit that he developed an Environmental Farm Plan (EFP), a free, confidential assessment of an agricultural operation's environmental strengths and weaknesses.
"There are a lot of things about the EFP program that are plain common sense, but it opened up my eyes to things I never thought about before."
The information on this website is available for reprint with credit to "The Alberta Environmental Farm Plan, www.albertaEFP.com".
Article development courtesy of The Alberta Environmental Farm Plan Company