As a host to the larvae of the endangered Fender’s Blue Butterfly, Kincaid’s lupine was declared a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2000. Only found in small areas of prairie grassland west of the Cascade Mountains, Mallonee Farms is the northernmost epicenter for the lupine in the US. 

Kincaid’s Lupine (Photo courtesy of Washington Natural Heritage Program)

All across North America, endangered plant species and wildlife are struggling to survive on agricultural land. The United Nations Environment Programme has pegged the global food system and its encroachment on wildlife habitats, along with its use of fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals, as directly threatening 86 percent of species at risk of extinction worldwide. In the United States, more than 50 percent of threatened or endangered species are vital pollinators such as the Fender’s Blue Butterfly. Without pollinators to fertilize berry crops, orchards or field crops such as squash, all of us eaters are also endangered. But, it’s not always easy for growers to identify those species at risk on their properties.

Until its discovery in 2004 by an eagleeyed employee of Washington State’s Department of Natural Resources cycling past one of the farm’s pastures, Maynard Mallonee had no idea the lupine on the family property was endangered.

NatureServe is a US-based not-for-profit organization that acts as a clearinghouse for biodiversity data. Through remote sensing such as wildlife cameras, collaring of wildlife, satellite imagery, drones, geographic information systems (GIS) and on-the-ground eyewitness observations, analysts can predict where wildlife and plant species at risk might be on agricultural land. 

Compiled into maps, the information is used by government agencies such as state departments of natural heritage, fish and wildlife services, conservation organizations and individuals across North America to tailor responses that support at-risk species. These might include, as in the case of the Mallonee Farm, adopting rotational grazing practices or, in other instances, altering haying schedules. But nothing is full-proof and the surveying of private land is, after all, voluntary. 

“We can’t survey everywhere,” says Regan Smyth, vice-president of conservation and science for NatureServe, “which makes a lot of things hard to know.” 

A still image of the NatureServe Explorer Pro interactive map that allows users to explore documented at-risk species by area and by species. The dark red hexagons represent an area with greater than 2,000 species and lightest hexagons representing an area with less than 25 species. (Image courtesy of NatureServe)

She also admits that when it comes time to do on-the-ground surveys to verify the predictive data, growers can get a little ornery about sharing information. They worry about the inconveniences it might cause to production. After the lupine was discovered on the Mallonee family farm, the Department of Fish and Wildlife told Maynard Mallonee to come up with a rotational grazing plan for his cattle that protected the lupine.

“It’s big government telling you what to do,” says Mallonee, “and if you don’t do what they want, they can make life difficult.” 

For the most part, Smythe says people managing land care about it and want to do the right thing. “Once people understand working lands need to be part of the picture of how we keep a diversity of life on the planet, then those who might in other circumstances not want people traipsing around their property become collaborators with Natural Heritage programs,” she says.

In Utah, the Wildlands Network uses mapping data to predict the migration corridors of wildlife. Hunter Warren is engagement coordinator for the organization and concurs with Smythe that there can be a mixed reaction from landowners when they learn that a migrating herd of mule deer, for example, will be stomping through their property. But once they learn that any adjustments needed to support the wildlife, such as replacing barbed wire fencing with fencing that won’t snag and harm an animal, will be paid for by the organization, they become more receptive.

Migrating herds of deer or elk, for example, can, through their grazing and trampling of the ground, break down organic matter into the soil, releasing nutrients that benefit crop production. Plants such as Kincaid’s lupine through their root systems create pathways in the soil that allows for enhanced water filtration and carbon sequester. 

Bryan Gilvesy is CEO of the Alternative Land Use Services Program (ALUS), a non-profit organization working to help fund grower’s initiatives in six Canadian provinces and in Iowa that protect species at risk. He relates how in Southern Ontario a farmer discovered his hay field was home to 250 bobolinks, a bird assessed as being of special concern in Canada by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada and listed under the Species at Risk Act. A ground nesting bird, the bobolink prefers grasslands and prairies to lay its eggs. As more land is converted for agricultural use, the bobolink’s traditional nesting areas have become endangered. Combine or tractor harvesting destroys eggs and can even result in the deaths of birds. ALUS worked with the farmer to alter the haying schedule so that the fledgling bobolinks had time to grow. 

“The farmer got a more mature hay crop and was rewarded financially,” says Gilvesy.

A report by The American Farmland Trust has concluded that managed agricultural land can support both food production and wildlife. It advocates for a broader approach to mapping biodiversity on agricultural land and enlisting the help of farmers and ranchers to do it with policies that embrace the USDA’s legacy of voluntary, incentive-based and locally led conservation. 

On the Mallonee farm, the latest mapping shows a 33-percent increase in the lupine’s population. And although the farm’s grazing plan is having to be constantly updated and re-filed with the Department of Fish and Wildlife to accommodate the spread, Mallonee is happy he took the time and effort to protect the plant. 

 “In the beginning, maybe I might not have,” he says. But, without question, Mallonee is happy he did. The benefits of taking action to protect the lupine have been worth it. “The dairy farm is better managed through the rotational grazing methods we’ve developed,” he says.

The post A Win for Growers Who Protect Biodiversity on Agricultural Land appeared first on Modern Farmer.

He grew up in north-central Massachusetts, an area Shepard dubs “the industrial wasteland,” where plastic and manufacturing were a way of life. “The river at the bottom of the hill where we lived ran different colors every day, depending on what color dyes they were dumping into it,” says Shepard. When the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught on fire, the young Shepard asked his mother why it made the news. “I said, ‘Ours catches fire once a month,’ and she explained to me rivers weren’t supposed to do that.” 

An environmental awareness began to stir in Shepard. He got a degree in ecology, and then, in 1989, secured a piece of land in Alaska, five miles away from the nearest road and 300 miles away from Anchorage, and discovered most of his food was shipped from Seattle. That supply chain didn’t make sense to Shepard. “I was surrounded by blueberries and lingonberries and all kinds of different food products that the indigenous cultures ate for time immemorial. So I thought, why not redesign my ecosystem?” 

Photography via Mark Shepard.

Shepard is now 35 years into his program, with hundreds of properties he’s restored across North America, all bought and paid for, free and clear. He operates his farm as well as a diversified enterprise based on smart real estate investments, selling plants, consulting and selling large, whole-sale quantities of a handful of native and non-native plant crops, such as hazelnuts and asparagus. 

Combining principles from permaculture, agroforestry and ecology, Shepard pioneered what he calls restoration agriculture. This new method of farming produces food in a way that restores land and ecosystems by establishing natural communities based primarily on native, perennial plants that are high in nutrients, carbohydrates, protein and oils. 

Shepard’s intentionally designed Alaskan ecosystem, supplemented with animal proteins, supplied all his food while enhancing, not degrading, the land, and he realized that restoration agriculture, a system based on native, perennial plant crops, could work anywhere. “I got good at it,” he says, “and took it right to the corn belt.”

In 1995, Shepard acquired land in Wisconsin that was degraded from years of intensive, industrial agriculture. He put his restoration skills to the test and reintroduced native food crops, including oaks, cherries, hazelnuts, chestnuts, apples, gooseberries and fungi. By restoring the Midwestern plant communities that were present before industrial farming, Shepard noticed increased soil fertility and a better appearance–it also stored water more effectively. 

Cows, hazelnuts, chestnuts, asparagus, grass and alders at New Forest Farm.

His methods stand in sharp contrast to farming annual crops, which destroys soil and existing perennial ecosystems. “You plant seeds that grow for a few months, and it’s done,” says Shepard. “You’ve created a desert, and there’s no longer a rich, abundant ecosystem.” 

Shepard’s method manages ecological succession to optimize ecosystem health while using far less labor than traditional farming. “Right now, my ‘farming’ is that I’m a glorified hunter-gatherer, except I don’t have to go out looking for things,” he says. “They’re right where I planted them and they stay within fences. It’s really wonderful.” 

Instead of buying into traditional farming, Shepard carved his own path in a way that felt meaningful. “I wanted to help accomplish massive ecological restoration, at scale, as fast as possible,” he says. His advice for farmers who want to change to a perennial agriculture system is to start researching perennial plants that would naturally co-exist in one’s ecosystem. Plant some of those plants right away, and more over time while still relying on annual crops to make ends meet. He recognizes that it’s difficult for small-scale farmers to make a living, but his methods prioritize restoring ecosystems and using creative, diversified income sources to support the cash flow from farming.

The post Meet the Midwestern Farmer Restoring the Land by Growing Native Plants appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Yet, it’s not the same for all crops, everywhere. Each spring, along a hidden dirt road in northern Maine, my mother squats calve-deep in ditch muck to gather the edible, curled fronds of the ostrich fern, a delicacy that appears year after year regardless of rain, drought or fungus. While small-scale farms increasingly rely upon innovative technology to hedge their bets on a harvestable crop—think Kernza, complicated, mechanical planters or expensive, hybrid seeds—native, perennial crops, like my mother’s fiddleheads, persist regardless of an erratic growing season. This begs the question—what if annual crops can’t offer us the sustainable future we, as farmers and consumers, need? 

Finding an old way to farm

Mark Shepard’s New Forest Farm enterprise is built upon what he calls restoration agriculture: growing perennial food crops in a way that mimics native ecological systems. “We need to trust natural plant communities because they’re tried and true. They’ve done alright through just about every disaster that’s been thrown their way,” says Shepard. 

Native, perennial plant species—such as fiddleheads—are often better equipped to succeed than non-native, annual plants because they’ve evolved within an ecosystem for millennia. Native plants thrive with fewer or no inputs and, due to genetic diversity, are better equipped to survive in our changing climate. Because of this, landscaping with native species is already widely popular. 

Polyculture including hazelnuts, chestnuts, grapes, apples, and pasture. Together, these crops yield 2.5 times that of any individual component of the system. Photography via New Forest Farm.

Start with small changes

Farmers don’t need to make a whole-sale switch to native species to reap ecological benefits while tapping into an emerging, native-plant market. Small changes, such as converting a single, sub-prime field into a food forest,where a selection of diverse edible plants are grown mimicking the structure of a forest, can be effective. Shepard’s New Forest Farm began with annual crops and transitioned to perennial crops over time. 

Native species can also be included in techniques that many sustainability-minded farmers already employ. For example, hedgerows could be planted with species of American hazelnut, with the small, harvested crop offered in community-supported agriculture boxes or at farmer’s markets. 

Don Tipping of Siskiyou Seeds offers small quantities of unique crops—some of which are native plants—at farmer’s markets and sells them to customers, who are intrigued by the novel product. Although the success of a product can be hit or miss, as with products at any farmer’s market, sometimes, Tipping’s products sell out, with customers asking for them at the next market. He plans to experiment soon with plant-infused beverages. 

In addition, because native plant species support more biodiversity than non-natives, farmers looking to attract beneficial insects for pollination and pest control could plant alley crops of native species that provide food for pollinators and humans, such as sunchokes. 

Expand on silvopasture techniques

Much of the shift that farmers must make to incorporate native plants as food crops relies more on mindset than technique. For example, take silvopasture, which is a method of integrating foraging livestock and wooded areas. Farmers such as Kirsten Marra and Chris Wellington of Muddy Roots Farm use silvopasture practices to help feed and shelter livestock. In such a system, oaks and other nut trees are already key. “We know where all our hardwood stands are in the woods, so we choose our ends [of the pasture rotation] to finish the pigs under the nut trees. Tree nuts are high in fat and contribute to nice marbling of the meat; the unsaturated fatty acids help increase flavor and juiciness. They are also a good source of carbohydrates and protein. They’re very good for the animals, and they create a nice fat-cap or fat layer,” says Marra. 

In their woodland and field pasture system, the pigs are happier, fatter and healthier, all while eating far less grain—about two buckets a day for 10 pigs—which Marra and Wellington say the pigs don’t touch until yummier foods (including annual vegetable scraps) are gone. But this system also helps the environment. The pigs are rotated frequently to prevent any damage to the land, and their wallowing creates vernal pools, their foot traffic presses seeds into the soil and their munching keeps invasive species in check. 

To take a system like this one step further, creative farmers can use trees to produce crops for livestock and people—and not just using acorns or chestnuts. For example, linden tree leaves are great in salads, and their fruit and flowers make a unique (and delicate) chocolate substitute. 

Chris Wellington at Muddy Roots Farm.

A new market

While demand for native plant foods is different from that of annual agricultural crops, a market does exist. Elderberries are particularly trendy, but other native, perennial crops such as sunchokes, pawpaws and even chestnuts are also popular. Still others—such as hazelnuts, ramps and mushrooms—are already in demand at farmer’s markets and by wholesalers alike. 

On a national level, websites such as Foraged offer farmers an opportunity to reach a wider audience, with some of the website’s popular crops including boysenberries and American Ginseng. 

Using these native, perennial foods instead of annual crops often amounts to a simple substitution, such as frying fiddleheads instead of asparagus, using mashed sunchokes instead of mashed potatoes or using pawpaws in place of bananas in bread. 

Pigs at Muddy Roots Farm. Photography via Muddy Roots Farm.

Long term changes 

Changes in our food system must come at the policy level, but some of these changes are happening already. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) now recognizes the importance of agroforestry techniques by offering agroforestry grants and funding. More recently, the US Office of Global Food Security released its Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils, which advocates for returning to more traditional crops that grow better in certain climates. 

Douglas Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home and other books, worries that farmers will over-spray native plant crops and thus mitigate any environmental benefits. But if we work to change consumers’ expectations for Instagrammable, blemish-free food and restore our environments with healthy, resilient plants, we can find a balance between harvest and hope for the future of agriculture. 

This isn’t a utopian dream. Consumers’ increased interest in hyper-local foods and regenerative, sustainable agriculture offers support for new ways of farming. Plus, changes in perspective can occur on a crop-by-crop basis as innovative farmers showcase unconventional, native plant foods, even if those foods aren’t staple, dinner-table commodities right now. A great example of crop success is kale, which was once a mere garnish but is now a popular superfood. 

With agriculture facing more climate pressure, tenuous land access and fewer resources than ever before, now is the time to make small or farm-wide changes toward planting native, perennial species as crops, even if the path forward seems untraditional or unusual. 

Says Chris Wellington of Muddy Roots farm, “They called us crazy for wanting to raise pigs in the woods.” 

The post Fiddleheads, Not Spinach appeared first on Modern Farmer.

When Chelsea Wood was a child, she would often collect Periwinkle snails on the shores of Long Island.

“I used to pluck them off the rocks and put them in buckets and keep them as pets and then re-release them,” Wood said. “And I knew that species really well.”

It wasn’t until years later that Wood learned that those snails were teeming with parasites.

“In some populations, 100 percent of them are infected, and 50 percent of their biomass is parasite,” Wood said. “So the snails that I had in my bucket as a child were not really snails. They were basically trematode [parasites] that had commandeered snail bodies for their own ends. And that blew my mind.”

Wood, now a parasite ecologist at the University of Washington, sometimes refers to parasites as “puppet masters,” and in many cases, it’s not an exaggeration. Some can mind-control their hosts, for example, causing mice to seek out the smell of cat pee. Others can shape-shift their hosts, physically changing them to look like food. And their ripple effects can reshape entire landscapes.

For centuries, people have thought of parasites as nature’s villains. They often infect people and livestock. In fact, parasites are by definition bad for their hosts, but today, more scientists are starting to think about parasites as forces for good.

“I don’t think anyone is born a parasitologist. No one grows up wanting to study worms,” Wood said. “Somewhere along the way, I like to say, they got under my skin. I just fell in love with them. I couldn’t believe that I’d gotten that far in my biology education and no one had ever mentioned to me that parasites are incredibly biodiverse, ubiquitous, everywhere.”

On a cloudy August morning, Wood took me to Titlow Beach in Washington state, one of her team’s research sites. Back in the 1960s, one of Wood’s research mentors had sampled shore crabs here. At the time, the area was very industrial and heavily polluted. But when researchers, including Wood, came back to collect samples half a century later, the beach had transformed. The water was cleaner and the shorebirds had returned, but those weren’t the only promising signs: The crabs were now full of trematode worms, a type of parasite that jumps between crabs and birds.

Chelsea Wood kneels to search for shore crabs at a beach in Tacoma, Washington. She will later dissect the crabs to search for parasites. Jesse Nichols / Grist

The parasites were a sign that the local shorebirds were doing great, Wood explained.

As scientists have learned more about parasites, some have argued that many ecosystems might actually need them in order to thrive. “Parasites are a bellwether,” she said. “So if the parasites are there, you know that the rest of the hosts are there as well. And in that way they signal about the health of the ecosystem.”

To understand this counterintuitive idea, it’s helpful to look at another class of animals that people used to hate: predators.

For years, many communities used to treat predators as a kind of vermin. Hunters were encouraged to kill wolves, bears, coyotes, and cougars in order to protect themselves and their property. But eventually, people started noticing some major consequences. And nowhere was this phenomenon more apparent than in Yellowstone National Park.

In the 1920s, gray wolves were systematically eradicated from Yellowstone. But once the wolf population had been eliminated from the park, the number of elk began to grow unchecked. Eventually, herds were overgrazing near streams and rivers, driving away animals including native beavers. Without beavers to build dams, ponds disappeared and the water table dropped. Before long, the entire landscape had changed.

In the 1990s, Yellowstone changed its policy and reintroduced gray wolves into the park. “When those wolves came back in, it was like a wave of green rolled over Yellowstone,” Wood said. This story became one of the defining parables in ecology: Predators weren’t just killers. They were actually holding entire ecosystems together.

“I think there’s a lot of parallels between predator ecology and parasite ecology,” Wood said.

Like the gray wolves in Yellowstone, scientists are just starting to recognize the profound ways that ecosystems are shaped by parasites.

Chelsea Wood holds a jar of fish that her lab dissected for a study published in 2023. Jesse Nichols / Grist

Take, for example, the relationship between nematomorphs, a type of parasitic worm, and creek water quality. The worms are born in the water, but spend their lives on land inside of bugs, like crickets or spiders.

At the end of their lives, nematomorphs need to move back to the water to mate. Instead of making the dangerous journey themselves, they trick their infected hosts into giving them a ride by inducing a “water drive,” an impulse on the part of its insect host to immerse itself in water. The insect will move to the edge of the water, consider it for a little while and then jump in — to its own death, but to this parasite’s benefit.

The story doesn’t end there. In a way, the entire creek ecosystem relies on a worm trying to hitch a ride to the water. Fish eat the bugs that throw themselves in the water. In fact, one species of endangered trout gets 60 percent of its diet exclusively from these infected bugs. “So essentially, the parasite is feeding this endangered trout population,” Wood said.

With less of the threat associated with hungry fish, the native insects in the stream can thrive, eating more algae and thereby giving the creek clear water.

Parasites make up an estimated 40 percent of the animal kingdom. Yet, scientists know next to nothing about millions of parasite species around the world. The main parasites that scientists have spent a lot of time studying are the ones that infect farm animals, pets, and people.

Many of these alarming parasites, like ticks or the parasitic fungus that causes Valley Fever, are expected to increase due to climate change. But no one actually knows what climate change means for parasites, broadly — or how any big change in parasites might reshape the world. “There’s this general sense that infection is on the rise, that parasites and other infectious organisms are more common than they used to be,” Wood said. “At least for wildlife parasites, there really isn’t long-term data to tell us whether that impression that we have is real,” Wood said. “We had to invent a way to get those data,” Wood said.

Wood had an unconventional idea of where to look: a collection of preserved fishes locked away in a museum basement.

Chelsea Wood holds a jar of preserved fish from the University of Washington Fish Collections. Jesse Nichols / Grist

The University of Washington Fish Collections is home to more than 12 million samples of preserved fishes, dating all the way back to the 1800s. But the thousands of jars lining the collection shelves also contain something else: all the parasites living inside the fish samples.

“So much has been discovered from museum specimens that we tucked away at one time, and then pulled off the shelf 100 years later,” said Wood. “It’s really remarkable to get to peer back in time the way that you do when you open up a fish from a hundred years ago. It’s the only way that we’ll know anything about what the oceans were like, parasitologically, that long ago.”

Chelsea Wood dissects fish samples in her lab at the University of Washington. Jesse Nichols / Grist

Wood and her team spent over two years opening up jars and surgically dissecting the parasites from within. Under microscopes, they identified and counted the parasites before returning everything for future study. In the end, they found more than 17,000 parasites.

Looking at the number of parasites found in fishes over time, the researchers found a mix of winners and losers, but there was one big class of parasites that was unequivocally declining: complex parasites, the kinds that need several different host species in order to survive. That type of parasite declined an average of 10 percent each decade, the team found.

Jesse Nichols/Grist

In Wood’s investigation, there was only one factor that perfectly explained the decline in parasites: It wasn’t chemicals or overfishing. It was climate change. It made a lot of sense: Complex parasites can only survive if everyone one of those host species are around. If just one type of host goes missing? “Game over. That’s it for that parasite,” Wood said. “That’s why we think that these complex life cycle parasites are so vulnerable: because things are shifting, and the more points of failure you have, the likelier you are to fail.”

Wood said that, before this study, researchers had no idea climate change was wiping out this important class of parasites.

“It’s likely a collateral impact,” she said. “We don’t even have a handle on how many parasites there are in the world, much less the scale of parasite biodiversity loss right now. But the early indications are that parasites are at least as vulnerable as their hosts, and potentially more vulnerable.”

Wood says that it’s important for people to understand that parasites play huge and complex roles in nature, and if we ignore what we can’t see, we risk missing out on understanding how the world really works. “We all have a reflexive distaste for parasites, right? We take drugs, we apply chemicals, we spray, Wood said. “Our argument is that parasites are just species. They’re part of biodiversity, and they’re doing really important things in ecosystems that we depend upon them for.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/video/parasite-climate-change-ecosystem-health-science/. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post Nature Can’t Run Without Parasites. What Happens When They Start to Disappear? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

By literally wiping out tons of pests every night, bats save US farmers an estimated $3.7 billion annually. Besides the bug carnage, bats also pollinate crops such as coconuts, agave, guava and bananas, disperse seeds and create fertilizer. 

However, these little mammals are under attack—more than half of North American bats risk severe population declines over the next 15 years. And agriculture, which destroys foraging and roosting habitat, is one of the greatest threats to bats. 

Yet farmers can be important allies for wildlife by using innovative practices to conserve bats. In turn, this mammalian air crew protects and pollinates their fields.

Pests and heirloom produce

“I know a lot of people are kind of freaked out by the bats but they are invaluable in sustainable agriculture—absolutely invaluable,” says Stephanie Miller, owner of Mystic Pine Farm in Virginia, which specializes in organic heirloom crops from the African diaspora.

Her farm is bustling with bat activity for several reasons.

“We don’t obviously use any chemicals because that’s also a main deterrent and that will definitely get rid of your bat population very quickly,” says Miller. 

Besides directly poisoning bats, pesticides and insect-resistant crops reduce the abundance of their prey. 

A wooded area on Mystic Pine Farm in Virginia. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Miller)

Miller also maintains oaks on her property to provide roosts for the bats and intentionally supplies food for her winged guests. 

“I grow night-blooming plants that attract the bats and give them nectar and feed them,” says Miller. “Also, I grow species of native plants and what I would consider medicinal herbs that they also like to feed off of or attract the food that they eat—things like purple coneflower, yucca and sunflowers.” 

Research backs these observations up: Lower-intensity practices such as agroforestry and organic farming support higher bat activity levels and diversity compared to more intensive agriculture.

Factors at the landscape level also come into play.

“You should always leave as much natural habitat as possible around your farms,” says Merlin Tuttle, a bat researcher and founder of Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation. “Where pests do the worst damage is where you have huge monocultures, where for miles and miles you have nothing but corn or soybeans or wheat planted. And in those cases, bats and other natural predators can’t survive the off-season. After you harvest the corn or the wheat, there’s no pests out there to eat.” 

In turn, Miller benefits from having bats around.

“I’m using nature, including the bats, to control my pest population,” says Miller. “And bats do a lot of work. They actually pollinate certain crops. They also eat pests that might be an issue and keep those populations under control.”

For instance, bats kill corn earworms, a major pest of popcorn and one of Miller’s main crops. 

“I’m using nature, including the bats, to control my pest population,” says Virginia farmer Stephanie Miller. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Miller)

Pecan protection 

While Miller exemplifies a bat-friendly farmer, she’s not alone. Through Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation and Bat Conservation International, pecan farmers are learning how to cut down on pests by installing bat houses.

One example is John Worth Byrd, owner of a sustainable pecan farm in central Texas.

“We have three moth-born pests here, the walnut caterpillar, the pecan nut casebearer and the hickory shuckworm,” says Byrd. “But the bats, their primary food is moths. So, I thought, well that’s great. Some people in Georgia had done it, put bat houses into their pecan orchards. So, I started putting up bat houses.” 

Byrd has five species of bats on his property. Some forage in wide open spaces away from their roosts, while others dine locally in the orchard canopy. While all the bats suppress pecan pests, the locavores kill the most. 

Byrd uses a couple of strategies to help his bats. Besides putting up bat boxes, he doesn’t spray any pesticides on his property. In addition, if a tree dies in his orchard, he leaves it up. 

“A lot of these bats roost in these old dead pecan trees…” says Byrd.

“The best bats were staying in these cavities, not as many numbers like the [Brazilian] free tails in my houses, but they were doing a lot. They were local feeders instead of feeding in the atmosphere.” 

Unsurprisingly, all this pest-munching is valuable.

“If people could actually see what bats are doing, they’d be lined up to protect them,” says Tuttle. “It’s estimated by our Parks and Wildlife Department here in Texas that consumption of insect pests is saving Texas farmers approximately $1.4 billion annually.”

Aiding agaves

One of Mexico’s most iconic products has also jumped on the bat conservation bandwagon.

Through the Tequila Interchange Project, tequila and mezcal producers are growing bat-friendly agaves. These spiky plants are normally cloned, but letting some of them flower has several advantages. Night-blooming flowers provide nectar for bats, including an endangered species, the Mexican long-nosed bat. By feeding on the flowers, bats also pollinate them.

Commercial farming of blue agave, used for tequila, has eroded its genetic diversity and increased its susceptibility to disease. For instance, in the 1990s, a combination of bacteria and fungus spread through agave fields, and nearly 25 percent of the crop was abandoned.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by agave farmers. 

“They understand that something is happening,” says Irene Zapata Moran, a doctoral student at the University of Wyoming. “They see that there are more diseases in the crops. And people who have been in this industry all their life, they have told me they remember before that the plants used to be bigger.”

A lesser long-nosed bat feeds on an agave blossom in Arizona. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Bat pollination is seen as a solution, because as opposed to cloning genetically identical plants, sexual reproduction brings in new genes. This could also increase the plant’s ability to adapt to climate change.

However, allowing for natural pollination of agaves involves a direct financial hit for farmers. 

Farmers normally cut the flower stalks on the agave to allow the sugar to be concentrated in the core. After harvesting, they use this core for tequila production. 

“They’re completely rivals—you cannot have agaves in bloom and tequila from the same plot,” says Zapata Moran.

One solution could be for tequila producers to charge a premium price for bat-friendly products. Offsetting just a portion of their sunken costs could be an effective way to incentivize farmers who may not be motivated to give up some of their crops in the name of biodiversity.

The vast swaths of cropland and pasture blanketing the globe present a golden opportunity for bat conservation. And, with more than 18 percent of species listed as threatened globally, bats need all the help they can get. While sustainable practices require funding, cost-sharing programs, such as those from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, can help farmers. Plus, the payoff is worth it—bats are an eco-friendly solution for many agricultural woes.

The post Agriculture Threatens Bats. These Farmers Want to be Part of a Solution. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

It’s no secret that Earth’s biodiversity is at risk. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 26 percent of all mammals, 14 percent of birds and 41 percent of amphibians are currently threatened worldwide, mainly due to human impacts such as climate change and development.

Other forms of life are also under pressure, but they are harder to count and assess. Some scientists have warned of mass insect die-offs, although others say the case hasn’t been proved. And then there are fungi—microbes that often go unnoticed, with an estimated 2 million to 4 million species. Fewer than 150,000 fungi have received formal scientific descriptions and classifications.

If you enjoy bread, wine or soy sauce, or have taken penicillin or immunosuppressant drugs, thank fungi, which make all of these products possible. Except for baker’s yeast and button mushrooms, most fungi remain overlooked and thrive hidden in the dark and damp. But scientists agree that they are valuable organisms worth protecting.

As mycologists whose biodiversity work includes studying fungi that interact with millipedes, plants, mosquitoes and true bugs, we have devoted our careers to understanding the critical roles fungi play. These relationships can be beneficial, harmful or neutral for the fungus’s partner organism. But it’s not an overstatement to say that without fungi breaking down dead matter and recycling its nutrients, life on Earth would be unrecognizable.

Bracket fungi growing on a tree. Photo by Mark Castiglia, Shutterstock.

Healthy ecosystems need fungi

The amazing biological fungal kingdom includes everything from bracket fungi, molds and yeasts to mushrooms and more. Fungi are not plants, although they’re usually stocked near fresh produce in grocery stores. In fact, they’re more closely related to animals.

But fungi have some unique features that set them apart. They grow by budding or as long, often branching, threadlike tubes. To reproduce, fungi typically form spores, a stage for spreading and dormancy. Rather than taking food into their bodies to eat, fungi release enzymes onto their food to break it down and then absorb sugars that are released. The fungal kingdom is very diverse, so many fungi break the mold.

Fungi play essential ecological roles worldwide. Some have been forming critical partnerships with plant roots for hundreds of millions of years. Others break down dead plants and animals and return key nutrients to the soil so other life forms can use them.

RELATED: The Untapped Potential of Mushrooms

Fungi are among the few organisms that can degrade lignin, a main component of wood that gives plants their rigidity. Without fungi, our forests would be littered with huge piles of woody debris.

Still other fungi form unique mutualistic partnerships with insects. Flavodon ambrosius, a white rot decay fungus, not only serves as the primary source of nutrition for certain fungus-farming ambrosia beetles, but it also quickly out-competes other wood-colonizing fungi, which allows these beetles to build large, multigenerational communities. Similarly, leaf-cutter ants raise Leucoagaricus gongylophorus as food by gathering dead plant matter in their nests to feed their fungus partner.

A mostly unknown kingdom

We can only partially appreciate the benefits fungi provide, since scientists have a narrow and very incomplete view of the fungal kingdom. Imagine trying to assemble a 4-million-piece jigsaw puzzle with only 3 to 5 percent of the pieces. Mycologists struggle to formally describe Earth’s fungal biodiversity while simultaneously assessing various species’ conservation status and tracking losses.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species currently includes 551 fungi, compared to 58,343 plants and 12,100 insects. About 60 percent of these listed fungal species are gilled mushrooms or lichenized fungi, which represent a very narrow sampling of the fungal kingdom.

Asked what a fungus looks like, the average person will probably imagine a mushroom, which is partly correct. Mushrooms are “fruiting bodies,” or reproductive structures, that only certain fungi produce. But a majority of fungi don’t produce fruiting bodies that are visible to the eye, or any at all, so these “microfungi” go largely overlooked.

Many people see fungi as frightening or disgusting. Today, although positive interest in fungi is growing, species that cause diseases—such as chytrid fungus in amphibians and white-nose syndrome in bats—still receive more attention than fungi playing essential, beneficial roles in the environment.

Mushroom growing kits have grown in popularity in recent year. Photo by Miriam Doerr Martin Frommherz, Shutterstock.

Protecting our fungal future

Even with limited knowledge about the status of fungi, there is increasing evidence that climate change threatens them as much as it threatens plants, animals and other microbes. Pollution, drought, fire and other disturbances all are contributing to losses of precious fungi.

This isn’t just true on land. Recent studies of aquatic fungi, which play all kinds of important roles in rivers, lakes and oceans, have raised concerns that little is being done to conserve them.

It is hard to motivate people to care about something they do not know about or understand. And it’s difficult to establish effective conservation programs for organisms that are mysterious even to scientists. But people who care about fungi are trying. In addition to the IUCN Fungal Conservation Committee, which coordinates global fungal conservation initiatives, various nongovernment organizations and nonprofits advocate for fungi.

RELATED: Home Gardeners Discover the Fun of Growing Fungi

Over the past two years, we have seen a surge of public interest in all things fungal, from home grow kits and cultivation courses to increased enrollment in local mycological societies. We hope this newfound acceptance can benefit fungi, their habitats and people who study and steward them. One measure of success would be for people to ask not just whether a mushroom is poisonous or edible, but also whether it needs protection.

Delegations from most of the world’s countries will meet in China this fall for a major conference on protecting biodiversity. Their goal is to set international benchmarks for conserving life on Earth for years to come. Mycologists want the plan to include mushrooms, yeasts and molds.

Anyone who takes their curiosity outdoors can use community science platforms, such as iNaturalist, to report their observations of fungi and learn more. Joining a mycology club is a great way to learn how to find and harvest fungi responsibly, without overpicking or damaging their habitats.

Fungi are forming important networks and partnerships all around us in the environment, moving resources and information in all directions between soil, water and other living things. To us, they exemplify the power of connection and cooperation—valuable traits in this precarious phase of life on Earth.

Matt Kasson is an associate professor of mycology and plant pathology at West Virginia University; Brian Lovett is a postdoctoral researcher at West Virginia University; and Patricia Kaishian is a visiting assisting professor of biology at Bard College.

The post Opinion: It’s Time to Include Fungi in Conservation Goals appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In their new book, Farming on the Wild Side, they unearth the philosophical and scientific principles that influenced them as they reverted their farm into a biodiverse, semi-wild state, phasing out sheep and potatoes as they embraced apples, pears, stone fruits, and uncommon berry crops. The Hayden’s story charts an evolving relationship with an ecosystem and its inhabitants, grounded in observation, ecological thinking, and the belief that native plants can teach us what we need to know about the land to see it thrive again.

The following excerpt is from Farming on the Wild Side: The Evolution of a Regenerative Organic Farm and Nursery and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.

As a farm that values diversity, we don’t have many biological enemies. At least we don’t think of them that way. Certain plants are allies in the places we want them, sequestering carbon, filtering water, and creating fertility, and become “weeds” only when they compete with our plantings. We do spend a fair amount of time and effort on weed management. For our crops to thrive, we need to keep the grasses and other weeds out of the propagation beds and berry bush plantings, and in check during the early years of fruit tree establishment. Weed management isn’t always easy, though. Plants have a lot of life force and want to grow! 

We use a variety of techniques to keep the weeds at bay, including hand weeding, landscape fabric, and sheet mulching with cardboard close to the plants. Landscape fabric is great because it can be reused year after year, but it’s not a good idea to leave it down over the winter, because it provides a safe cover for voles, which can then be a problem in themselves by girdling trees and shrubs in the winter. There’s a pesky rodent! If we use proper vegetation management around bushes and shrubs, including vole guards on the trees, we can keep their dam- age to a minimum. They then become just another coinhabitant of the land. Did we mention that we like foxes? 

We put nets on certain crops such as honeyberries, red currants, and blueberries before they ripen, to protect them from birds that are “pests” for only a short time in the summer. We take the nets off when we’re done with the harvest, allowing the birds to clean up the fruit. This strategy helps reduce other pest problems, like spotted wing drosophila, in our early berry crops. 

Our diversity of crops allows us to withstand occasional pest out- breaks and potential crop losses by leaning on the income from other crops until a balance is reestablished. We depend mostly on biodiversity and ecological intensification practices to limit insect pests. We should differentiate here between pests and pest outbreaks. You some- times hear or read in alternative agriculture circles that pests on a plant reflect an unhealthy plant or soil conditions. We don’t think that is correct. We consider having a diversity of insects, including those that eat crop plants, as part of the natural balance. A pest outbreak occurs when the population of an insect increases to the point where it can cause high economic damage to a crop. A low level of pests keeps the predators and parasites fed and happy and working. Wiping every- one out with insecticides causes wild fluctuations in pest populations, as their populations tend to grow faster than predators’ populations. 

If we grew only one crop, with clean fields and field margins, we, too, would be anxious about pests and potential losses; so we can understand why monoculture farmers turn to pesticides for insurance and assurance. But it is a treadmill, and we don’t understand why they keep insisting on monocultures. Of course, the chemical companies know how to exploit fear with their marketing. Many of the pesticide advertisements in the trade magazines look like horror movie bill- boards, with giant caterpillars and their gaping fangs coming to get you. Pesticide companies are not necessarily the farmer’s friend. They are more like parasites themselves, making their living off farmers. A good parasite doesn’t kill its host, though. 

The goals of efficiency and economy of scale (which is purely about maximizing profits) are still part of the mainstream cultural mentality in our society. We’ve shown that a small-scale diverse farm has certain ecological and economic advantages. We try to be efficient in our labor and harvests, but it’s not critical to our bottom line to wring every last berry from the land. We can afford to share a little with our coinhabitants. As regenerative farmers, we’re trying to find the right balance for us and the so-called pests to coexist. 

This isn’t to say that it’s all unicorns and rainbows at our farm in Vermont, The Farm Between. Pest outbreaks occur because of things beyond our control— like the weather or newly introduced pests such as Spotted Wing Drosophila (more on SWD below). There’s this idea floating around that if you have a biodiverse organic farm with good soils and good management that everything will be pest resistant and in perfect balance all the time. No way. Species populations are cyclic; outbreaks and subsequent crashes occur. That’s often how an overall balance is maintained. 

________

Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD)

This little fruit fly, Drosophila suzukii, has become enemy number one of berry growers in much of the United States. Originally from Southeast Asia, it was first noticed in California in 2008 and has since spread throughout the United States. It made its way to Vermont in 2012. We first found it in our everbearing strawberries toward the end of June that very year. When we realized what was making the berries mushy, we panicked and tilled the whole patch under, hoping that would prevent the fly’s spread to the rest of the farm. In hindsight, that was pretty silly. After all, you can’t keep a pest like SWD out. 

Unlike the regular old vinegar fruit fly that can only lay her eggs on rotting or damaged fruit, SWD females have a knifelike serrated ovipositor—the egg-laying part of the female—that can cut into unripe and undamaged fruit. After cutting her way inside, she typically lays one to three eggs. The males are easy to identify because of their spotted wings. The adults and possibly pupae overwinter in leaf litter, duff, and rotting fruit. During the growing season, adults typically live for a few weeks. A female can lay three hundred or more eggs in her lifetime. Depending on the temperature, it takes a week or two to go from egg to adult, but they can cycle through many generations per growing season if you have a variety of fruit, as we do. As the season progresses, their populations can increase to damaging levels. 

We no longer grow everbearing strawberries, not only because of the SWD, but also because we want to stick with perennial fruit. We’ve never seen them in the honeyberries, another reason we love these early berries. They show up in the blueberries usually after a couple of weeks into the picking season. When our fall raspberries start ripening in August, it might be a week or two before we start noticing damage. They’re in the elderberries come late August and September. We’ve even seen them in fall native fruits such as highbush cranberry and silky dogwood and wonder what the ecological ramifications are of reducing these food sources for wildlife. 

SWD numbers and their damage seem to vary based on the weather. They don’t like it hot and dry. Unfortunately, the weather is beyond our control. Damage also varies based on picking hygiene, and this is within our control. Picking often and picking clean is the best way to curb their numbers and their damage. This also means sorting berries during or after picking. We need to do this anyway for other pests such as slugs, snails, Japanese beetles, and birds. Usually, the impact of these other pests is minimal, however. SWD can be severe if we’re not careful. The times we’ve been lackadaisical about picking regularly, or when other people pick who aren’t thorough, are the times we might find considerable numbers of SWD-damaged berries. 

We try never to leave mushy berries on the bush. The really damaged berries get solarized in clear plastic bags if the numbers are high, or in the case of raspberries, we smoosh them onto the black plastic walkways or in the dry duff in the greenhouse floor when there are only a few. If this doesn’t kill them outright, it will cause the larvae to dry out and die. Lightly or slightly damaged berries can still be used to make fruit syrups. Berries with no visible damage are sold fresh or frozen. The raspberry receptacle that is left on the stem after picking will be white when there is no damage and stained pink if a “young one” (code for SWD maggot) has been feeding there. 

Even though we don’t like this new pest, we’ve gotten over it to some extent. We figured out how to manage and live with it. We accept that we’re going to have losses, which might be as high as 20 percent in raspberries, given the weather and management conditions. With a wet summer, elderberry losses can be even higher. We’ve experimented with netting individual elderberry panicles using the type of nylon sock that shoe stores use for trying on shoes. Enclosing the panicle of green fruit within the nylon sock and closing it off at the stem with a twist tie prevents access to the fruit by SWD but allows the berries to ripen. Given the time involved to sock each panicle, we figure this makes economic sense only when SWD numbers are high and with big-berry, heavy-producing varieties like Marge. 

Nancy Hayden has an MFA in creative writing and is a retired environmental engineering professor at the University of Vermont. John Hayden has served as a pest management researcher, extension agent, international consultant, and university educator. The Haydens have been owners of The Farm Between in Jeffersonville, Vermont, since 1992. 

The post Rethinking Pests, Invasive Species and Other Paradigms appeared first on Modern Farmer.

This important book is now available.

Is Beekeeping Helping or Hurting Struggling Pollinator Populations?

Excerpt by Jodi Helmer

In the race to save pollinators, even the ancient hobby of beekeeping has come under fire. Critics warn that domesticated honey bees are detrimental to wild pollinators. In fact, a 2018 study published in the journal Science was titled, “Conserving honey bees does not help wildlife,” and suggested widespread efforts to tend European honey bees were misguided.

Instead of treating honey bees like pollinators, a growing number of researchers have suggested seeing them as livestock, noting that both managed colonies and cows, pigs, and chickens raised in cramped conditions face similar issues: Overcrowding and homogenous diets depress their immune systems and increase pathogens. In one meta-analysis, more than half of studies found competition for resources had negative effects on wild bees. (The research did not measure the direct effects of honey bees on wild bee fitness, abundance, or diversity; managed hives located in their native ranges had a lower impact on wild bees than those in hives situated in non-native ranges).

“Much of the discussion and the debate around pollinators and pollinator health over the last 10 years has really been driven and fueled by the honey bee… I think those of us who have worked on pollinator ecology for a long time, we feel a certain amount of affinity for the honey bee. But out of the whole range of pollinator issues, the honey bee is doing fairly well compared to some species. The honey bee is not going extinct anytime soon,” says Eric Lee-Mader, co-director of pollinator conservation at the nonprofit Xerces Society.

Thanks to the focus on honey bees, Lee-Mader believes that native pollinators might not get enough credit for their role in crop pollination. He cites squash and pumpkins as examples of crops where native bees outperform honey bees. But farmers often don’t realize this, paying for hive rentals to ensure pollination takes place, even though native bees are more than equipped to do the work.

Lee-Mader notes that the native bees tend to be active early in the morning, often before the sun has fully risen, so farmers don’t realize they’re getting a free service. He hopes beekeeping can evolve so people understand that honey bees are not the answer to every pollination challenge. We can’t keep ignoring the larger health of the natural environment.

“Unfortunately, when we look at beekeeping, especially large-scale beekeeping, there tend to be a lot of problematic and troubling questions that arise,” he adds. “The honey bee, unfortunately, suffers from the challenges that have arisen from within the beekeeping industry like the long-distance movement of bees…that has facilitated the spread of bee diseases.”

One serious concern is the spread of pathogens between managed bees and wild bees. The majority of studies on the topic have found potential harm to wild species. The possibility that honey bees could be contributing to the decline of their wild brethren led researchers to test 169 bees from four families and eight genera for five common honey bee viruses…and found that more than 80 of wild bees were diagnosed with at least one virus.

Viruses can be spread when both species visit the same flowers. Moving hives between pollination sites is equivalent to bringing new, non-native species to different areas. These issues led the study authors to suggest that honey bee declines should be seen as an agricultural issue, not a threat to biodiversity. They also argued for policies such as hive size limits, location restrictions, and greater controls of managed hives in protective areas. The authors offered a firm directive, noting, “Honeybees may be necessary for crop pollination, but beekeeping is an agrarian activity that should not be confused with wildlife conservation.”

Christina Grozinger PhD, distinguished professor of entomology at Pennsylvania State University embraces a less hardcore stance on the issue, noting while it’s currently popular to say that honey bees are destroying landscapes, she doesn’t think that the data backs up that view.

“I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game where you have honey bees in the landscape and therefore, the wild bees go down,” she says.

Novice beekeepers might be making life harder for honey bees. As the “save the bees” message spreads, the number of new beekeepers has increased. In 2015, the Florida Department of Agriculture reported a record number of registered beekeepers in the state with 3,856 beekeepers maintaining 460,000 new colonies (up from 150,000 hives in 2007). Illinois has also reported a surge in new beekeepers with 700 new beekeepers registering with the state Department of Agriculture in a single year, bringing the number to the highest level since 2005. Meanwhile, 300 new beekeepers have joined the Backyard Beekeepers Association in Spokane, Washington, since 2015.

Even though uneducated beekeepers have been called, “one of the largest killers of local bee populations,” most beginners lack adequate support to succeed. Even the most enthusiastic new beekeepers might struggle to maintain their hives without education and mentoring. According to some estimates, 70 percent of new beekeepers quit within the first two years.

Inexperienced beekeepers might not be equipped to recognize and treat pathogens like Varroa mites. Bees from infected colonies will abandon their hives and merge with other colonies. Or when they die off, bees from other colonies will “rob” the honey from infected hives and bring it back to their colonies, spreading disease. Whether or not a colony is healthy can depend on the beekeeper’s background and apicultural practices. Unfortunately, those practices are currently trending aware from good science and management. An article in American Bee Journal notes a “strong mood shift” among aspiring beekeepers. Some want zero interaction with their bees, believing that feeding bees or smoking the hive (to keep bees calm during routine inspections) are acts against nature.

Given the hands-off approach that some new and “natural” beekeepers take to maintaining hives, it might not be surprising that beginning beekeepers had double the winter losses of professional beekeepers; beginners also had more signs of bacterial infections and heavier Varroa infestations. Pesticides are the sole treatment option for Varroa mites.

Novice beekeepers often want to steer clear of chemical treatments, which puts other hives at risk. Because small-scale beekeepers have hives spread across the landscape—as opposed to concentrated in agricultural areas—starting a hive without understanding how to maintain it increases the risk that viruses will spread. Hobbyist beekeepers have exacerbated the spread of pathogens and resistance to miticides and antibiotics, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Economic Entomology.

Data collected from beginning beekeepers could be making the status of honey bee populations appear direr than is warranted. Reports of abandoned hives led to widespread concerns about Colony Collapse Disorder, but information about losses came from voluntary surveys from beekeepers; beginning beekeepers—whose inexperience leads to greater losses—contributed to those surveys and their die-offs became part of the scientific record. During the 2017-2018 season, backyard beekeepers lost 46.3 percent of their colonies over the winter compared with just 26.4 percent for commercial beekeepers.

Highlighting the possible downsides of good intentions is not meant to dissuade public efforts to help pollinators. Rather, letting concerned citizens know what could go wrong—and providing education and resources to minimize those unintended consequences—can help pollinator populations bounce back. Experts support initiatives to protect pollinators, including some of the potentially “harmful” practices such as monarch releases, maintaining gardens of tropical milkweed, and beekeeping.

“It’s really important to understand the species that you’re trying to protect,” says Sarina Jepsen, director of endangered species for the Xerces Society and deputy chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature bumblebee specialist group. “Often, we need to act before we fully understand why a species is declining and it’s really important to continue to do research to answer the most relevant questions and to continually adjust conservation strategies as new research becomes available.”

The post Book Excerpt: “Protecting Pollinators: How to Save the Creatures that Feed Our World” appeared first on Modern Farmer.