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On Lopez Island northwest of Seattle, Henning Sehmsdorf grows 2
acres of organic barley to feed chickens, pigs and a single Jersey
milk cow. Sehmsdorf’s barley-on-a-small scale forges yet another
link in the circle of sustainability on his 50-acre farm. The barley
feeds his animals. Their manure feeds the soil. The soil produces
the vegetables. The vegetables feed the community.
Near Corvallis, Ore., on Stahlbush Island Farms, Rob Heater strip
tills nearly all of the farm’s 2,500 acres of berries, fruits
and vegetables. Tilling in ribbons —instead of wide swaths—disturbs
two-thirds less soil, leaving intact a frenzy of soil-enriching
biological activity and reducing the potential for runoff and erosion.
South and across the Rockies, in Monte Vista, Colo., Wiley and
Travis Keller help their mom, Carolyn, and dad, Steve, milk 200
ewes. The Kellers sell the rich milk to cheese makers in Santa Fe,
New Mexico, and Fort Collins, Colorado. Milking sheep means extra
work for Wiley and Travis, but also extra income as the Kellers
extract values far beyond lamb and wool.
The barley field, the strip tillage, the sheep dairy—all
ideas transformed into reality with grants from the Western Sustainable
Agriculture Research and Education program. Western SARE is an initiative
of USDA that provides competitive grants to producers, researchers
and ag-support professionals, grants that cultivate economic, environmental
and community sustainability.
Sustainable agriculture. The phase is esoteric, its definitions
varied. Sustainable agriculture fits into and complements modern
agriculture. It recognizes the true values of farmers and their
products. It embraces and learns from organic farming yet can mean
much more. It works on farms and ranches large and small. It harnesses
new technologies. It blurs the lines between environmental concern
and agricultural productivity. It renews the best practices of the
past and applies them to the future.
The clarity of sustainability comes with seeing—seeing the
face of the land nurtured with sustainability and the faces of the
people who embrace it—the Sehmsdorfs, the Heaters, the Kellers.
Their tales are repeated a hundred times over under big skies on
diverse Western landscapes. Sustainable farmers and ranchers are
renewing, recycling and renovating. They’re inventing, creating
and building—all with the goal of staying on the land, making
a profit, protecting their environment and strengthening the communities
in which they live.
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