The Intermountain West—specifically Western Colorado—has been the setting for our farming adventures for the past several decades. We were drawn especially to those areas with wide horizons, million-dollar mountain views (without the price tag), vast areas of wilderness, amazing wildlife, isolated farms and ranches, and for most of the time at least, clean air and quiet. The gnarliness of the weather, landscapes, and wildlife certainly makes farming a challenge, but is much of what makes it all worth it.
Most all these attributes can be profoundly degraded if we fail to take care of this land and the ecosystems and life it supports, so it’s incumbent upon us, as Wild Farm Alliance says, to grow our food and fiber “in a way that supports and benefits from wild nature.” We need to find our place on this landscape—coexisting with it, protecting it, and helping restore any harm we have already caused. Wild farming, ranching, and gardening—along with rewilding your local foodshed as we have suggested—are powerful tools to make this so.
Taking a closer look at what wild farming practices can work well here, we first need to look around us. Growers are ingenious in adapting to local conditions, so examples abound of how to coexist with nature—see the beautiful Farming with the Wild book for example. Rather than a menu of practices, a set of questions to keep in mind as we look at food and fiber operations around us is a wise way to start. Besides having a wealth of information on their website on how to “grow with the wild”, the Wild Farm Alliance has a succinct set of core principles that can be paraphrased into the following very basic questions.
Is the soil kept covered with plants? This is a guiding principle at the core of much of the encouraging renewed interest in soil health and enlightened tillage, cultivation, cover cropping, interplanting, and weed control practices. It will look different in different settings, but the basic principle is the key. With the landscapes and climate in the intermountain West, we need to pay special attention to the effects of extreme drought, wind erosion, floods, salinization, time honored but unwise tillage practices, and general aridity on our ability to keep plant cover on the soil.
Are flowers present? Pollinators—especially so many native ones beyond honeybees—are essential to so many of our crops, but are often overlooked. Making sure that appropriate nectar sources are available throughout the growing season, as well as nesting sites, is critical. Taking the time to look more closely at your pollinators and how they are doing through the season is the key. With farms often isolated from each other in our region (which has advantages for organic production and seed saving), we need to ensure that pollinators have the ability to move readily between nectar sources (essentially pollinator trails).
Are native trees and shrubs part of the farm? It makes sense that native plants are important to attracting and supporting native pollinators, as well as other beneficial insects, birds, and other animals. In our part of the West, we also have plenty of invasives from other semi-arid to arid regions that love our fields, rangelands, streams, and irrigation canals and ditches. Addressing invasives in ways that don’t cause new problems in the ecosystem is vital.
Is wildlife, from bees and birds to larger animals, present? The benefits of wildlife of all sorts are wide-ranging, whether directly aiding the crops or livestock, in controlling damage from other organisms, or overall, by keeping the on-farm ecosystem healthy. In the Intermountain West, we have the special needs of wildlife-friendly fencing (the fence in the photo above needs some adjusting), maintaining viable corridors for movement of elk and other ungulates, avoiding overgrazing, and coexisting with nearby carnivores, among many other things.
Taking a broader look as we zoom out from the individual farm or ranch and find a high lookout, we can see the mosaic of food-producing ecosystems and surrounding wild or semi-wild ecosystems. We need to consider the interactions between all these ecosystems whose health is so intricately intertwined. The grazing, fencing, wildlife corridor, and carnivore issues mentioned above play out on a larger scene. This is where the rewilding of our agricultural lands blends into the rewilding of an entire region—which we prefer to consider our extended foodshed.
Moving forward: Besides giving us valuable insights as to what wild farming, ranching, and gardening practices can work in our region, watching nature and how it is doing in our foodsheds is our responsibility if we want healthy food, healthy land, and healthy people. Monitoring specific indicators of foodshed health over time, collaborating with growers and community members on local monitoring projects, and participating in Citizen Science activities that help scientists address sustainability issues is what our HCFS Foodshed Health Field Guides were designed for. We have just updated two “observing worksheets” for these Field Guides that include many of the questions posed above.
Paying attention to our foodsheds and being aware of how nature is faring is the basis for action. Recognizing producer practices that “support and benefit from wild nature” and rewarding those producers in the marketplace and with community recognition and supportive policies should help these wise practices spread, making our local and regional foodsheds healthier for all.
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