Tree Farmer Mathematician: Farm Bill Benefits Really Add Up
With Congress beginning its work on the 2012 Farm Bill, we're looking to hear your Farm Bill stories. Share yours right here on the American Forest Foundation blog by submitting a comment in reply to Walt’s story.
Despite a career teaching college mathematics, I often feel more at home out in the woods on my 32 acre farm in Ohio. Over the years, my wife, Donna, and I have poured ourselves into our land.
We have been working to improve the soil quality and eventually we will leave it in better shape for our daughters. In fact, when we bought the land, the soil was so dry and degraded that it literally drifted out onto the road. So we planted windbreaks, which have helped keep the soil in place in the years since.
Donna and I are now part of a regional intiative, the Lake Erie Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, which is improving water quality in tributaries to Lake Erie by strategically investing in land conservation.
Through this program, we have been able to take farmland that flooded frequently—and transported pesticides and fertilizers downstream—and instead reforest eight acres of riparian buffer zones on the land. In addition, we planted grass strips in gullies, preventing the washouts that were all too common.
Why are Farm Bill conservation programs important?
Without the soil, we’d have nothing—no food, no land, no trees. We’ve got to protect it. And that’s exactly what the Farm Bill has allowed us to do. We could not have completed all the forestry and conservation practices without the technical assistance of the various agencies and the cost-share funds to implement the various farm bill programs.
Our long-term forest management goal is to have a healthy forest, manage our timber sustainably and at the same time enhance the wildlife habitat, protect our streams and watershed and provide recreational opportunities for family, friends, and our community.
Please join me and Donna in supporting the American Tree Farm System’s efforts to protect Farm Bill programs for family forest owners.
Submit your Farm Bill experience in the comments section below. By sharing your story, you’ll help your member of Congress understand that these conservation programs have a real effect in your district.
Photo credit: the Lange family
for the tree farmer program. They are always there to answer any questions I
have or to assist in any way.
Without this program, I would be forced to just my land grow up and have
very little income from it. Since I am on a fixed income, what I get from my
timber is very important to me.
Stocking control, or density management, is a critical component of maximizing all the many benefits of growing trees, from ecological to economic and forest heal
We should expect more from all of the so called advocacy organizations! They should be advocating the replacement of our outmoded financial system instead of just applauding the very piece meal approach to funding of this essential activity. Even more though they need to address the systematic destruction of the rural way of life by the corporate giants that now control both the funding and the communication to our youth and urban oriented population.
Alan Page, Research Forester
Dan Campbell, Forest Wildlife Research Biologist (USDA Retired)
It's been a marvelous program and I feel supported on all sides. As a woman managing on her own, that means a lot. I have a trusted forester who worked to design my management plan. The plan is my map to follow and keep me on track.
I've taken on some cost share with NRCS for pre commercial thinning, and a project to save some old fruit trees.
My adult son has become involved in helping on these projects which makes it all the sweeter.
I encourage all land owners to get involved. The management plan is a great first step and it's a plan designed with your long terms interests. You will save on your property taxes too.
I am director of a summer program for children and we use the land to teach children about the forest and nature.