RANCHING Business
New Tool for Calculating the Financial Costs and Benefi ts of Conservation Croppin g
W
HAT IMPACT WILL COVERING THE LAND WITH COVER CROPS or perennial grasses have on a farmer or rancher’s
fi nancial bottom line? The Land Stewardship Project (LSP) has developed a new tool that can help answer that question. The Cropping Systems Calculator is for farmers, ranchers, non-farm landowners and natural resource professionals who want to crunch the numbers and fi nd practical ways to achieve continuous living cover on the land. “We already know that growing cover crops, di-
versifying rotations and establishing more perennial pasture grasses on the land is good for water quality and wildlife habitat,” said LSP’s Robin Moore. “But that does little good if farmers can’t afford to make these changes to their operations. Now the calculator can help fi gure out the fi nancial pluses and minuses of covering fi elds beyond the typical 110-day corn- soybean growing season.” The calculator was developed as part of the Chip-
pewa 10% Project initiative, a collaboration of LSP, the Chippewa River Watershed Project and various other groups and agencies. The initiative is working to help farmers and other landowners develop profi table methods for protecting water quality in the Chippewa River watershed, which is in west-central Minnesota. The calculator is an Excel-based tool that allows
the comparison of two crop rotations, each up to six years in length. It provides average yearly returns as well as a year-by-year breakdown for each rotation. Another feature of the calculator is that it allows a comparison of various grazing systems on a per-acre basis. A producer can compare types of cattle (cow/ calf, stocker, feeder-to-fi nish, custom grazing) as well as grazing management style (continuous, basic rota- tional, managed intensive rotational, mob). In fact, the calculator is relatively unique in that it can compare row-cropping to various grazing systems on a per-acre basis, according to LSP’s Rebecca Wasserman-Olin, who developed the tool in consultation with various other economic experts, as well as farmers. The calculator’s default fi gures were gathered from
the University of Minnesota’s farm fi nancial and pro- duction benchmark database — otherwise known as FINBIN — that covers a 10-county area encompassing
tscra.org
the Chippewa River watershed region. Users can eas- ily change the defaults to more accurately refl ect the realities of their own enterprises, thus allowing them to customize the calculator to their situation. “The Cropping Systems Calculator is not expected
to provide an exact amount of income a farmer can rely on earning the following season, but rather a good estimate of the range of returns possible,” said Wasserman-Olin. “The goal of the calculator is to give farmers a way to make informed management decisions that aren’t simply based on doing it the way we’ve always done it.” Members of the Chippewa 10% team have spent
that past few months working with crop and livestock farmers in the Chippewa watershed to test and fi ne- tune the calculator under real world conditions. One of those farmers, Byron Braaten of Starbuck, Minn., was surprised when the calculator showed that plant- ing row crops wasn’t the only practical choice on his operation. “If you feed it your honest numbers you get an
honest answer, and at least on my farm, it supports more cover crops, more diversity,” said Braaten. “We’re brainwashed into thinking that corn and beans are the only way to make money, but this tool helped me see what is profi table on my farm, what works with my numbers.” The Cropping Systems Calculator is available at
landstewardshipproject.org/chippewa10croppingsys- temscalculator.
August 2016 The Cattleman 81
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