What is climate smart management? The Role of Stewardship in a Changing Climate
The sun hasn’t risen yet, but the horses are already saddled up. Cattle dogs yip and bark from their cages, ready for their morning meal and hoping to get the chance to run. A cacophony of sandhill cranes trumpet from the distance.
Beneath a dim light in the pole barn, a few of the crew at Archbold’s Buck Island Ranch sit at a picnic table, Celsius energy drink or coffee in hand, slowly waking up as they prepare for a day of working cattle. As the sunlight begins to peak over the horizon and the rest of the team arrives, the crew get on their horses and set off to drive a 400-head herd into the pens.
The grass glistens golden in the pasture as the team of four ride out, and I think about an often-repeated quote Mary-Margaret Hardee, assistant ranch manager of Archbold’s Buck Island Ranch, cited the day before: “Concrete is the last crop.”
What do you mean by that? I asked.
“Once it goes there, it never goes back,” she said. “If you don’t keep open space open, you won’t have wildlife, you won’t have quality water, and you won’t have food.” Earlier in this series, we explored the science of how well-managed working lands can mitigate the effects of a warming climate by sequestering and storing carbon. Crucial to the goal of building climate resilience is the way that land managers adapt to changes in weather patterns and conditions. As temperatures become more extreme, rainfall more variable, and floods and wildfires more frequent, the way the landscape is managed is critical for both the climate and those who depend on working lands.
As I’ve heard it put, stewardship needs stewards; and as challenges from climate grow, those land stewards face increasingly more stress to make ends meet.
“You can’t do what you did five years ago, you’ve gotta adjust to what Mother Nature throws at you,” Gene Lollis, ranch manager of Archbold’s Buck Island Ranch said. After two hurricanes and heavy precipitation over the last few months, the pregnancy rate of cattle this fall recorded one of the lowest Lollis has ever seen in his nearly 30 years as ranch manager. “We’re always dealing with Mother Nature; it has always been the biggest challenge to agriculture.”
The management of the 10,500-acre cattle ranch is coupled with the effort to address climate change by quantifying and understanding the many ecological services provided by working agricultural lands. As mentioned in the previous article, after studying the sequestration and emissions of carbon from the Ranch since 2010, Archbold scientists have found cattle grazing can increase net carbon storage and decrease a pasture’s global warming potential. Those results, however, don’t just happen on their own. Along with countless hours and endless data analyzed by researchers, there are earlier mornings and longer days put in by those out on the land managing thousands of acres and cattle in such a way that reaches the carbon positive outcome, while also running a business. For decades, Lollis and his team have managed the Ranch utilizing activities that promote productivity and sustainability, such as rotational grazing, minimal fertilizing, and prescribed burning – practices that are now considered ‘climate-smart agriculture mitigation activities’ according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
Research from Buck Island has shown that grazed pastures contain greater soil carbon compared to ungrazed pastures. The further implementation of grazing management practices, such as rotational stocking and changing stocking rate, helps to enhance these services by avoiding overgrazing and improving vegetation condition and soil carbon.
These practices have mutually beneficial outcomes: they sustain productive grasslands for grazing, promote carbon sequestration, reduce fuel loads that lead to catastrophic wildfires, and improve soil health, water quality, and wildlife habitat.
In Archbold and Florida Atlantic University’s 2024 The Florida Wildlife Corridor and Climate Change report, one of the key policy recommendations for climate resilience is to incentivize climate-smart management of working lands.
“Climate-Smart Management is the adoption of conservation activities that provide mitigation benefits for climate change.” NRCS District Conservationist Carlos Torres said, “Our goals are to provide a solution to identified natural resource concerns.”
Torres and his team provide technical and financial services to producers to support the sustainability of agriculture in Highlands County and address the challenges from a changing climate.
The cost of implementation and the time it takes for the practices to reach full potential are the biggest barriers Torres sees for agricultural producers. Though having environmental benefits in the long term, often these voluntary practices demand added investment.
I sit in Lollis’ office as he eyes a balance sheet and makes calls to pinpoint the going rate per head this year. “Energy, fuel, and other costs of operations are getting more and more expensive,” Lollis said. Hardee, who sits beside me finishes the thought for him: “When all the other costs of the operation go up, it’s harder to put as much money into the land. If things get tight, they [‘climate-smart’ practices] might have to be the first to go.” That’s where incentive-based programs like NRCS’ Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) can come in. These programs provide financial assistance to producers as compensation for adopting climate-smart management or other ‘best-management practices’.
“They provide a benefit to the producers and the environment, [it is a] win-win solution,” Torres said. For three decades, Archbold scientists have studied and stewarded these natural resources on Buck Island Ranch, seeking to understand the role of working lands as functional, resilient ecosystems. Throughout this time, Lollis has seen more and more producers have to utilize incentive-based programs or conservation easements as tools to help supplement and sustain their operation. These have become vital for keeping working lands ‘working’.
“Remove the rancher and remove the cow from the land, then you likely won’t have anyone able to burn and manage the land. The ecosystem will turn into something it’s not supposed to be. Invasives will take over, and eventually the native species will leave,” Lollis shared. “And then, well, then what will we have left.”
Incentive-based conservation programs are ways that agencies like NRCS support producers to meet their operation goals, address natural resource challenges, and mitigate the climate impacts to, and from, agricultural production. Ultimately, they are tools to help sustain working lands and conserve and enhance the natural resources we all depend on. Interested producers can contact Torres at [email protected], visit the Highlands County NRCS Service Center, or visit Archbold’s ‘Landowner Assistance Resources’ page at www.archbold-station.org/landowner-resources/.