CRP Choices Favor Grazing and Wildlife

CRP Choices Favor Grazing and Wildlife

New Mexico farmers who have been protecting nearly a half-million acres of erosion-prone land in the Conservation Reserve Program since 1986 are reviewing their options under the next Farm Bill. Pasturing cattle might be the best choice.

Researchers have shown that weeping lovegrass, a well-adapted forage that farmers planted on many of these acres, allows excellent grazing. Lovegrass provides beef cattle with weight gains of 2 to 3 pounds per day during spring and early summer, while supporting a stocking density up to five times higher than native rangeland species. Scientists in the SARE-funded project also have been studying the feasibility of returning some acreage to dryland sorghum and wheat production. But with below-average precipitation the past two years, row cropping under various tillage regimes has proved riskier than grazing. Best cropping results so far have been in small, no-till sorghum plots that yielded an average of 370 pounds per acre in 1995. That's below county-average yields of 500 to 600 pounds per acre for sorghum last year. Additional moisture or fertilizer might help a bit. "But it looks like God intended large portions of eastern New Mexico to stay in grass," one researcher observes. The project also has shown it is easy and inexpensive to add wildlife-encouraging plants and watering sites on semiarid grasslands to strengthen the ecosystem. (Western Region project LW93-33)

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