The first EcoSun Prairie Farm, located near Brookings, South Dakota, is intended as a working model of agricultural and ecological sustainability. The 640-acre corn and soybean farm has been leased for five years, beginning in 2008. The centerpiece of the Farm will be the restored tall grass prairie on crop land and rehabilitated remnant swards of CRP and pasture. Also important will be the restoration of the hydrology and wetland grasses in 35 temporary and seasonal wetland basins drained by previous operators. These restored grasslands and wet meadows will form the economic base of the Farm.

The clientele served by this project will be diverse, including current farmers wanting to escape the high costs of tillage machinery, heavy pesticide use, and confining farm price support programs typical of contemporary row-crop agriculture; a growing class of non-traditional farmers, often from a city background, but who desire to live in rural areas, to farm in an ecologically-healthy way, and to produce unsubsidized products such as grass-fed meat which are more and more in demand by the public; and absentee landowners who bought land for outdoor recreation but desire income to make their land payments and pay property taxes. The Prairie Farm will be a model for these and other groups of producers and consumers of an alternative way of making a living from the land.

Many questions will be answered through research and monitoring on the Farm, including but not limited to, the rates of carbon sequestration in restored grasslands and wetlands; amount of improvement in surface and ground water quality; how to develop a decision system to better market grass products; how to balance wildlife and economic benefits; and economical ways to establish and manage restored tall grass prairie.

We expect this project to go a long way towards the goal of designing highly productive, efficient, and ecologically-healthy farms that capture and make available for human use far more energy than they use. Through this project, EcoSun Prairie Farms will gain the knowledge and experience to develop a set of principles and methods to guide the establishment and management of the first generation of grass-based energy farms in the northern Great Plains and Midwest.

Spring-Summer 2009

Wetlands

Seeds of four species of sedges and whitetop (Scolochloa) were mass collected from natural, private wetlands in eastern South Dakota in summer 2009 to establish populations in restored wetlands at the Prairie Farm and to sell on the open market. The prairie cordgrass plugs planted in several Prairie Farm wetlands in 2008 spread out rapidly in 2009. They flowered profusely reaching heights of approximately 10 feet. The cordgrass in these wetlands has developed into prime wildlife habitat with excellent potential as a feedstock crop for biofuel. Cordgrass seed will be collected from these wetlands in fall 2009 and marketed by Millborn Seeds of Brookings. Cup plant (Silphium) also was plugged in shallow wetland basins to examine its potential as a companion plant with cordgrass as a biomass feedstock.

Grasslands

Switchgrass and bluestem plantings drilled in 2008 developed into tall, dense stands of vegetation in 2009. Another retired soybean field of 35 acres was planted in 2009 to a warm-season grass and forb mix dominated by big bluestem. As of 2009, approximately 140 of the original 400 acres of cropland have been converted to grassland. The remaining cropland acres will be converted over in 2010 and 2011.

CRP

In 2009, warm season grasses were drilled into a CRP field undergoing renovation. The field (see map on homepage) was treated with herbicide, burned, and disked in 2008. The result was a high quality grassland dominated by Sunnyview big bluestem with high potential as productive, warm-season pasture or biomass feedstock.

Tours

In 2009, a number of tours were conducted for individuals and groups that have provided funding, in-kind contributions, or other forms of support for the Prairie Farm. These include: Millborn Seeds, Inc., Brookings; Sun Grant Research Center (SDSU); Nathan Peterson (Hildebrand Strategies, Sioux Falls); and legislative offices of U. S. Representative Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin and U. S. Senator Tim Johnson. Tours for the general public are planned for summer 2010.

Spring-Summer 2008

Wetlands

Two of the six restored wetlands were planted with plugs of prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata) started and grown under greenhouse conditions in winter and spring of 2008. Plugs were planted June-July, 2008, in two densities (3 and 5 foot centers) in each wetland to compare the time and cost required to establish a dense, closed stand of cordgrass. Approximately 4,000 plugs were planted in each of the approximately 1.5 acre wetlands. Survival rate of the cordgrass plugs measured at the end of the 2008 growing season was high, approximately 90 percent. Many plugs flowered and tillered vigorously the first year. Most other wetland species that grew together with cordgrass the first year were common annual grass or grasslike plants present in the seed bank, such as barnyard grass (Echinochloa) and nut sedge (Cyperus). River bulrush (Schenoplectus), a common early-successional perennial wetland plant, also grew with cordgrass in the deeper parts of the basin.

The largest wetland restored is approximately 12 acres in size at full pool. A water control structure was built into the plug to allow adjustment of water depth, hydroperiod and vegetation composition and production. Many hundreds of ducks used the wetland during spring 2008 migration. Breeding ducks and migrating shorebirdswere abundant during summer 2008. A pair of American bitterns nested and raised young on the wetland as well. Native wet meadow plants such as sedges (Carex) and prairie cordgrass spread out in the wetland during its first functional year in many decades.

Expansion of native, wetland vegetation is a major goal of the Prairie Farm project. Numerous environmental benefits will result from this effort; however, the production and sale of wetland seed also represent a potentially significant income stream for the Prairie Farm. To further this goal, several wetland species (primarily sedges) were collected from natural, private wetlands and transplanted into restored wetland basins on the Prairie Farm in 2008. These transplants and others planned for 2009 will form the innoculum for our future native wetland seed business.

Grasslands

Nearly 100 acres of corn and soybean cropland on the Prairie Farm were planted to grassland in Spring 2008. One field was drilled to NE-28 switchgrass and another to a mixture of tall grasses and prairie forbs dominated by Bonilla big bluestem. Seed will be the main product from the switchgrass field, while specialty hay and lean, grass-fed beef will be the main product anticipated from the bluestem field. Seven acres of another field were sub-leased to South Dakota State University for a 3-year replicated experiment, funded by the NRCS, to compare the production of corn, switchgrass, a bluestem mixture (including forbs), and prairie cordgrass. The remaining 13 acres of this field were drilled with Sunburst switchgrass. Good initial stands of grass were established in 2008.

CRP

Experiments were initiated in 2008 to renovate CRP at the Prairie Farm to enhance their potential to produce biofuel feedstock in the future. Permission to conduct these experiments on active-contract CRP fields was granted in 2007 by the South Dakota State FSA Committee and the South Dakota State Technical Committee. The primary objective is to convert cool-season invasive grasses and weedy forbs that currently dominate these fields with low biofuel value to warm-season, native grasses with high biofuel value. This will be accomplished by combinations of spring and fall burns, herbicide application, mowing, and grazing.

Fall 2007

The first stage of the Prairie Farm project began in fall 2007 when ditch plugs and low berms were installed in 6 drained wetland basins. Some 30 additional drained wetland basins remain on the farm and will be under consideration for restoration in the next several years. The adjacent figure shows the maximum extent of surface water in the Spring if all wetlands on the farm were restored to pre-drainage conditions. However, we think that nearly all wetlands, except the large, undrained semi-permanent wetland in the center of the farm, are temporary and seasonal in nature, and therefore, will dry out by early to mid summer in most years. In especially dry years, many of these restored basins will not have surface water at all. However, sub-irrigated conditions will be present in and near these restored basins to support wetland grass production throughout most growing seasons, even in relatively dry years.