Farming with the Wild— Case Study

Toward a Wilder Family Farm

After a long season of dawn-to-dusk farming, Charlie Rominger could understandably look toward late fall for some much deserved down time. The canning tomatoes, wine grapes, corn, wheat, long-grained rice, and sunflowers on the 2,000–acre Yolo County California family farm that he and his brothers operate have been sold. But once the bills are paid, paperwork completed, and fields prepared for winter, Rominger is looking forward to yet another season of work. The first chance he gets to break free, the tall, soft-spoken, outdoorsman plans to mount his tractor and begin to shape and scoop a swale and pond in a particular low-lying area of the farm.

For more than a decade, Charlie, his brothers Bruce and Rick, and their father, former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Richard Rominger have been restoring habitats on their commercial farm northwest of Winters. They’ve planted hedgerows of native grasses, shrubs, and trees as living borders between fields. Levee banks and roadsides have been revegetated and help control weeds and filter runoff. Rice fields are flooded following the harvest season to help decay rice straw and to provide important habitat for waterfowl. And numerous ponds have been constructed to filter irrigation water, capture winter rain, and provide essential wetland habitat for native terrestrial species, as well as birds migrating along the Great Pacific Flyway.

In addition to creating a farm bustling with quail, pheasants, ducks, and dozens of other species, habitat restoration has made positive contributions to the Romingers’ diverse cropping operation. Native grasses, trees, and shrubs provide nectar and pollen sources for beneficial insects that control pests, and for local pollinators that help to maximize crop yields. Windbreaks protect fields and vineyards from wind and harsh weather.

According to Dr. Robert Bugg, entomologist and researcher at the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Project at UC Davis, on-farm wetland habitats, even those artificially constructed, may hold a key to saving some of the Sacramento Valley’s most threatened residents — amphibians. Populations of frogs, toads, salamanders and other amphibians have been suffering a free-fall decline due to a dramatic loss of wetland habitat as well as a great variety of other environmental factors, including global warming, pesticide pollution, and predation from non-native species. Because amphibians go through an extremely sensitive metamorphosis between aquatic and terrestrial life cycles, Bugg believes they serve as an early warning system of broader environmental degradation.

There still may be time to turn things around. Farm ponds and ditches, still poorly understood as ecological resources in this country, could potentially lighten our impact on amphibians and other creatures. Of course, an individual farmer like Charlie Rominger can’t take on the loss of habitat and native species alone or in isolation. It will take neighboring farmers as well as researchers like Bugg monitoring trials and analyzing results.

The important thing to note is that pond building and habitat restoration can also help farmers and landowners reduce sediment and runoff, thereby complying with impending Clean Water Act regulations. Now we need a nationwide movement of ecologically informed pond builders and wetland restorationists throughout our agricultural lands to follow their lead.