Adams said he could not have afforded to reseed marginal lands on his northern Utah ranch without a government subsidy that helps U.S. farmers and ranchers plant grasses, shrubs and trees in worn-out fields and along streams.
President Bush proposes to pump $7.8 billion more into conservation projects such as the one on Adams' ranch. Other Utah farmers would benefit under the proposal because few grow wheat, corn, rice, cotton and soybeans that now capture 90 percent of the government payments, Mark Rey, an undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said during a Utah tour earlier this year.
Adams' conservation payments over a decade totaled nearly $268,000 - twice what he had previously collected for growing wheat. He used the conservation subsidies to plant kochia, a shrub that is nutritious for cattle - the state's No. 1 agricultural industry.
Kochia (pronounced KO-chuh) also acts as a firebreak on lands prone to wildfires, and it can compete with the invasive cheatgrass, blamed for fueling blazes that have scorched tens of thousands of acres throughout Utah.
Adams harvests kochia seeds to reclaim other marginal lands on his sprawling ranch. And he sells excess seeds to farmers and government agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, which hopes to use kochia as part of the mix in reseeding burned out public lands.
One big challenge is that kochia seeds are expensive and limited. Adams already has sold seeds he had on hand, and his next harvest won't be until December.
Nationally, more than 36 million acres are enrolled in the voluntary Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers annual rent to take their land out of production. Reseeding on the reserve lands helps prevent soil and nutrients from washing into waterways and contaminating the air with dust, said Bruce Richeson, Utah executive director of the Farm Service Agency, which oversees the program.
Lands held in reserve, dubbed grass banks, also can be used for grazing livestock after wildfires and other disasters, said Richeson. The program's goal, however, is conservation. Each year, reseeding projects have reduced soil erosion by 454 million tons.
"This has not only helped me financially, but it's also good for the environment," said Adams, whose rangelands have become a showcase for the kochia plant. "The ground is in the best condition it could be."
Adams' nonirrigated wheat farm in Promontory receives annual rainfall of 10 inches to 12 inches - dry enough that the land had to sit idle every other year to store enough moisture to plant crops, such as wheat and corn. By the 1990s, however, Adams decided that farming no longer was economically feasible, so he enrolled some of his property in the conservation program.
Forage kochia is native to the Eurasian countries of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It came to the United States in the 1960s, when specimens were tested in northern Utah. Seeds were released for sale in 1984 by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and U.S. Forest Service.
The plants contain high levels of protein and moisture that range grasses alone can't supply. The University of Wyoming reported that in summer 2001 - when less than 2 inches of rainfall were recorded - shrubs produced 803 pounds per acre of forage on a Uintah County ranch, while an adjacent sagebrush field produced only 33 pounds of nutritionally dry matter.
Studies conducted at Adams' ranch showed that cattle grazing on kochia from November to the end of January saved the family 24 cents per day for each animal. The family benefited even more when the shrubs helped stop a wildfire on their property, saving a farmhouse.
"Bob has been a big part of the success of our program," said plant geneticist Blair Waldron, who has made numerous treks to Eurasia to gather hundreds of specimens for the largest conservation project of its kind in Utah.
Adams said without the conservation subsidy, "I'd still be planting marginal grasses and wheat, and the government would be paying me to do it."
The largest government payment Adams received for raising wheat hit $40,800 in 1998, but checks dwindled and ended by 2003 as he switched to growing kochia. The government now pays rent of about $30 an acre on 2,500 acres Adams took out of production for the reserve program.
Adam's wife, LuAnn, remembers learning just what kochia could do when songbirds reappeared on their land. "It was something I hadn't heard in a long time."
dawn@sltrib.com
