Seed Mix Experiments and Analysis of Native Seed Supply for Cost Effective Pollinator Habitat

The USDA Farm Service Agency intends to award, as a sole source, a fixed price contract to the University of Northern Iowa for seed mix experiments and analysis of native seed supply for cost effective pollinator habitat. Every acre enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) generates multiple benefits, such as soil erosion control and pollinator habitat. There has been considerable effort to document and even target enrollment according to these benefits. However, increasing the cost effectiveness of the program requires consideration of costs, as well as benefits. Additional attention on how to reduce the establishment cost of practices through careful consideration of seed mixes and management regimes would increase program efficiencies. This is particularly true for the native pollinator practice (CP-42), which has required seed mixes generally considered to be, not only costly, but difficult to successfully establish. Beginning in 2015, the Tallgrass Prairie Center (TPC) began studying the cost and ecosystem services of seed mixes at the Northeast Iowa Research and Demonstration Farm and found that mixes and management regimes tailored to local conditions can provide the same pollinator benefits and four times the soil protection and weed control as off-the-shelf pollinator habitat seed mixes at a quarter of the cost (holding constant the cover density). These results persisted into a second year of monitoring. The cost effectiveness of seed mixes is also impacted by seed-supply bottlenecks, which can lead to very high prices and subvert practice specifications such as species substitutions and weed contamination. The native seed industry has the ability to increase production capacity in response to market demand, but there is a critical time lag, and future demand must be sufficiently reliable to entice native seed growers to risk investing in greater production capacity. There may be opportunities to make CRP seed demand more compatible with the native seed market through coordinated implementation, improving cost-effective delivery of ecosystem services. Objectives To make CP-42 more cost effective, this project has three objectives: 1. Identify the factors that impact the cost effectiveness of practice establishment on CP-42 enrollments. 2. Develop alternative CP-42 seed mixes and management regimes that are more cost effective than off-the-shelf seed mixes. 3. Identify approaches to avoid seed supply bottlenecks for CRP. Scope For Objective 1, a sample of landowners who established CP-42 in Iowa in 2015-2017 will be surveyed, documenting time of seed ordering, cost of the seed, where the seed was ultimately obtained, as much of the origin of the seed as possible, when and how the planting was carried out, and first-year management practices. These data will be combined with vegetation and pollinator monitoring data from 30 of the landowners' fields per year to test whether the species planted are those that occur in the planting and pollinators respond accordingly when habitat is available. For Objective 2, the experimental work will continue at the current TPC site and expand to a second one representing a different ecoregion. A number of seed mixes and management regimes will be compared at each site using a randomized complete block design. At a minimum, the mixes will include a low-cost grass mix, a CP-42 pollinator mix currently used, and a cost-effective pollinator mix with varying forb to grass ratios. The management regimes will include mowing. The results will be relevant to portions of six corn-belt states. For Objective 3, information will be gathered through meetings and interviews from the native seed value chain-seed suppliers, conservation planners, and landowners-through individual and group meetings. Landowners will include those sampled for Objective 1 Members of the Agricultural Conservation Working Group, in particular, will be consulted to identify and address barriers to adoption of native perennial vegetation for conservation. Tasks - Conduct field experiments in northern and southern Iowa to compare the cost-effectiveness of various seed mixes and management regimes. - Develop experimental designs, sampling protocols and a flexible template for estimating cost-effectiveness of alternative seed mix and management regime combinations which can be replicated in different ecoregions. - Obtain and summarize CP-42 seed mix source, quality, and price data in areas of recent high participation the upper Midwest. - Conduct detailed vegetation and pollinator surveys at roughly sixty CP-42 sites planted in 2015-2017, quantifying the impact of native seed supply shortages on ecosystem services and applying the cost effectiveness analysis used in field experiments. - Identify ways that CRP can maximize the potential of the native seed industry to be able to meet changing demand for seed with affordable prices. Delivery - Quarterly reports to FSA detailing accomplishments, progress, and barriers to successful completion of the project. - Preliminary report (due June 30, 2018) analyzing the 3rd year's data from ongoing experimental site and the 1st year's data from second site. The report will identify the geographic area and range of soils over which these conclusions would apply, develop a flexible template for quantifying anticipated cost-effectiveness of alternative seed mixes and managements, and discuss ways to promote native seed industry production capacity (volume, species and regional variety). - Final report (due June 30, 2019) that builds upon the preliminary report and reflects the final year of data collection. Results will be shared at a minimum of two presentations at scientific conferences. Interested and qualified contractors should contact Erin Olenjack, at Erin.Olenjack@wdc.usda.gov, or Billy Rowland, at Billy.Rowland@wdc.usda.gov, by June 23, 2017 at 12 pm EST.