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Richland Center Farmer Wins with Conservation Stewardship Program

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Thursday, December 12, 2013   

RICHLAND CENTER, Wis. – Calvin Sebranek's family has been farming near Richland Center since the early 1940s.

He recently received awards from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Department and the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service for his exemplary land stewardship practices. He also was recognized for enrolling much of his land in the Conservation Stewardship Program, or CSP.

Sebranek's land was the 800-thousandth acre enrolled in Wisconsin. He says the CSP staff has helped him a lot.

"They've been great," he says. "You know, the local guys here have been just phenomenal. They've come up with these new ideas – 'I think this new idea we got, we think it will work on your farm, someone else has done it so go see it, and get your opinion and my opinion on it,' you know. They're just great guys to work with."

Sebranek urges other farmers to sign up for the Conservation Stewardship Program, which has an open sign-up period until Jan. 17.

He says his goal is always to leave the land in better shape than he found it, and he's done projects to ensure his crop rotation and cattle-raising operation are more sustainable. He also did a project with the stream on his land.

"I'm not a fisherman,” he says. “I never had time to fish, but we put in 24 trout lunkers for the fish in the creek, and it's just better for the wildlife and the fish and everything."

Sebranek custom-raises 80 Holstein heifers and about 250 Holstein steers, and switches between corn and alfalfa for most of his acreage. The farm now encompasses about 400 acres.

Farmers can learn more about signing up for the Conservation Stewardship program online at www.nrcs.usda.gov, or by visiting a local NRCS field office.

Sebranek says he enrolled his land in the Conservation Stewardship Program to carry on the tradition started by his father.

"Dad built a dam back in the mid-70s,” he explains. “That was probably our first conservation practice – there's a creek that flows down through the middle of our farm. And he did small stretches of riprap, I'll say in the early 80s, mid-80s. We've just went to more, I don't know what the right word is, modern practices."

Sixty million acres of land in the U.S. are in the Conservation Stewardship Program.



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