Read Smith is a farmer, rancher and soil conservation advocate who practices what he preaches on his 8000-acre ranch in the grassland prairies of eastern Washington’s Palouse region. “I am a sixth generation farmer, the third generation of my family to live on this ground,” he says. Read and his youngest son are carrying on the mostly dryland farming that Read’s grandfather started here in the 1930s. They raise hard red and white wheat, soft white wheat, barley, peas, lentils, oats, canola, mustard, safflower, sunflower, millet, alfalfa hay – and run some cows.

Read considers himself fortunate because both his grandfather and father were good stewards of the land. He comments, “They used all the technology that was available back during their times, and as a result I have a wonderful resource here.” Read has continued this tradition. In 1976, he began experimenting with direct-seed systems; by 1997 he converted the entire farm to direct-seed.

Direct seeding means that Read never plows his fields, instead using a machine called a “drill” to punch seeds into the stubble of last season’s crops. Where his conventional neighbors have tidy furrows carved into the soil, Read leaves no ground bare. He explains, “In conventionally tilled soil, there is a fraction of the living organisms present in the ground because that conventional system effectively minimizes the amount of worms, microbes and wonderful friendly bugs that are present by the millions in healthy soils.” In addition to healthier soils, Read has found that his fuel costs have gone down and that direct seeding saves him time.

Where some farmers cultivate every inch of their acreage, Read plants a buffer of native grasses, legumes, trees and shrubs around every field he plants. He has put a full quarter of his property – the less productive cropland – into the Conservation Reserve Program. “It is a pretty good trade off because you are in effect renting that land to the government for a period of time, and you keep it in a sustainable grassland system that is beneficial to wildlife and the environment,” he explains. “If there is a way my descendents can cultivate these very steep hillsides efficiently and in an environmentally friendly way, that’s great, these topsoils will still be here. I am just trying to protect the resource now so there will be that option in the future.”

From the high points on Reed’s property, the golden grasslands roll on unhindered out toward the horizon. It is an arid land, averaging less than 15 inches of rain a year, but water has played a major role shaping the landscape. The remains of ice age floods are still evident here. Says Read, “Oftentimes I get up on these hills and think about when Lake Missoula broke loose and that water was going by here at 60 to 70 miles per hour. What a roar that must have made for two or three days as it emptied and pooled.”

Smaller-scale mudflows are a major concern for Read today. He reports, “The topsoil here in the Palouse is 40 percent gone today. We have only been farming for four generations and we have lost ten percent of the topsoil with every generation.” He continues, “Technology has masked the loss of productive capacity of these soils – new fertilizers, new techniques, new varieties, and new tools – and as a result people are ignoring the loss of that resource.” Now, not only is the topsoil eroding, but the subsoils are washing off the hills and covering the good bottomland soils. Read feels strongly that moving away from tillage is a key to remedying this problem.

Read has worked diligently to change the ways of conventional farmers. He has been a Conservation District official since 1974, including a stint as the president of the National Association of Conservation Districts. The benefits of direct seeding take some years to realize, and many farmers aren’t willing or able to make that investment. Read says, “Its frustrating to me as a proponent of direct seed to have producers make a one or two year commitment to try direct seeding, on perhaps their most marginal ground, and then declare the system inadequate. It’s not a fair test.”

Read is working on all fronts to be a good steward of his resources. He carefully cultivates wildlife habitat and ponds as part of his ranch operation.  “It’s very rewarding to see wildlife respond to things that you can do,” he says. The ranch supports whitetail and mule deer, upland game birds, migratory waterfowl and a whole host of predators, songbirds and birds of prey. Read prefers wildlife watching to hunting himself, but he is practical about the role of hunting. He permits fee hunting on his land to a small number of people that agree to a long list of requirements before they can come on the ranch. All proceeds from this hunting are invested in further improvements to wildlife habitat.

In developing a system for rotational grazing, Read wanted to find a way to cross fence his pastures and still have access to water. He was able to install a solar-powered pump in an abandoned wellhead, allowing him to divide one large pasture into four small sections around a centralized trough. He explains, “It will be easy to rotate cattle among these four pastures, and there will be more efficient use of the range because they will eat the less desirable crops, facilitating proper rotational grazing.”

Read has been pleased with the reliability of his small investment in solar energy, and is enthusiastic about the role farmers and ranchers may play nationally in renewable energy production. “The greatest potential that the Pacific Northwest and all of rural America has is green energy production,” he says. “Rather than raising crops for less than the cost of production and shipping them abroad, why don’t we keep those products at home producing power.” Using crop residues and other agricultural sources for biofuels is an area that is only now being developed and researched to its full potential.

While the economics of wheat farming are challenging in today’s markets, Read is confident that this can change with US consumers demanding more accountability and security in their food production, and the possibilities offered by green energy. “I am more optimistic today than I was 20 years ago about the potential of agriculture and rural America surviving,” claims Read. “It’s going to be a different world; it’s not going to be like what we see now.” Read does not like to hear the gloom and doom that he finds common in rural coffee shops. He says, “I see great opportunity around the corner. I just hope we can survive the transition between now and then, and keep as many people on the farms as possible.” He concludes, “When we get to the point where we are attracting young people back to agriculture, when the sons and daughters of aging farmers want to stay on the farm because it’s a good alternative to the city lifestyle, then we will have accomplished that goal."

Contact
Read, Deanna & Jeremy Smith Family Farms
J. Read Smith
11751 Lancaster Rd.
St. John, WA 99171
Tel: 509-648-3922
Fax: 509-648-3922
reads@stjohncable.com