Leopold Conservation Award recognizes farm near Green Bay for its sustainability efforts

On their 240-acre beef, pig, chicken and vegetable farm near Green Bay, Valerie Dantoin Adamski and Rick Adamski contend with the same worries that most other farmers do. But they don’t have to think too much about wild predators. 

In fact, Valerie believes predators can be useful to Full Circle Farm’s operations. Although the farmers use electric fencing to protect their chickens from hungry foxes, they see the wild animals as helping to protect their son and daughter-in-law’s nearby organic vegetable farm. 

“We’re pretty sure that having fox on the farm is a good thing because it keeps the rodent populations down,” Dantoin Adamski recently told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “Rabbits and mice will damage the crops. So, we think the foxes are a net plus on the farm, and all we have to do is enhance the protection for the chickens.”

Full Circle Farm’s efforts to minimize impacts on the natural environment and wildlife won the family the 2024 Leopold Conservation Award from the Sand County Foundation. The award, given in collaboration with the American Farmland Trust, “recognizes and celebrates achievement in voluntary conservation by agricultural landowners.”

The married couple spoke to “Wisconsin Today” about the ways that they try to lessen their farm’s environmental impacts. 

Coexisting with wildlife

Valerie said impacts from wild animals — including wolves, coyotes, foxes and cranes — can be minimized. She is sponsoring a resolution with Wisconsin Conservation Congress that would change the way the state compensates farmers when wolves kill livestock. 

Currently, the state pays farmers when wolves kill their livestock. Dantoin Adamski would like compensation after a first wolf kill to depend on whether the farmer took steps to protect their livestock. 

“We just want to make sure that farmers, if they do have wolf predation on their farm, to take care of it and do something different, so the wolves just don’t keep coming back for a snack,” Dantoin Adamski said. “It’s not fair to blame the wolf if the farmer is doing less than good husbandry practices and letting the wolves come in and take livestock. And so this is an effort to have the wolves be accountable, but also the farmers be accountable.”

Adamski added that Full Circle Farm tries to be welcoming to wildlife by creating buffer zones around the farm and habitat within it where wildlife can thrive. These areas create space for grassland bird species, which are some of the animals that suffer the most from modern agricultural practices. 

“We have continuously seen bobolinks and meadowlarks and other grassland birds on our grazing pastures,” Adamski said. “We’re interested in enrolling in a program to even further enhance the wildlife habitat, or the grassland bird population on our farms by the practices of managed grazing.”

Managed grazing

Managed grazing is one of the main ways that Full Circle Farm tries to keep its agricultural footprint light. 

“We use no antibiotics or hormones. We don’t use herbicides or pesticides,” Dantoin Adamski said. “That’s pretty easy to do when you’re using managed grazing, which simply means planting really healthy, lush pasture crops of clovers, alfalfa and various grasses, and that’s what the cattle eat.” 

Dantoin Adamski said this is different from conventional beef farming. There, cattle might be housed with a concrete floor and fed in a bunk feeder. 

“We know that cattle have four feet. They can walk — let them go out in the field, harvest their own food, and then also deposit their manure out there,” she said. “So, we have way less manure handling than a conventional farm that has to have either a manure lagoon and then spread that poop in the fall after or early in spring.”

Community building

The farm has worked to maximize its sustainability efforts through collaboration. It participates in a community-supported agriculture venture — commonly known as a CSA — with several other nearby farms. 

“Farmers have a good way of producing, but not always the best way of distributing and getting produce to market,” Rick said. 

So, the farms partnered to share resources, creating the SLO Farmers Cooperative.

“We are teaming up with other farms … so that we’re not competing with each other, because then that only drives prices lower for us, and we don’t want to have higher prices for our customers,” Valerie said. “So, we talk about a value chain. Instead of a food chain, it’s a value chain where everybody gets the right value that’s appropriate for their place in the food system.”