Merry Gardens Farm

05/12/2026

The Farm Bill is the largest piece of U.S. environmental legislation that almost nobody calls environmental legislation. Most people associate it with crop insurance, commodity payments, and SNAP.

What gets less coverage is its conservation title — voluntary programs that pay farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners to do things like restore wetlands, plant cover crops, fence cattle out of streams, and put marginal cropland into permanent grassland habitat.

Between fiscal years 2019 and 2024, the Farm Bill committed $21.7 billion to these conservation programs across the country. New economic analysis from The Nature Conservancy, released as Congress debates the next Farm Bill, shows what that money actually returned. Each year, those federal investments generate roughly $3.45 billion in added economic value — a national return of $1.58 for every federal dollar invested.

They support an estimated 46,700 jobs annually, on average, over a ten-year period. About 22,400 of those are direct conservation jobs (laborers implementing practices, scientists, engineers, agency staff).

The rest ripple through equipment suppliers, native plant nurseries, contractors, and rural service economies. For context, that's roughly 5 percent of the total number of farmers, ranchers, and agricultural managers in the entire United States.

The programs in question — Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), and a handful of others — are entirely voluntary. Landowners apply.

They get paid to implement specific practices on their own land. Nobody's property rights are restricted. Nobody is forced to do anything. The federal share covers part of the cost; the producer covers the rest.

And the public goods generated — cleaner drinking water for downstream cities, reduced flooding, restored pollinator habitat, captured soil carbon, recovered grassland and wetland species — accrue to everyone. The current Farm Bill has been operating on extension since 2023.

Congress has yet to pass a new one. The conservation title sits at roughly 7 percent of total Farm Bill spending, dwarfed by the nutrition and crop insurance titles, and it gets nibbled at every reauthorization cycle.

The number worth keeping in front of any policymaker considering cuts: $1.58 returned for every $1 invested, plus tens of thousands of jobs, plus the air and water benefits that don't show up on a balance sheet at all. Conservation, when you actually measure it, doesn't cost the country money. It makes the country money.

05/11/2026

Minnesota looked at 8,000 yards and saw not lawns, but a corridor. The state just opened grants for its Lawns to Legumes pollinator habitat program, and the design is smarter than a typical rebate check.

Homeowners and renters can get up to $400 reimbursed for converting lawn to native plants, but the program prioritizes projects that connect to existing habitat patches.

The goal is not just 8,000 random gardens. It is a statewide bee corridor that pollinators can actually travel through without hitting dead zones of turf grass and chemical treatment.

The inclusion of renters matters. Most conservation rebates target property owners. Minnesota recognized that roughly one-third of the state's residents rent, and their yards are just as capable of producing habitat.

A renter with landlord permission can tear out a front lawn, plant prairie dropseed, purple prairie clover, and butterfly w**d, and get paid back. Over 8,000 yards already joined.

The plants are legumes and forbs that fix nitrogen, build soil, and bloom in succession from April through September so there is never a hungry week for bees. The program is funded through the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources, which means it ties pollinator health directly to water quality and soil stability.

It is a corridor in the most literal sense — a connected path of living infrastructure running through neighborhoods that used to be ecological dead ends.

05/10/2026

The grass around a public school playground is not supposed to be a chemical exposure zone. For years in Washington state, it functionally was. Landscapers sprayed cosmetic pesticides — chemicals used purely for aesthetic w**d control, not for health or safety — on the same grounds where children ran at recess and where local insect populations attempted to survive. The chemicals drifted. They soaked into soil. They killed the clover and dandelions that bees actually need, and they left kids playing on treated surfaces without any real understanding of cumulative exposure risk.
Washington state just banned cosmetic pesticides on all public school grounds completely. The law forces landscapers to switch to mechanical w**d control — think flame w**ding, hand removal, and targeted mowing — instead of broadcast chemical sprays. This is not a small operational change. School districts contract out grounds maintenance to companies that have built their cost structures around chemical applications. Those contracts have to be renegotiated. Equipment has to change. Training has to happen. The state decided that inconvenience was worth the trade. Children are now shielded from unnecessary toxic exposure on public property, and local insect populations get a reprieve from one of the most relentless chemical pressure points in urban landscapes. The lawns might look slightly less uniform. The biology underneath them gets to function again.

05/05/2026

❤️🐄 this is how we do it. As a community. 🙏

158 likes, 8 comments. "Isolated Nebraska ranchers learn they are not alone"

04/28/2026

Something has shifted permanently in how Americans relate to food and where it comes from. The pandemic accelerated a trend that was already building, and the numbers have not retreated. More than four in ten US households are now producing food at home — vegetables, fruit, herbs — and the demographic driving the fastest growth is under 44. Millennials represent nearly a third of all gardeners. Seventy percent of them consider themselves plant parents. The food revolution is quiet, decentralized and happening in backyards and on balconies across every state.

04/28/2026

04/18/2026

The USDA is paying farmers to convert 40,000 acres of cornfields to prairie, and the $3.1 billion program runs through 2028.
This isn't a pilot project. This is agricultural policy recognizing that monarch butterflies need milkw**d more than we need marginal corn. Farmers can grow monarch habitat instead of unprofitable soybeans and get paid through the Conservation Reserve Program. The rows in this photo represent the transition—corn on one side, native prairie plugs on the other.
The scale matters. Forty thousand acres of restored prairie creates a corridor for pollinators through the agricultural Midwest. It filters runoff before it hits the Gulf of Mexico. It sequesters carbon in deep prairie root systems that go ten feet down. It provides hunting habitat for pheasants and waterfowl.
Farmers are signing up because the math works. Marginal corn ground—fields that flood in spring or dry out in summer—yields poorly. The CRP payment often exceeds crop profits. Meanwhile, the prairie establishes in three years and then manages itself with prescribed fire every few years instead of annual tillage, planting, and chemical application.
The program specifically targets monarch habitat, requiring milkw**d and nectar plant establishment. It's not just "plant grass." It's ecological restoration with specific botanical requirements.
Is this the future of agricultural policy—paying farmers to restore ecosystems rather than maximize commodity production? Should taxpayers fund 40,000 acres of prairie when corn prices are high?

04/17/2026

Five dollars per square foot. Cash. No tax deduction, no rebate paperwork that comes six months later. Actual money for actual square footage of lawn you tear out and replace with California natives.
I did the math while standing at this nursery in the photo. Those are Eschscholzia californica and Cleveland sage waiting for pickup. A standard 1,000 square foot front yard in a San Fernando Valley suburb—that modest patch of Bermuda grass struggling against the heat—nets you $5,000. The check comes after inspection, but it comes. LA is literally buying back its desert identity one yard at a time.
The demand broke the initial program budget. They had to inject more funding because homeowners ran the numbers and realized the rebate covers the plants, the mulch, the installation labor, and leaves money leftover. Meanwhile, the water bill drops 60% once the natives establish. You're getting paid to lower your utility costs.
The ecological benefits cascade. Native bees specializing on California sagebrush suddenly have forage in neighborhoods where they haven't been seen in decades. Hooded orioles nest in palm trees but feed in these restored yards. The urban heat island effect drops when reflective turf becomes layered canopy with mulch underneath. Root systems go six feet deep instead of the three-inch mat of Bermuda grass.
Cultural psychology is the real hurdle. For seventy years, an LA lawn meant you'd arrived. It signaled affluence and waste capacity. The rebate program weaponizes that signaling—it makes lawn ownership financially irrational. Your neighbor cashes a $5,000 check and watches their water bill plummet while you're still paying $300 a month to keep Kentucky bluegrass alive in 100-degree heat.
The irrigation lines in the photo are for establishment only. Two years from now, that nursery bed survives on 15 inches of annual rainfall—the natural desert climate. No sprinklers. No guilt about waste during drought restrictions.

04/15/2026

What if increasing your crop yield didn’t require spending more money?

Some of the most effective ways to improve crop yield come from working with your soil, and surprisingly, using fewer inputs. By focusing on soil biology, diversity, and water efficiency, farmers are seeing stronger yields and lower input costs over time.

Discover how regenerative practices can help you increase yield and profitability. Read more on the Soil Health Academy website.


https://soilhealthacademy.org/natural-ways-to-increase-crop-yields-without-spending-more-money/

04/15/2026

😔

While most of Devon is bright green, an emerging patchwork of fields will turn yellow, then brown, then silver. This is the kiss of death from glyphosate, the “world’s favourite herbicide”. Most agriculture starts by removing any competing vegetation. In this case, the fields need to be cleared to sow maize for cow feed.

The choice is normally either to plough, costing around £25 per acre, or to spray with glyphosate, costing around £15 per acre. Some argue that glyphosate kills w**ds without disturbing the soil, so is less damaging to the environment – and have even branded no-plough farming, facilitated by glyphosate, as ‘regenerative’. Like all artificial pesticides, glyphosate is banned in organic farming.

At college, I was taught that glyphosate breaks down quickly and harmlessly on soil contact, has zero mammalian toxicity, and is harmless in our waterways. All of this turned out to be untrue. It is sprayed on the oats and wheat that go into our breakfast, the legumes in our dinner and the barley that’s turned into our beer. It’s in our tap water and rain; it’s such a persistent chemical that 28% of bread samples tested by the Pesticide Action Network UK were found to contain high levels of glyphosate, while in the US, it can be found in 80% of urine samples. And we’re using more of it than ever – since 1990, the amount of glyphosate used in UK farming has increased by 1,000%.

Every year, I watch these fields die. What upsets me is that maize likes a loose seedbed, so the fields will likely be ploughed anyway. This begs the question: why spray as well? To add to the madness, much of the land will soon be covered with plastic film, to warm the soil and boost early growth. Since 2021, the EU has only allowed biodegradable film, which breaks down into CO2 and water. But in the UK, most of the film is oxo-degradable, breaking down into microplastics that remain in the soil indefinitely. I’m bemused that such widespread plastic pollution is deemed acceptable, while we congratulate ourselves on banning plastic straws.

My point here is not to demonise farmers, but to plead for a food and farming policy that accounts for environmental and financial costs. Farmers are not philosophers; they must make a living. It’s the government’s job to create the framework, so food production is not achieved at the cost of our planet or the health of its people.

📸 Emma Stoner for Veg & Table

04/15/2026

😍

Imagine waking up to a w**d citation from your city because your pollinator garden grew taller than the grass in your neighbor's lawn. That scenario has played out thousands of times across American suburbs—until Columbia passed an ordinance that fundamentally changes the game between municipal code and ecological gardening.
Columbia's new law doesn't just suggest tolerance for tall native plants. It offers legal protection. Homeowners can now register their naturalistic gardens with the city, and once that registration is on file, standard w**d ordinances don't apply. You can grow tall. You can let your milkw**d (Asclepias syriaca) and ironw**d (Vernonia gigantea) hit four feet, five feet, six feet without worrying about the citation letter in your mailbox.
The registration process requires a basic site plan and a commitment to native species, but it explicitly protects "messy" ecological landscaping that functions as actual habitat. That National Wildlife Federation certification sign you see in some yards? It now carries legal weight in Columbia. The city recognizes that a Certified Wildlife Habitat designation exempts the property from height restrictions that were written decades ago for manicured turf grass.
This matters beyond one Missouri city. Columbia's ordinance is the first of its kind in the state to codify ecological function over aesthetic conformity. It recognizes that a yard full of native Joe Pye w**d (Eutrochium purpureum) and wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) isn't neglect—it's conservation infrastructure. The bees, butterflies, and songbirds that use those plants don't care about your HOA's height restrictions, and now Columbia's legal code acknowledges that reality.
What do you think? Should every city offer "garden wild" registrations, or should native plant gardeners have to fight citation battles case by case? And if your city offered this protection tomorrow, would you register your yard?