Marginal Areas Program – A Winning Partnership

By Ken Bailey

Pheasants Forever Canada’s (PFC) partnership with Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) in Alberta is increasing perennial cover on the landscape, providing valuable nesting and escape cover for upland game birds, including grey partridge and pheasants.

DUC’s Marginal Areas Program (MAP) offers a financial incentive to producers willing to plant perennial cover in marginal areas of annual cropland. PFC’s $50,000 investment in the program is boosting the incentive and expanding the awareness of PFC and our own Save the Edges campaign in Alberta.

“Many farmers have areas of low productivity that provide little or no financial return, whether because of salinity, poor soils, or because portions of their land are not easily accessed by the large equipment they use. MAP offers them $125/acre to convert that unproductive cropland to forages or perennial species,” says Pheasants Forever Canada President Perry McCormick. “Taking these areas out of cropland and seeding them to forages results in increased returns for farmers and huge benefits to pheasants, other ground nesting birds, pollinators and biodiversity. We like to think of it as farming the best, leaving the rest.”

DUC’s senior lead in agriculture, Craig Bishop, says they’re thrilled that PFC approached them about a partnership.

“In many ways DUC’s objectives align with PFC’s,” he offered. “Enhanced game bird habitat is the mission of both organizations, and our respective supporters tend to come from the same demographic.  We share a lot of values with PFC and believe it’s better to cooperate than to compete when opportunities to do so exist. PFC’s participation in this initiative will allow us to stretch the program further than we could without them. And that’s good for wildlife, including upland birds and waterfowl.”

Eligible lands are capped at a maximum of 40 acres per parcel (quarter-section), though they’re most typically five to 20 acres in size. In addition to the financial incentive, MAP also offers farmers a pollinator-friendly seed pack, a mixture of short- and long-lived perennial species that include vetches, clovers and sunflowers, though they’re not obligated to take advantage of this offer; roughly half do, the remainder seeding perennials of their own choosing.

“In addition to improved financial returns, there are several other benefits realized by the producers when they increase biodiversity in mostly monocultural landscapes,” says McCormick. “These include a decrease in the prevalence of herbicide-resistant weeds, enhanced carbon sequestration, a reduction in salinity, improved water and soil quality, and an increase in at-risk pollinator diversity and abundance. Research also shows that healthy landscapes that host safe spaces for pollinators realize increased local crop production. This program is win-win and we’re pleased to be partnering with DUC. Producers will benefit, but so will southern Alberta’s pheasant population.”

Thanks to our supporters, Pheasants Forever Canada is able to invest in Ducks Unlimited Canada’s (DUC) Marginal Areas Program (MAP).

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Pheasants Forever’s investment will help boost this incentive offer to producers and expand awareness of Pheasants Forever and our Save the Edges campaign in Alberta.

In addition to the incentive and pollinator bonus, MAP also offers access to Echelon from Nutrien Ag Solutions. Echelon’s crop advisors work with producers to create a precise picture of their fields, giving them the confidence to make better decisions in both planning and execution.