What's in a Decade?

Grant County sits in the heart of the Driftless Area of Wisconsin between the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers. The landscape here is dendritic and riverine because glaciers did not reach it during the most recent glacial period.

Much of the Midwest is characterized by flat expanses well situated for large fields of row crops. In the Driftless Area though, steep slopes and many meandering streams have forced farmers to adapt their practices to its uniquely rugged topography.

At a national level, cropland has become increasingly consolidated since the 1980's, meaning agricultural production has been gradually shifting onto larger farming operations.

However, the livestock and pasture sectors have not seen this trend. Pasture land and beef cow/calf operations are shifting onto smaller farms.

Those two sectors are prominent in Grant County. In 2022, it was ranked #1 for the county in Wisconsin with the highest market value of cattle/calves and 27% of the land in the county is pasture/grassland. While other cropland (including corn, soy, alfalfa, tobacco) is still prominent, the steep slopes and floodplains in the area make extensive row cropping difficult.

Before the establishment of present-day land ownership in Grant County, the land was inhabited by Ho-Chunk, Kickapoo, Sauk, Fox and other Native peoples, who were forcibly removed through a series of treaties and government actions, reshaping the landscape into the property boundaries we recognize today.

Today, land is owned by federal, state, municipal, tribal and private entities. 88% of Grant County is owned by private, mostly rural owners.

Most of the rural land is dedicated to agricultural production, mostly on small family farms.

94% of the farms are considered 'family farms' by the US Department of Agriculture.

According to the last five USDA Censuses of Agriculture (these are taken once every five years), approximately 80% of farms in Grant County have consistently between 10 and 500 acres.

Another process in agricultural areas is cropland expansion, which causes conversion of grasslands and other ecosystems. Between 2008 and 2016, cropland expansion occurred at an estimated 1 million acres per year in the US.

As an example for trends in land cover change in other areas of the Midwest, Brown County South Dakota, in the heart of the Great Plains is a county with high rates of cropland expansion (especially from grasslands to row crops) since 2008.

Grant County has both more pasture and forest land generally and has seen gentler trends in land cover change. Since 2020, there has been a slight increase in 'natural' land cover (mostly from increases in pasture).

Consolidation and cropland expansion are pieces of two types of related change: change in ownership and change in land use/land cover. Understanding these factors can help scientists, policy makers and communities assess land use patterns, conservation potential, and socio-ecological dynamics.

Just because there isn't drastic consolidation and cropland expansion is Grant County, does that mean that land ownership and cover generally have been stable through time?

Using publicly available tax parcel data, we can check whether a parcel has been owned by the same entity through time.

Combining that with land cover through time from the USDA Cropland Data Layer, we can compare trends in similarity. Owner names have clear spikes at 1 (same owner for past decade), and most parcels have similarity scores greater than .43. Most land cover has been in the same category for at least half of the decade.

We can use parcel geometries to map the relationship between stable land cover and ownership since 2014.

This data can be a resource for further questions and conclusions:

In Grant County, the landscape is characterized by a dominance of small rural properties with both ownership and land cover stability over the past decade. However, stability does not inherently mean long term ecologically beneficial practices. Stable land could mean a farmer has kept a wooded area out of production, but it could also mean they kept the land in monoculture corn/soy rotations. Understanding the nuances of land use within this stability will help guide future conservation efforts and ensure that agricultural practices in Grant County support both economic viability and ecological health.