Roots matter for award-winning regenerative North Dakota ranch family

MADDOCK, N.D. — On any given day, rancher Brian Maddock is out in the drift prairie near the town of Maddock that bears his family name, dropping hay bales on wind-scoured hilltops and hardpan soil where little else will grow.

From there, the cattle do the rest of the work. They eat, they trample, they fertilize.

Green rings begin to form where nothing grew, soft swells of emerald where cattle will graze again after they’re rotated in again from another paddock.

The soil, after years of careful management by the Maddock family, breathes again.

For that work, Brian and his wife Vicki, along with the entire Maddock family, recently received recognition as recipients of the Leopold Conservation Award, making them part of a growing lineage of farmers and ranchers proving that working lands can also heal themselves.

The transformations to the Maddock family’s 4,000 acres of ranchland didn’t come from a one-season fix. They were constructed one fence, one water line and one holistic grazing decision at a time.

For the Maddock family, it has been a way of life since the early 1990s when land they farmed near Devils Lake became inundated, forcing a shift to rotational grazing and other regenerative ranching practices.

The Leopold Conservation Award, administered by Sand County Foundation, is a nationally recognized honor celebrating outstanding voluntary conservation.

Named after conservationist Aldo Leopold, the award is now presented in 28 states. This is the 10th time the award has been given in North Dakota.

“We’re excited about the things we’re doing, raising the cattle the way we do, and we’ve changed so many things over the years,” Brian Maddock said. “In a lot of ways, it’s not more work, it’s easier.”

After attending a course on holistic land management through the Carrington Research Extension Center around 40 years back, Brian came back home with eyes wide open to a shift the family needed to make away from crops and toward cattle.

“That opened my mind up tremendously,” Brian Maddock said of the course.

The farm was struggling financially at the time, he said.

“He came back from that course and said we need to make changes in how we farm or we’ll have to quit farming,” said his son, Travis Maddock. “He realized, once he started looking at the whole of things, that as a farmer, he was failing to try to raise crops. He wasn’t making any money. It wasn’t going to work out.”

That soul searching led his father to understand where his strengths lay, which was managing cattle and grass, Travis said. The family looked at the land they had and saw a lot of dirt, but not much quality soil left.

“All the tops of these hills are blown right down to the clay. Can we build some soil? Can we look at that? So we start putting a lot of these principles into place,” Travis said.

From there, they started installing cross-fences, developing water systems and rotating cattle through around two dozen paddocks, eventually shifting marginal farmland with soils too thin to support crops to ones that can support cattle. That’s helped restore fertility to the land.

“That land is really designed to support cattle,” Travis Maddock said.

Through practices like livestock impact on the grassland and bale grazing, the family has been able to transform the land, he said.

“You put the bales out there and let the cattle graze them down,” Travis Maddcok said. “That gives you your soil health principles, you’ve got cover, you’ve got living roots in there, you’re increasing your water cycle, your nitrogen cycle. Underneath there, you get your microbes rocking and rolling, and they’ll build soil for you. That’s how you build soil.”

Travis talks about how, as a regenerative rancher, you really have to think about the two herds you need to manage.

“We’re feeding the cows, but we’re also feeding all those microbes in the soil. We need to feed them too, and they need to be thriving,” he said. “As long as we can have symbiosis between those two things, we have the opportunity to create something where good things are happening, whether it’s financially or ecologically.”

Since the first Leopold Conservation Award was given in 2003, the award has spread to recognize the positive things farmers and ranchers were doing across the country in stewarding working lands.

Lance Irving, vice president of Sand County Foundation, calls these recipients “quiet heroes” for the work they put into their farms and ranches.

“This is an opportunity to recognize actual working farms and ranches, where their livelihood is tied to their productivity, and how conservation is a tool in their toolbox to not only make them more environmentally resilient but also economically resilient,” Irving said.

Award winners are chosen by panels within their state designated by local partners that include the North Dakota Association of Conservation Districts, North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition, and the North Dakota Stockman’s Association.

What stood out about Brian Maddock, Irving said, is that he’s never satisfied and always looking to improve his processes.

“He’s not doing it for himself, he’s thinking, how can I make it better for my kids, how can I make it better for my grandkids,” Irving said. “Folks of his generation willing to change what they’ve done for the last 40, 50 years, to try something new, is not something you see all the time, and that really stands out to me.”

Irving also points out the Maddock family motto of “Soil. Cattle. Family.” sums up their philosophy.

“If you take care of the soil, the soil will take care of the cattle. If you take care of the cattle, the cattle will take care of the family,” Irving said. “But that initial building block is taking care of the soil. You can’t do the others before you take care of the soil.”

Darrell Oswald, district manager for the Burleigh County Soil Conservation District, helped bring the award to North Dakota in 2015.

Judging is done by local leaders from agriculture, conservation, and state agencies.

“One thing I’ve noticed about all of the winners over the years is they all think holistically,” Oswald said. “They’re early adopters. They think outside the box. They’re not afraid to try things.”

The Maddock family is no exception, he said.

“Brian was an early adopter of multi-paddock adaptive grazing systems, and was thinking outside the box,” Oswald said. “They’re in an area where ranching is secondary to farming. They’ve carved out a living there, where annual cropping is generally king.”

As the

10th North Dakota family to receive the award

, the Maddocks join a roster of producers helping to shape regenerative agriculture in the state and region.

Other recent winners include Heaton Ranches in McKenzie, Bartholomay Kattle Kompany in Sheldon, Spring Valley Cattle in Glen Ullin and Sand Ranch near Ellendale.

“These are the elite of the elite of producers, in my mind,” Oswald said. “They’re profitable. They’re putting resources first. They’re in it for the long haul. They’re generational, and in theory, they want to farm and ranch forever and are working towards that. What they’re doing with the soil and resources is allowing them to do that, and that’s important.”

This mirrors national trends. Many Leopold winners began changing practices when their backs were against the wall — financially, ecologically, or both. Once they saw it work, they became advocates, showing neighbors what’s possible.

Irving notes that today’s regenerative ranchers don’t fit old stereotypes.

“The general public’s notion of what a farmer or rancher is not actually indicative of what this next generation is,” Irving said. “These are tech-savvy folks.”

Irving mentioned how they’re adopting GPS grazing collars, innovative water systems, soil sampling and tissue testing, and that there is more of this than ever before.

“In a way, agriculture kind of has its back against the wall, and you have to figure out how to do it, because not only is our food system relying on it, but also our rural communities,” Irving said. “Farms and ranches are the backbones of rural communities, and without them, that’s an entire way of life that becomes harder and harder.”

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