These days, rancher Bill Sproul starts his mornings with a cup of coffee, watching the sun rise over his ranch near Sedan, KS. He has slowed down from the peak years of his operation, when he was managing over 3,000 cattle across roughly 18,000 acres, but the way he manages the land has not changed. Sproul has spent a lifetime building a philosophy rooted not just in cattle, but in the land itself.
Sproul was born in Washington and moved with his family to Oklahoma when he was 11 years old. There, he grew up on a small dairy farm and attended a one-room schoolhouse before later attending Oklahoma State University, where he earned a degree in animal science. Even then, he knew the dairy business was not what he wanted.
“I didn’t want to milk cows,” he told WLJ. “I just wanted to be a cowboy.”
After college, Sproul spent years moving from place to place, working in Kansas, Texas, Missouri and California, building experience and trying to find his footing in agriculture. In 1979, he and his wife, Peggy, bought their first farm near Kansas City. To make the farm payments, Sproul took a job with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, working in Leavenworth, KS, and later in California.
“We started out at 11% interest, and before we got it paid off, it was over 20%,” Sproul said. “It took about eight or nine years.”
With the land paid off, Sproul returned to agriculture full time. He farmed, ran sheep and cattle, built starter yards and began grazing cattle for others. By 2003, he’d grown the operation, sold out and moved south to the Flint Hills near Sedan to begin again.
When he bought his current ranch, it was in decent shape, but trees had begun to take over parts of the prairie. Over the next decade, Sproul focused heavily on clearing those trees, estimating he cut and piled around 30,000 of them to restore the grassland. At the time, he was still operating under the same mindset he had always known; one focused on production. That began to shift when he was introduced to “A Sand County Almanac”by Aldo Leopold. Leopold’s concept of land ethics changed how he viewed his ranch. Instead of seeing land as something to own and use, he began to see it as something he was a part of.
“Now I’m community-based conservation,” Sproul said. “I do everything for the benefit of the community.”
That philosophy shows up in how he manages day to day. He feeds cattle on the ground instead of in troughs, moving them across the ranch to spread nutrients. He relies on fire to control woody species and maintain prairie health. He also keeps stocking rates low, allowing the land to recover and build resilience.
Over time, Sproul found that focusing on the land first did not hurt his bottom line. It improved it. Today, he is in a position to step back and enjoy what he has built, both on the operation and in the condition of the land itself. For Sproul, however, the most important part is not what he leaves behind physically, but what he passes on.
“This land is not ours to own,” he said. “It’s just our turn.”
WLJ: What does “community-based conservation” mean to you?
Bill Sproul: My definition of community-based conservation comes from Aldo Leopold. When you view land as a commodity, then you own it. You bought it, you paid for it, you pay taxes on it. You can do anything you want with it. You can plow it, farm it, cover it up, work it away. It’s a commodity. It’s just dirt.
But when you view land as a community, then you start to learn to love and cherish land, and you are part of the community. I do everything for the benefit of the community. I’m part of the community, and plants are part of it and cattle are part of it. All my decisions are made based on what is best for the community, not any one thing, just the whole as a whole.
WLJ: What management practice do you rely on most to support that approach?
BS: Grassland needs disruption to flourish, and fire is the tool that provides that. Fire is the one trump card that Mother Nature gave the prairie to keep the woody invasion out. For the prairie plants, their growing points are below ground, and woody species, their growing points are above ground. So when fire comes through, it burns those trees and brush off, but the grass just comes right back. That’s how you manage prairie. You use fire to control those woody species and keep the land in grass.
You don’t have the kind of intense fires we used to have because of houses and people, but you still use it as a tool. You burn it, you set those woody plants back, and you keep the system functioning the way it was designed to. If you don’t use fire, that prairie will turn into a forest. Fire, along with regenerative grazing, is what keeps it a grassland.
WLJ: What is the biggest challenge you’re dealing with on your ranch today?
BS: Invasive species. Sericea lespedeza (Chinese bush clover) is the biggest one. It wants to be the only plant on the playground. We’ve used chemicals, fire and non-traditional grazing. You can burn it off, and that first regrowth, the first 30 days, is actually highly palatable.
But after about 30 days, the tannin levels increase. Any cow that grazes it will get a stomachache and quit grazing it. Then she grazes the native plants around it and keeps them suppressed, while Sericea lespedeza takes off. It pulls moisture and nutrients away from the rest of the plant community. Then it goes to seed, and that seed can stay viable for years. Once it’s there, it’s extremely hard to get rid of.
The newest threat is Old World bluestem. It reminds me of sericea in 1994. But nobody has it high up on their radar. So now is the time to figure out how to stop it before it becomes what sericea is today.
WLJ: What would you say to those who believe conservation comes at the cost of production?
BS: How you take care of the community below ground grows the plant community above. The better you take care of the root system and the soil, the more forage you produce. And the more you grow above ground, the more cows you can support, and the more money you make. So to me, the better you take care of the soil and the plant community, the better your operation performs. It’s not separate from production. It drives production.
I’ve been successful, but more money all the time was never my focus. Wealth is life. Your quality of soil, your quality of water, that’s where the real wealth is. Everything else is just dollars. You’ve got to have money, but it can’t be the No. 1 driver. If you manage the land right, the production follows. Maybe 1,000 cows isn’t the answer. Maybe 200 cows and managing something for somebody else is. If the land is healthy, it will produce. That’s where it all starts.
WLJ: When you think about your legacy, what matters most to you?
BS: I’m leaving my legacy by teaching my children and grandchildren land ethics. Then they’ll teach their grandchildren, and that way land ethics goes on and on and on forever. My legacy is to teach. Not only teach your children, but teach your grandchildren that this land is not ours. It’s our turn to take care of it. It belongs to the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren.
