Windbreaks: Return on Investment & Communicating the “Why”

Greetings everyone. My name is Paula Como and today I'd like to talk about something many of us know is valuable but often struggle to explain the return on investment of windbreaks. When landowners are considering whether to establish, renovate, or remove a windbreak, one of the first questions they ask is, "Is it worth it?" Unlike purchasing a new piece of equipment, the value of a windbreak isn't always immediately visible. Today, we'll discuss where that value comes from, how to communicate it effectively, and some tools available to help quantify those benefits. Today's presentation has three goals. First, we'll discuss how windbreaks protect crops and livestock because understanding those biological benefits is the foundation for understanding their economic value. Second, we'll talk about how to communicate these benefits to landowners. Often, the challenge isn't whether windbreaks work, it's helping producers understand how they contribute to the profitability of their operation over time. Finally, I'll introduce a few available calculators that can help estimate return on investment and support planning discussions. Before we begin, let's define two important terms. The first is return on investment or ROI. Simply put, ROI compares the financial return from an investment to what it costs. A positive ROI means the investment is generating more value than it costs over time. The second term is windbreak. While we often think of tree rows, windbreaks can include shrubs, grasses, fences, or other barriers that reduce wind speed and protect an area. The important point is that windbreaks aren't just trees. They're a conservation practice designed to improve growing conditions. This slide summarizes why windbreaks provide economic value. By slowing the wind, they create a better microclimate for crops. Reducing wind means less evaporation, so soils retain more moisture. Plants then experience less water stress, humidity increases slightly, and early season daytime air and soil temperatures become a little bit warmer, all of which support healthier crop growth. Windbreaks also reduce soil erosion, helping to preserve valuable topsoil and nutrients. Research summarized in long-term field studies found that average crop yields increase range ranges from 8 to 44% depending on the crop and growing conditions. The benefits extend beyond crops as well. Livestock protected from wind experience less cold stress. Animals require less energy to maintain body temperature. That reduces winter feed requirements, while improving calving, lambing, and for dairy cattle, milk production. The key takeaway here is that windbreaks are more than just soil. They improve the productivity of everything they're protecting. While the benefits are real, calculating ROI isn't straightforward. First, many of the benefits are delayed and indirect. Soil conservation, improved moisture, and better growing conditions accumulate over many years. Second, weather matters. Windbreaks often provide the greatest yield benefit during dry or stressful years, meaning annual returns can fluctuate. Third, establishing a windbreak removes a small portion of cropland from production. That short-term loss must be weighed against increased productivity across the protected acreage over time. There are also ongoing maintenance costs, such as weed control, replacing dead trees, or repairing storm damage, and those will also vary over time. Finally, many ecosystem services, including wildlife habitat, carbon storage, and biodiversity, provide real value, but are difficult to express in dollars. These factors make windbreak ROI much more complex than simply comparing costs and revenues. Fortunately, we don't have to estimate these values manually. There are several calculators that have been developed specifically for windbreak planning. These tools estimate established costs, maintenance expenses, land removed from production, and expected economic benefit over the life of a windbreak. These are also not just useful for landowners. Conservation districts can also use these tools for long-range planning, grant applications, and demonstrating the value that conservation investments pro- provide for their communities. Having numbers behind our recommendations often helps move conversations from opinions to informed decisions. Now, I'd like to briefly demonstrate how easily this tool is to use. We'll enter a few basic pieces of information such as acreage, windbreak design, and costs. The calcula- calculator will then estimate expected economic returns over the life of the windbreak. As you watch, remember that these numbers are estimates. They're intended to support conversations and planning, not replace professional judgment. The real strength of the tool is helping landowners visualize how long-term conservation benefits translate into economic value. So, in the windbreak economics tool, we have rows dedicated, and you can leave these blank. Not every row has to have something put in. They each have a drop-down menu. And so, you can go in, and you can determine whether you are planting evergreens or deciduous, um small or large, or conservation stock, nursery stock. And you can put in what went into each row. I'm just going to go down the list here for purposes and go in order. You can also put in that there was no row. Spacing in between, again, all of these, if you click on the square and use the drop-down menu, you can have your spacing. This is between row spacing here, in-row spacing. You can also change this to 6 ft, 12 ft. You can If you try to manipulate it, it doesn't always go as planned. It's going to go with what the general recommendations are for whatever this is selected to be. So, I'm just going to go in and make sure everything has a number. Planting stock, since most of what we work with is bare root, I'm just going to put that in for all of our options. Weed control method, I'm just going to put in a variety. Windbreak length, I'm going to say 500 ft. Site prep, we'll do mechanical prep. Main crop. Let's do wheat. Average yield. You can put um You can put in if you know what your what the current average yield is that year, you can put that in um into these columns as well. But, right down here you can see what's your numbers are um in the financial analysis below. So, even with some incomplete information, we can see that the net the total establishment cost is going to be around $330 based on this calculator. Um the total area is going to be about half of an acre, and the total area impacted by this 500-ft windbreak is going to be about 17.22 acres um 40 years after planting. So, 20 years after planting, um the cost ratio would come here. Let me see if I just seven And the more kind of information you put in, the more accurate this is going to be over time. And so, this is going to be net present value of increased crops yield if new windbreak. So, if this is a brand new windbreak, um after 20 years of planting, you're going to be about $90 in the red. 40 years after planting, it's going to be about $1,000, and this is 18 years um to pay back. Um And if this is a renovated windbreak, as you can see, we get a little bit more um a little bit more payback a little bit sooner. Now, if I were to increase the size and let's say we're doing a 1,000-ft windbreak, then we start to see our numbers change a little bit, and we're getting we're doubling that acreage. And so, this is a calculator again just to help with planning. It's to help us um communicate to landowners what um is going to, you know, best serve them, how putting this in may actually improve their financial standing, or maybe that it's not as big of a financial risk to put one in um in the long run it's going to pay off. It's going to have some benefits. And again, having those having actual numbers for your average price per bushel is going to be hugely um important and having accurate um pricing in there is also. So, this will change year to year with that um with those cost fluctuations that we see in agriculture. Uh there are other tabs down here, and these are just tabs that are going to um help build this calculator. So, you really only have to worry about that summary unless you are an Excel sheet nerd and would really like to dig into it. So, this is just one calculator that's out there. Uh in our description, we will have several more. And it's important to remember that windbreaks are an investment in the productivity and resilience of farming operations. While the return isn't always immediate or easy to measure, decades of research show that protecting soil, conservation moisture, and improving growing conditions can generate significant long-term economic benefits. So, with this, if you're watching this with your board, now is a great time to pause the video and consider the following the following questions. How does your SCD currently communicate the value of windbreaks to landowners? What questions do producers most often ask when discussing windbreaks or windbreak removal? How could your SCD incorporate ROI discussions into windbreak education? I want to thank you for your time today. I hope this presentation has shown that while windbreaks may not produce immediate financial returns, they are important tools that help provide measurable economic value by improving crop production, protecting livestock, conserving soil, and increasing the resilience of agricultural operations. Understanding and communicating that long-term value is an important part of helping landowners make informed conservation decisions. If you have any questions for me, I am always happy to help. My contact information is there on the screen. My cell phone, should you want to give me a call, is the preferred method to get a hold of me. Otherwise, my email is always the best. I will definitely get back to you via email. Thank you all for your time.