Healing Rangeland, One Graze at a Time — Van Mansheim’s Story
- Buz Kloot, Ph.D.
- Aug 21
- 3 min read
I first visited Van Mansheim about 5 miles north of Colome, in Tripp County, SD, on his farm in October 2020. When I recently sat down again for a podcast interview with him, the conversation quickly grew beyond a podcast. Van is the whole package: no-till, long rotations, cover crops, bale grazing, livestock integration, and even a pheasant hunting enterprise. In the past week, I’ve spent hours answering questions on our social media about no-till, inputs, weeds, and soil biology — and Van spoke to every one of them from lived experience. He doesn’t deal in abstractions. He says as a fourth-generation farmer, a businessman, and as a board member of the South Dakota Soil Health Coalition who knows how to make soil health principles work in real fields.
Walk onto Van Mansheim’s pastures today and you’ll find something rare on the northern plains: a constellation of forbs, native grasses, shrubs, and wildflowers. But it wasn’t always this way. For years, Van — like so many — assumed his “native” rangeland was just that. In reality, it was a monoculture of smooth brome and Kentucky bluegrass, crowding out the diversity that once defined the prairie.
That realization hit home around 2016–2017, when he began working with grazing mentor Leland Schoon and moved from what was essentially season-long grazing to rotational grazing. The result is that Van’s pastures began to thrive. A South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks survey tallied 10 native warm-season grasses, 6 native cool-season grasses and 42 native forbs! Sharp-tailed grouse and prairie chickens, both native birds, flourished. Interestingly, pheasants, not native, have made a slower but stead comeback — a boon for Van’s hunting enterprise. “It wasn’t what we brought in,” Van says. “It was what came back when we changed the management.”
Van’s leadership extends beyond his own pastures. As a board member of the South Dakota Soil Health Coalition, he shares what he’s learned with other producers. His credibility comes not from theory but from practice: restoring prairie, balancing cattle and wildlife, and proving that good grazing can rebuild diversity.
Forbs, often maligned online as weeds, turned out to be some of the best forage. Research from NDSU’s Kevin Sedivec shows many native forbs grade out at 20–24% crude protein, rivaling alfalfa. Van sees it firsthand in his cattle: healthier animals, better gains, less need for supplements.
Even the land itself responded. Old waterholes stopped filling — not because rain quit falling, but because the water was infiltrating instead of running off. Infiltration that once seemed impossible became normal.
It’s a point worth emphasizing, especially amid the debates we see in our Facebook comments. Some insist weeds are useless. Others claim no-till or grazing systems don’t work in heavy soils. Van’s rangeland offers a living rebuttal. Diversity isn’t theory here — it’s a visible, measurable shift in plant communities, animal health, and wildlife.
“Healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy livestock, healthy people — it all goes together,” Van says. And he’s not speaking from theory. He’s speaking as a fourth-generation farmer, a conservation-minded grazier, and a leader helping other South Dakotans see their pastures in a new light.
This post is part of a companion piece. There was too much to share in a single post, so we decided to separate them even though they form a whole. Be sure to read the other post here to get the full story.
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