I am willingly adding environmental restrictions to my 6.74 acres of farmland. Here's why.

Over 22% of butterflies have disappeared from the US since the 1990s. Here's why I am adding ecological 'restrictions' to my 6.74 acres that I plan to still run a business from.

Earlier this week, after opening my laptop one morning, I stared at a news headline in the Washington Post that read: Butterflies in the U.S. are disappearing at a ‘catastrophic’ rate. As I read through the article, praying the title was clickbait and that the butterfly situation in the U.S. is, surely, not that dire… I found no such hope by the end of the written piece.

One doesn’t need to read an article like that today to know that butterflies, dragonflies, lightning bugs, moths, birds, and bees aren’t as abundant as they used to be. Just spend an hour outside at your property this June, and the truth of that article will become unavoidably obvious, whether we agree with the people who conducted the butterfly counting experiment or not.

Sitting with this truth is heavy - what does a planet look like without pollinators? Without the divine beauty that radiates off of butterfly wings? It’s not a future any of us want to experience, trust me. Yet, having these hard conversations now ruffles some feathers. There’s only going to be so much time we CAN have these conversations before the discussion is too late. I know that nature adapts - and always has - but we’ve never engaged in an assault this deadly on nature herself before.

The article states that the decline in butterfly numbers began towards the end of the 1990s, which happens to line up with a very steep increase in pesticide and glyphosate application in farming and gardening. We will never know for sure the “number one cause” of this alarming trend, but I am willing to bet my life savings that applying chemicals to plants, crops, the food we eat, and the environment that sustains us is the leading problem here.

Too many people get caught up in trying to tell everyone else that their take on the cause of this decline is correct. We fight about it endlessly online. While we fight, nothing is being done to actually remediate the effects.

Which leads to my decision to apply environmental restrictions to my land today. Everything is impossible… until one person makes it possible. I am not saying I am the first person to be ecologically minded or donate land to endangered species. I am far from it. But I do believe, as a deeply visual species, that becoming an example we talk about will have a more profound impact on this story than merely writing about it on my social media.

That’s why this week I officially registered my 6.74 acres with the National Wildlife Federation, pledging to provide:

• food

• water

• safety

• and a place for wildlife to raise their young

People have asked me, “Why on earth would you apply those restrictions to farmland? That’s going to cut into your profit!”

It would cut into profit if I planned to farm my land commercially. I don’t plan to do that. I plan to employ a mixture of organic/regenerative farming, conservationism, agrotourism, and leaving a portion of my land wild. I have come to learn I own 6.74 acres of prairie, bordered by young tree lines that were used to separate farms 50-years ago. Prairie is disappearing more than any other kind of ecosystem in our country (in addition to swamps/estuaries), which is why I take the kind of land I have come to own very, very seriously.

I am setting out to do something that I believe to be unique today. I see commenters fall into two schools of thought under my posts:

• those that believe everything we ever do should be in the name of profit/money

• those that believe everything we ever do should be altruistic/in the martyr spirit

To one school of thought, locking my land up makes me a hippie-dippie moron. To the other school, planning to still turn a profit while protecting my land doesn’t make me enough of an environmental martyr. Using plastic seed-starting trays, to the latter school, still makes me a modern, wasteful consumer.

I fall smack-dab in the middle of those two schools. I am attempting to start my own “school” here. It’s why my moniker on my Instagram profile right now is Alex Fasulo: Ecopreneur.

And… my land’s not locked

The National Wildlife Federation is a nonprofit. I have applied zero governmental restrictions on my land. Though, if I ever apply a farming or conservation easement, which I plan to do, then governmental restrictions would be applied to my land. Easements ensure the land will be used for the defined purpose indefinitely, which can impact finding buyers if you ever plan to sell, etc.

To that I say… so what? Why is EVERYTHING we do about hoarding as much money as possible? I have learned in my lifetime that money will come to YOU if you follow your divine path. We live in an abundant universe. One person’s abundance does not impact your ability to pay your bills and find joy in your own life. I taught myself the basics of money, wealth building, and investing very young after witnessing serious money mismanagement in my family (on my dad’s side). I knew I never wanted that kind of money trauma to find me. I read every book I could find on money.

And you know what I learned?

Money IS energy. It’s a vehicle and a means to an end. If you hoard it… your momentum stops. If you continue to move it around, sharing it with others, it will continue to find its way back to you.

Does this new environmental designation impact the absolute peak amount of money I could make in one given day as a farmer? In the old-world of conventional farming, sure it does. But that doesn’t matter to me, and even more importantly, I am going to demonstrate that all of these things can coexist at the same time. I can earn a living, create a pollinator oasis, farm, welcome the public to my property, save money to buy more land and do this all over again, and feel no guilt that I am on my own pursuit of abundance without destroying the environment to do it.

It’s 2025 for crying out loud! Do we not have the technology to do all of the things I just listed without castrating the environment?

You will find not one, but two of the plaques in the photo above at my property if you visit this year. Visuals matter. The plaque is the physical representation of my commitment, showing everyone who watches my content or visits my farm that I am serious about putting the needs of the environment ahead of money. Again, I don’t believe I am the first person to do this. But if I can be someone that inspires 1,000 people behind me to do the same, then I will feel I have done what I set out to do with my land.

As Aldo Leopold famously pondered in A Sand County Almanac… man cannot relate to or care about something he has never seen. Humans need to see, with their own two eyes, what land looks like that’s untouched by chemicals. Only then will people begin to question how they’ve managed their own land. Even the most innocent of homes today has rat poison, roundup weed killer, and ecological wasteland lawns that have scared off the most beautiful butterflies in their area. Words are empty. Actions will make the difference, and I hope my 6.74 acres is that catalyst.

You have my word!

I cover all things land loans, starting a farm from scratch, conservationism, Monarch butterflies, developing raw land, doing this all mainly solo, without a tractor, and working with the Amish here on my Substack.

As this is one of my free articles, here is my ‘buy me some seeds’ profile if you feel inclined.

All funds raised through this link will be 100% used to buy native seeds, plants, and my greater conservation work at the farm.

Thank you all: https://buymeacoffee.com/alexfasulo.

Follow along!