Each year Mingo Swamp Friends assist the Refuge in planting and maintaining more than 19 wildlife food plots alongside Refuge roadways and in remote locations alike. Sites are selected based on U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service policy and their ability to supply critical forage for wildlife and heightened viewing opportunities for Refuge visitors.

With the assistance of Friends' members, the Refuge utilizes a diversity of crop management techniques. Strip farming, dual cropping, and crop rotation are just a few of the many methods employed for the production of biologically productive food plots. Friends and volunteers alike sow seed along levee tops to provide browse and limit erosion in addition to creating transitional areas on the edge of abandoned fields and forest. The most common crops are corn, wheat, clover, and milo. Native grasses are encouraged in historic grassland areas on the Refuge. Ready to do their part for conservation, local seed dealers graciously donate seed grain for planting, greatly reducing the cost of operation.

Wildlife benefit from food plots in many ways. Often, ground nesting birds and other small animals take advantage of food plots or the remains of food plots left untended through the winter and far into the spring and summer. Native broad leaf plants and grasses spring up during the growing season in old standing corn or milo providing excellent shelter and nesting habitat. Deer, turkey, sparrows and other wildlife utilize the old crop areas for browse and shelter. Keep this thought in mind while visiting the Refuge. Next time you see such a field, remember--a special service to wildlife is being provided and the field has not been abandoned.