Making Progress

From a window in his rural Lake City home, Mark Schleisman can see the North Raccoon River. It’s not only a tributary feeding the Mississippi River, but a place where his kids enjoy fishing. It’s an extension of the landscape that Schleisman has worked decades protecting using various soil and water conservation efforts.

He knows the cover crops, bioreactors, grass waterways and filter strips are benefitting water quality. One sign is the quality of fish his children catch.

“When I was a kid, the water quality was not very good in the river,” Schleisman says. “We fished for catfish

BY BETHANY BARATTA

and got mostly carp. Now, my kids catch bass and walleye – nice game fish out of the water.”

He sees the water quality improve through the various testing he’s been involved with through the Iowa Soybean Association (ISA). Cover crops sequester nutrients on his fields, keeping valuable inputs there for the next crop.

Tile monitoring through ISA validates progress made in water quality.

“I really appreciate ISA doing this monitoring because it puts a real number behind the practice,” he says.

Long before the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy was implemented, ISA was working with farmers to reduce nutrient loading in Iowa’s streams and rivers. ISA recognizes the role the agriculture industry has in positively affecting water quality for downstream partners.

“Farmers in watersheds have the first opportunity to influence what stays on the farm and what’s released,” says Roger Wolf, director of innovation and integrated solutions for ISA’s Research Center for Farming Innovation.

Corey McKinney, a conservationist with the Iowa Soybean Association, checks water levels in a newly installed saturated buffer along Rock Creek near Osage.

Workers install a bioreactor in the Rock Creek Watershed near Osage.

He says a suite of practices can change the flow of water. Each practice – whether within a field or edge-offield – can be a “barrier to the impact of the raindrop,” he says.

The Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, which ISA provided technical Roger Wolf expertise in coordination with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and Iowa State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has heightened the discussion of water quality since it was released in May 2013.

The Iowa plan was developed in response to the 2008 Gulf Hypoxia Plan, which called for the states bordering the Mississippi River to reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus reaching the gulf by at least 45%.

“The key of the nutrient reduction strategy is to crack the nut on capturing big reductions in nutrient losses,” Wolf says.

Various practices and tools are helping the state achieve the goals set in the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy. ISA Conservationist Corey McKinney helps farmers determine which tools are most appropriate for their farms.

“I’m here for the farmer,” McKinney says. “We talk through the goals of the farm, look at where a practice could make the most sense and work at getting those practices implemented.”

A further evaluation of Schleisman’s farm, for example, determined that additional bioreactors could be constructed to filter water before reaching the Mississippi River. As a result, three bioreactors will be implemented this year.

Schleisman is also excited about a water recycling project being engineered for his farm. With technical assistance from Chris Hay, ISA senior manager of production systems innovation, Schleisman will recycle water that flows from his fields by storing it for irrigation when rainfall is scarce.

“We’re taking tile water that potentially has unused nutrients in it and reapplying those back onto the field to raise a crop, rather than losing those nutrients downstream,” Schleisman says.

Sometimes, adding a project isn’t the right fit for the farm or the farmer, McKinney says. Farmers can then rely on ISA’s agronomy and analytical experts to make the most out of every acre through improved cropping systems and analytical tools.

The integrated approach to water quality is key to reaching the “audacious” goals of the strategy, Wolf says.

“Using this integrated approach within ISA’s Research Center for Farming Innovation, we’re bringing together on-farm research along with agronomic and analytical data to build soil health and improve water quality,” Wolf says.

There are efforts underway to transition from demonstration-sized projects to those that encompass several counties.

“For us to be really successful in achieving these big goals set in the reduction strategy, we’re going to have to get a lot more acres under these strategy-approved practices,” Wolf says.

As ISA has done for the past several decades, it stands ready to help farmers understand and implement tools to help them be better stewards of their fields and water. “There are a lot of tools in the conservation toolbox,” McKinney says. “Finding the best tools to accomplish the goal can be daunting, but that’s where the expertise of ISA comes in. We’re here to help.”

Contact Bethany Baratta at bbaratta@iasoybeans.com.

The Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance is thrilled to partner with the Iowa Soybean Association (ISA), Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS), and WHO and WMT Radio on the Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here campaign. It aims to raise awareness of the roles all Iowans can play in improving water quality. One feature of the initiative are live broadcast remotes originating from farms throughout Iowa.

I was pleased to be back on Bill and Nancy Couser’s farm near

BY SEAN MCMAHON

Nevada for the third stop on the campaign. It was a beautiful day in mid-August to launch the brand new $33 million Iowa Systems Approach to Conservation Drainage project along with our partners at IDALS and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

The Couser farm is an exemplary model for conservation practices. From the site where we broadcast the show — at the headwaters of both Indian Creek and the West Branch of Indian Creek — we can gaze down an ample 200-foot grass buffer to a beautiful, restored stretch of meandering creek. Also within our view is dense timber teeming with birdlife, four saturated buffers and bioreactors, and a sevenacre patch of native prairie. As Bob Quinn of The Big Show observed, we could also see an ethanol plant, view several wind turbines and hear a nearby train. And of course, we could see where the Cousers have implemented cover crops, no till, other forms of reduced tillage, drainage water management and innovative nutrient

Sean McMahon, Executive Director of the Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance, visits with Bob Quinn during an WHO Big Show interview about Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here.

stewardship practices, including a recent biological product designed to increase the amount of nitrogen available to the corn crop.

The Cousers are also measuring water quality. They have broken their farm down into four quadrants, each drained by different tile lines, to better understand how different management systems are impacting nitrogen and phosphorus levels.

The Cousers aren’t done yet. They’re also planning on installing two more bioreactors on their ‘AGvocacy Learning Farm.’

The Couser farm was very fitting to kick-off the new water quality campaign, because the Cousers are already taking a systems approach to agricultural productivity, profitability and water quality. We look forward to working with additional producers in north-central and central Iowa to adopt this systems approach.

Building off concepts developed by Dr. Mike Castellano and colleagues at Iowa State University, the Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance will help farmers better understand the interactions among subsurface agricultural drainage, in-field management practices and agricultural productivity and profitability. We’ll also seek to better integrate infield management practices with edge-of-field conservation drainage practices. This approach will help farmers improve their bottom line, boost yields, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve water quality.

As farmers are considering upgrading their subsurface drainage, it is a great time to plan and design conservation drainage practices like drainage water management, saturated buffers, bioreactors or even wetlands.

Drainage water management can help farmers in years like the one we’re having right now, with a fairly wet spring followed by a very dry summer. Drainage control structures installed on tile lines can hold water back for the crops, enabling farmers to get a yield bump from those systems.

Brock Hansen, a farmer from Baxter, collects a water sample from a field tile. Hansen works with the Iowa Soybean Association to monitor water quality on his farm.

The Iowa Systems Approach to Conservation Drainage project is made possible by a $10 million grant from USDA-NRCS through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), which we are matching with $23 million in nonfederal partner contributions.

The RCPP, first authorized in the 2014 Farm Bill, will target federal financial assistance to priority watersheds and landscapes and usher in a new era of public-private partnerships. In Iowa, we have done just that. This new RCPP includes 16 public and private sector partners. In 2016, IAWA and IDALS collaborated on the Midwest Agriculture Water Quality Partnership (MAWQP) RCPP. MAWQP has 48 partners, mostly from the private sector, and has helped improve conservation on more than 3.5 million acres. This includes helping pay for the bioreactors and saturated buffers the Cousers installed on their farm last year.

I had the privilege of announcing some ‘breaking news’ on The Big Show. The NRCS had just selected the MAWQP for renewal and would be providing an additional $10 million for the project. These new dollars will benefit farmers in priority watersheds, such as the North Raccoon, South Skunk and Cedar Rivers. The additional funding will help MAWQP expand from a $50 million project ($11 million from USDA and $39 million from non-federal partners) to a $100 million project ($21 million from USDA and $79 million from nonfederal partners). MAWQP is now the biggest RCPP project in the nation.

It’s a special day when you get to announce $20 million in new grants for Iowa’s farmers to improve water quality! I’d like to thank NRCS, IDALS, ISA and the dozens of IAWA’s private sector partners who make these projects possible.

McMahon serves as Executive Director of the Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance.