Targeting Farmer Outreach

BY CAROL BROWN

The Environmental Programs and Services (EPS) team at the Iowa Soybean Association (ISA) follows a strategy to help Iowa soybean farmers improve natural resource management while improving their competitiveness.

Working closely with farmers and engaging with government agencies, organizations and companies, the EPS team works to achieve the goals of the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy (INRS) through watershed and farm conservation planning and water monitoring.

In 2018, EPS worked on more than 35 projects across Iowa. These initiatives assisted farmers directly and addressed their concerns including nutrient loss and reduction, water quality and soil health, conservation drainage, habitat preservation and farm sustainability.

Corey McKinney, Iowa Soybean Association, collects a water sample to take back to the ISA lab and analyze.

Joseph L. Murphy/Iowa Soybean Association

Exploring Watershed Diffusion Hubs

In partnership with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS), ISA will develop and deploy a strategy to transform current watershed plans and projects into “hubs of diffusion.”

Through a grant from the Walton Family Foundation, the project team — consisting of representatives from

EPS and IDALS — will evaluate the current implementation progress of specific watershed plans and identify diffusion hub opportunities. The diffusion hubs will be focused around advanced watershed implementation projects that can expand innovation and investment into surrounding watersheds. These core watersheds will have already achieved some success in watershed project plans and conservation practice adoption. Roger Wolf, EPS director, will lead the development of a moderate watershed planning methodology to guide the identified diffusion hubs.

He says new innovative funding opportunities for water quality improvement are becoming available in Iowa. The EPS team is leveraging current investments to help increase the pace and scale of water quality improvement. It is imperative that Iowa scales up faster and in cost-efficient and effective manners,Wolf says.

Roger Wolf, ISA EPS director

Joseph L. Murphy/Iowa Soybean Association

To accomplish this, the team will develop tools to track historical, current and future progress.

They also will develop a strategy outlining ways to move into the next generation of watershed planning and implementation.

The diffusion hub project will also expand the knowledge base for the financial aspects of farm conservation practices.

The EPS team will conduct financial analyses with farmers who use conservation practices on their farming operations. The results will be shared with other farmers, ag retailers, lenders and insurers. Hopefully, as a result new products and services will be created to further incentivize conservation adoption. The outcome should impact how conservation practices fit financially into farming operations, ag retailer platforms, loans and insurance products.

“With passage of additional water quality funding last year, IDALS is continuing to explore opportunities for outside funding that can further expand water quality practice implementation,” says Mike Naig, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture.

“This grant will give us the opportunity to develop and evaluate new pathways to deploy future funding,” he says.

The EPS team will be expanding their work in 2019, making connections between rural and urban watershed residents for improved water quality through two new grant projects. Education and outreach events like field days will be a key component to success.

Joseph L. Murphy/Iowa Soybean Association

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Grant

Another new project through a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) will build demand for conservation implementation through targeted communications, technical assistance and evaluation.

A campaign led by ISA, the Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance (IAWA) and Trust In Food™ (a division of Farm Journal) will leverage geographic, technical and communication assets to increase and improve conservation-focused outreach to farmers and landowners.

“All project partners — and many stakeholders in the Mississippi River Basin — want to increase conservation practice implementation” says Nate Birt, program manager for Trust In Food. “This project will integrate excellent data analytics and state-of-theart watershed planning practices for the most effective outreach and technical assistance programming.”

Birt says a multipart communications campaign will be used to recruit farmers for technical assistance and adoption of conservation practices to improve water quality.

A goal of the grant project is to enhance technical assistance for faster adoption of conservation strategies that improve water quality. A watershed diffusion model like the Walton grant project will be used for distribution of information and technical resources. The goal of the campaign is to help align support and expand farmer awareness and adoption of conservation best management practices, by using data to precisely deliver messages to farmers seeking to take the next step in their resource management.

The project will be conducted in five sub-watersheds within the North Raccoon River watershed, encompassing approximately 381,000 acres. Additional partners include the Greene County Soil and Water Conservation District, Headwaters North Raccoon River Project, Farm to River Partnership Project, Agriculture's Clean Water Alliance and the City of Des Moines.

Contact Carol Brown at cbrown@iasoybeans.com.