Recently I attended a soil health conference in Ames, Iowa. At the noon lunch, Dr. John Lawrence of Iowa State University, addressed the challenges of improving soil conservation and water quality. Dr. Lawrence commented that achieving the goals of the Nutrient Reduction Strategy are probably equivalent to the difficulty of putting a man on the moon. After hearing Dr. Lawrence’s remark, I thought I would do some research. On May 25, 1961, before a special joint session of Congress, President John F. Kennedy announced his dramatic and ambitious …
Old Dog Teaching New Tricks
Ernie Aust was one of the most unique NRCS employees I have had the privilege of working with. Ernie was special. He served as Area Conservationist in Southwest Iowa and I was fortunate to have him as a supervisor. Looking back, it is obvious Ernie missed his calling. His talents would have been better utilized as an engineer or resource conservationist. During our professional visits, Ernie had little interest in talking about performance appraisals and workload analysis; instead he wanted to talk about engineering practices and variations …
I hope to see you at the InfoAg Conference
If you have an interest in precision agriculture, you should attend the 2016 InfoAg Conference. I will be at Booth #11.InfoAg features an educational program that includes plenary and breakout sessions. There is also an extensive exhibit hall of leading hardware, software, and vendors to precision agriculture. The educational programs are perfect for learning new perspectives about how to put technology to work in the field. It is also a great place to hear more about new products and services as well as the unique perspective on the global …
Choose Variety for Conservation
If you don’t care about the long-term results, then sure one size fits all…It seems like we have to learn the same lessons over and over. In 1986, I was a new District Conservationist in the Carroll Field Office in West Central Iowa. NRCS was just rolling out the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). In those first years, we conservation planners wrote one CRP plan after another, for pure stands of smooth bromegrass on CRP. It only took a few years before the wildlife biologist realized that a solid seeding of smooth bromegrass was almost …
Cookie Cutter Conservation
Cookie cutter conservation only works in research journals…Recently, my wife, Peggy shared a TIME® Magazine interview with me from the “Lab Girl.” In the interview, the Lab Girl said, “There are things that all scientists know are the reality in science, and the longer I am in this business it was driving me absolutely crazy not to say something. It’s not enough for me to be frustrated. It’s time to talk about it. I have learned that nothing gets readers so fired up as saying something everyone knows is true.” Well I agree, so here it …
Revisiting a Basic Standard of Care
A while back, I posted Be the Expert and asked for your feedback on the Environmental Working Group's (EWG) argument for a basic standard of care in regards to soil and water conservation. To meet the basic standard of care, EWG argued that every farmer should be required to adopt a set of 4 mandatory conservation practices:grassed waterwaysfilter strips along all water bodiescontrolled access of livestock to all water bodiesno application of manure to frozen, snow-covered, or saturated groundWhen I published that blog post, I promised at some …