I have four children. My youngest will be graduating from college in the spring of 2015. There are definitely good and bad points to being empty nesters. I do miss having my children at home, but one of the really good things is that Peggy (my wife) and I are done buying cars for my children. Early on we told our children that we would buy each one a car after they turned 16. However, we never promised them what kind of car they would get. Since we were buying the car we reserved the right to buy the car that we thought was the best fit …
Why Not Precision Conservation?
This week I am pleased to have as my guest writer, Jim Gulliford, Executive Director of the Soil and Water Conservation Society (SWCS). SWCS is a professional society dedicated to promoting the science and art of natural resource conservation and has been a leader in encouraging the adoption of precision conservation. Jim has more than 30 years professional experience administering natural resource protection programs in agriculture and for the Environmental Protection Agency. I first met Jim back in the early 1980’s when I was a young NRCS …
Sediment – how far is too far?
How far is too far? As a grandpa, this is a subject of great concern. The distance an ornery grandson can travel in just a few seconds is amazing. Sometimes this distance really matters and sometimes it doesn’t. In a busy parking lot, yes, it really matters. In an empty field, it probably doesn’t much matter. But as a responsible Grandpa, I better know how far is too far for the different situations or I will have to deal with the consequences.Likewise, how far is too far for soil to move in the erosion process? Well I guess that depends …
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 …
Who should pay?
Last month, I had one of those aha moments. A reporter was asking me about my thoughts on Iowa’s water quality and whether I thought shifting rainfall patterns (climate change) could be affecting nitrogen and phosphorus runoff. I responded that the research on this topic was crystal clear -- that over the last 20 years, the intensity of rainstorms has significantly increased, resulting in more runoff. The seriousness of this phenomenon should not be dismissed or ignored. Across most of the United States, the heaviest rainfall events have …
The numbers don’t add up
Many people agree that the nitrogen problem is mostly the fault of farmers, especially since current environmental models demonstrate that agriculture is responsible for 70% of the nitrogen and phosphorus load delivered to the Gulf of Mexico. I could easily be convinced to go along with this narrative. But before piling on farmers, I wanted to take a look at the numbers. Let me share with you what I discovered and the story the numbers actually tell. As I was looking into the nitrogen numbers, I formed my own baseline – that upper Midwestern …