Can farmers using carefully-managed cropping systems help reduce nitrate levels in municipal water supplies and still produce income from corn and other crops?
That’s a question that Sioux County Farm Bureau member Matt Schuiteman and Robb De Haan, a Dordt College environmental studies professor, are exploring with a three-year field research project they launched this spring on Schuiteman’s farm just east of Sioux Center.
Schuiteman and De Haan developed their field research project working with an array of interested parties, including Sioux Center municipal water officials and representatives from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. Their goal is to research cropping systems that can produce soil nitrate levels similar to perennial grasses, but provide income for farmers.
The three-year field research program is being backed by a $50,000 grant from the Ames-based Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
The cooperators hope their field research will serve as a guide for farmers all over Iowa and the Midwest who farm near municipal water wells. That will help farmers maintain income and continue to feed the world’s growing demand for food, while protecting water quality in rural communities, like Sioux Center, which draw much of their water from shallow wells.
“There is a perception that individual farmers can’t make a difference in water quality, and I just don’t think that is true,” said De Haan, who grew up on a Minnesota farm and has also taught agricultural studies at Dordt College in Sioux Center.
Real world solutions
But for a farmer to make a difference, De Haan said it’s important to develop a system that fits well with modern farming methods and equipment. “What we are really working for is a doable system, something that will work in the real world,” he said. “We want to be able to answer the question: Can a farmer really do this?”
Jeri Neal, leader of the ecological systems and research program for the Leopold Center, agrees it’s critical that researchers consider farm income when designing cropping systems around municipal water supplies.
“If a system doesn’t work for the farmer, it’s going to very hard to get adoption,” she said.
To make sure a system works for both the farmer and the local water supply, it’s essential to do real-world research, using conventional farm equipment, Schuiteman said. “If we are going to adopt some new methods, we need to know that they are going to work,” he said.
To launch the program this spring, Schuiteman planted a series of plots on 35 acres near wells that supply Sioux Center with a portion of its city water. The Schuitemans have farmed the land around the municipal wells for more than 30 years.
The research plots, which range from continuous corn to a grass-hay mix, have been designed to test a variety of cropping systems and rotations.
After the plots are harvested in the fall, De Haan and several of his students will take a series of deep soil samples to determine nitrogen levels. “We’ll go down six feet and test the nitrogen levels at every foot. That way we can tell how much nitrate there is and where it is,” De Haan said.
Ronald Vos, a Dordt agricultural economics professor, is also pitching in on the research project. He’ll help analyze the economic data to determine the economics of the various cropping patterns so they can be matched up with the soil test data.
Then the entire process will be repeated by Schuiteman and De Haan in 2010 and 2011. The third year, De Haan said, will be the key, “because we’ll have everything in place and we’ll have lots of repetitions.”
Reducing nitrates
Another focus of the project will be testing the effectiveness of using cover crops to reduce soil nitrate levels, De Haan said. It’s important, he said, to have roots in the soil pulling up the nitrogen rather than just leaving land idle in the late fall and early spring.
The movement of nitrogen in soils is a complex issue that is affected by many variables, De Haan emphasized. The small plots on Schuiteman’s land will not provide complete answers as to where nitrogen resides and if it ends up in ground water. But the research should provide evidence on how different cropping systems affect nitrogen in the soil, he said.
Schuiteman, who earned an agronomy degree at Iowa State University before returning to farm with his father and grandfather, has long been looking for ways to work with his community to protect and improve water quality. He and his wife, Minde, who have four children and one on the way, are committed to agriculture and the environment.
“It’s our hope that this research will lead us to better understand how we can produce crops in sensitive areas while maintaining underground water quality,” Schuiteman wrote in the application for the Leopold Center grant.
The Schuitemans had already started working with the city to improve water quality in the municipal wells. They trimmed nitrogen fertilizer applications on fields they farm near the wells several years ago and planted a grass buffer strip.
Farm, city cooperation
Schuiteman, a former Iowa Farm Bureau Young Farmer Committee chairman, has been an active participant since Sioux Center launched a community planning team in 2007 to address water quality concerns.
That proactive approach has impressed Sioux Center officials.
“Matt is a real innovator and is willing to think outside the box,” said Matt Van Schouwen, Sioux Center’s utilities engineer.
The research project, Van Schouwen said, is very interesting because it is exploring ways to improve water quality while producing farm income that generates economic activity in agricultural towns, like Sioux Center. “The typical option for land like this would be to go into the CRP (Conservation Reserve Program),” he said. “But that reduces the benefits for the farmer and for the community because that land is idle.”
De Haan said it’s exciting to have a farmer take the lead in a research project. “This is really a unique situation where we have a farmer who is motivated and capable of doing the research.”
The Leopold Center’s Neal said her organization was very interested in the Sioux Center proposal because the farmer and the community were working closely together. It was also interesting, Neal noted, because it is in Sioux County, the state’s top agricultural county.
For Schuiteman, who farms with his father and grandfather, the added duties of caring for the research plots, with a serious of complex crop rotations, has made life interesting. “It’s kind of hard to keep track of sometimes. I keep a color-coded map of all the plots and that thing never leaves the tractor cab,” he said.
