Iowa farmers have made profound progress in conservation over the past decade, particularly when it comes to edge-of-field practices such as saturated buffers, bioreactors and wetlands that reduce nutrient loss and improve water quality.

While in-field methods like cover crops, no-till and nutrient management have remained steady, prioritizing targeted programs could incentivize greater adoption of those practices statewide.

“In Iowa, we’ve done a really good job in getting folks to adopt edge-of-field practices,” Ruth McCabe, certified professional agronomist with Heartland Coop, told more than 100 participants at the 19th annual Iowa Women in Agriculture Conference. “We are number one for permanent or perennial conservation adoption in the United States.

“This state has hundreds of thousands of miles of grass waterways, terraces, sediment control basins, contour buffer strips, filter strips, saturated buffers, bioreactors, oxbows (and) wetlands. Iowa is dominating in this particular space.”

Many producers have already implemented in-field practices with proven long-term benefits, but further adoption could be encouraged through cost-share programs for tenants, crop insurance incentives or property tax reductions, McCabe suggested.
Any initiative offering short-term financial benefits makes conservation adoption more appealing, she said.
“Just it being the right thing to do is not enough,” McCabe said. “A conservation practice … needs to be the obvious choice. A farmer needs to look at it and go, I would be crazy not to do this program.”

Research around the globe
McCabe is a Nuffield Farming Scholar, sponsored in part by Iowa Farm Bureau, who researched conservation practices internationally. Nuffield Scholarships are awarded to individuals working in agriculture and related fields to support leadership and innovation in global food and farming systems.

She developed a manuscript entitled “A Bird in the Hand: Leveraging Short-Term Profits for Long-Term Sustainability,” highlighting global conservation practices and the influence of short-term financial gains on adoption rates.

Her goal: “to keep topsoil where it should be to keep fields profitable and productive,” while championing existing efforts and identifying practices with potential for broader use.

Through her international interviews with large-scale farmers operating on razor-thin margins, McCabe found that while edge-of-field practices are often lacking — due to the absence of cost-share funding — in-field practices like no-till and cover crops are widely used abroad.

These practices help retain soil moisture and build organic matter, often enabling a second crop on the same land within a year.

“They don’t do things because it’s the right thing to do … they do things since they’re trying to run a profitable business,” McCabe explained. “And from my perspective, what drives those people is … is it going to impact my short-term profits or not? If it isn’t, I’m probably going to stick with the status quo.”

A second crop makes no-till and cover cropping a no-brainer, she said.

What it means for Iowa
Although second cropping isn’t feasible in much of Iowa, McCabe believes the state could design programs that offer short-term financial incentives for adopting no-till, cover crops and nutrient management practices — much like successful programs seen internationally.

For example, tenant farmers — who often control in-field practices — frequently lack access to state-level cost-share programs, which typically remain tied to the land.

“State cost-share in Iowa is not enough to cover the costs of adoption for things like no tilling or cover crops,” she said. Implementation can cost $50 to $80 per acre per year, meaning benefits take time to materialize.

“We need to make cost-share programming that follows the tenant and not the acre,” she added.

“As long as the tenant is still using those practices on a new farm, they ought to be able to keep that cost share.”

McCabe offered several suggestions to make in-field conservation practices more financially viable, such as partnering with ag retailers. Heartland Coop is developing a conservation endowment fund to provide small grants that bridge the gap between landowner or tenant contributions and traditional cost-share. This can help smaller-scale projects succeed.

“Ultimate goal of making it so financially and viable in the short term that you’d be crazy not to just go for it,” McCabe said.

She also suggested greater outreach to absentee landowners. Partnering with land management companies on conservation initiatives can effectively communicate stewardship principles to non-operating landowners, she said.

McCabe said continuing to elevate conservation adoption is critical to helping Iowa farmers take care of some of the world’s best soil and maintain the land for future generations.