From cover crops to wetlands and beyond, Iowa farmers once again shattered records for conservation and water quality practice adoption during 2025.

“We hit exciting conservation milestones in 2025, and we battled very real challenges along the way,” said Iowa Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig. “And yet we continued to make progress because farmers said yes to conservation, even in a challenging ag economy. The pace of adoption continues to accelerate as more farmers, landowners, partners, practices, people and resources are added.”

Iowa farmers initiated a record 26 wetland projects in 2025, the most in a single year, with another 94 wetland projects planned for 2026 and beyond, according to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS). Wetlands work as natural filters that can reduce nitrate runoff from farms by up to 90%.

Iowa farmers also set another record by planting more than 3.87 million acres of cover crops in 2024, a gain of 142% since 2017, according to a survey of Iowa ag retailers.

The survey by the Iowa Nutrient Research and Education Council (INREC) shows that cover crops now blanket about 16.7% of Iowa corn and soybean acres, protecting soil from erosion, holding nutrients and building organic matter.

The INREC survey also reveals that no-till acres have increased by 22% since 2017, totaling more than 9.4 million acres, while another 4.6 million acres are managed with strip till and other conservation practices.

Farmers also continue to utilize precision fertilizer technologies and soil tests to optimize nutrient applications. The INREC survey shows that a strong majority of farmers apply nitrogen only in the spring or in-season when it is quickly taken up by growing crops.

The state’s innovative batch-and-build model also has accelerated the pace of adoption for edge-of-field water quality practices like bioreactors and saturated buffers, which can reduce nitrogen losses by 43% to 50% by treating water from tile drainage outlets before it reaches waterways. The batch-and-build model groups multiple conservation projects together rather installing them one at a time, easing the burden on landowners and speeding up nutrient reduction.

A project managed by Heartland Cooperative in the Middle Iowa Watershed completed 14 saturated buffers treating 29 tile outlets in Tama County and surrounding counties last year.
The cooperative is moving forward with a project treating 43 tile outlets in Muscatine and Cedar counties this year, and is recruiting farmers for another batch of projects to be surveyed this spring and constructed in 2027, according to Heartland Cooperative conservation agronomist Ruth McCabe.

Since 2023, the co-op has a total of 113 saturated buffered completed or in progress.

Record funding
The wide-ranging conservation efforts are supported through a variety of state, federal and private funding sources.

IDALS supported more than $34.3 million in soil and water cost-share in fiscal year 2025, nearly $7.2 million more than the previous year’s record, Naig reported.

The department allocated even more financial and staffing resources in FY 2026 to accelerate work upstream of the Des Moines, Raccoon and Middle Cedar Rivers.

A $3 million streamside buffer pilot project encourages farmers and landowners in those priority watersheds to add perennial buffer strips at the edge of their fields to filter water before it enters neighboring creeks.

Leading the nation
The collective efforts add up, as evidenced by state and federal reports showing that Iowa farmers lead the nation in various in-field and edge-of-field conservation practices, including buffers, waterways, filter strips, conservation tillage, water quality wetlands and pollinator habitat.

For more information and to see conservation practices in action, visit conservationcountsiowa.com.