A 600-foot saturated buffer on the edge of one of his fields filters water before it reaches nearby Holland Creek, a tributary in the Middle Cedar watershed. The buffer was installed through a partnership with the city of Cedar Rapids, which works with farmers to install strategic water quality practices upstream of its drinking water sources. 

Abels said his involvement on the Grundy County Soil and Water Conservation District board and local watershed planning efforts has broadened his understanding of how farms, cities and landowners can work together to improve Iowa’s water quality.

“I can’t stress to you how much Cedar Rapids wants to work with farmers. That is an indescribable partnership,” said Abels, who farms a little over an hour northwest of the city. “It’s easier to treat the watershed if you start at the top end than closer to the lower end.”

A newly completed 5-acre wetland project on his farm filters nitrates from runoff on about 80 acres and has also brought an influx of wildlife including pheasants, ducks and deer.

Conservation has been a steady drumbeat throughout Abels’ farming career, starting with no-till in the early 1990s. He learned that leaving residue on top of his corn and soybean fields rather than tilling it under the surface could provide long-term benefits like reduced soil erosion and improved soil health.

Over time, Abels expanded his conservation efforts to include strip till, cover crops, a saturated buffer, filter strips, conservation Reserve Program and pollinator habitat, nutrient management, a windbreak and wetlands to improve water quality and wildlife habitat.

His soils are now teeming with earthworms, a sign of soil health, and heavy rains no longer create gullies running through his fields. 

Many farmers in the Black Hawk Creek and Middle Cedar watersheds have installed wetlands and other measures to protect water quality, including a batch-and-build project that completed 14 saturated buffers and four bioreactors in Grundy and Tama counties last year. Batch and build is an accelerated conservation delivery model used by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship to install water quality practices on multiple farms simultaneously, speeding up the implementation of nutrient reduction practices. Iowa State University research shows edge-of-field practices like bioreactors and saturated buffers can reduce nitrogen in water runoff by 43% to 50%. 

Additionally, 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. 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 shows that cover crops now cover about 16.7% of Iowa corn and soybean acres, protecting soil from erosion, holding nutrients and building organic matter. 

No-till acres have increased by 22% since 2017, totaling over 9.4 million acres, while another 4.6 million acres are managed with strip till and other conservation practices, the survey found. 

Farmers also continue to use precision fertilizer technologies and soil tests to optimize nutrient applications. The Iowa Nutrient Research and Education Council 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 2024 survey reinforces Iowa’s leadership in both agricultural production and conservation,” said Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig. “We continued to make progress because farmers said yes to conservation, even in a challenging ag economy.”