Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig toured the Fred and Vicki Abels farm near Holland in Grundy County last week as part of The Big Show’s “Clean Water in Iowa Starts Here!” programming, a partnership between Iowa agricultural organizations, WHO Radio and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) that promotes clean water initiatives.

Abels is the 2025 Conservation Farmer of the Year, an award sponsored by the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and IDALS in cooperation with Conservation Districts of Iowa. Abels implements strip-till practices on his 380-acre farm as well as cover crops, a saturated buffer, filter strips, Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land, pollinator habitat, nutrient management, a windbreak and a new wetland designed to improve water quality and wildlife habitat. Naig and Shane Wulf, wetland project manager with IDALS, joined Abels and trekked along the 5-acre wetland completed a year ago with funding from IDALS. Wildlife populations around it have flourished, with pheasants, ducks and deer now common. Naig highlighted the importance of these efforts to intercept runoff and help protect local waterways while maintaining working land.

“Wetlands are a huge component of our strategy … and I’m proud of the work that our team has done,” Naig said, explaining that close to 30 wetlands projects are being completed across the state this year. “We want to work with farmers and landowners to implement whatever works, what makes sense on the landscape and what will work in their operation.”

IDALS has programs to help install buffer strips, cover crops, bioreactors and wetlands, he said. 

“We love to pilot things, and I think we have one of the fastest conversion rates of pilot to program of anywhere in the country,” he said. “We have a menu … a range of practices that work. There are management practices … strip-till, no-till, nutrient management, cover crops … things that you do in a field; and then there’s the edge-of-field practices” such as buffers, wetlands, oxbows and bioreactors that are more structural in nature. “It’s a combination of those things that work. It has to be an all-of-the-above approach,” Naig said.

For more information about conservation practices and programs available, visit the IDALS website at https://iowaagriculture.gov.