Iowa - Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), Bottomland

"CRP [Conservation Reserve Program] is the easiest sell we've ever had," says LuAnn Rolling, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) District Conservationist in Allamakee County in northeastern Iowa. "When we began selling the program, we picked out a creek or watershed, went down the creek, knocked on doors, and followed up with phone calls. We've enrolled 1,700 acres of continuous CRP under lots of contracts and have buffers on 40 miles of stream." Rolling, who has been in the area for a decade, adds, "In our area, there are many streams, cold water trout streams with feeder streams into them. Producers are well aware of the water quality potential of filters and buffers, but without a program like this, they couldn't do the right thing. With the rental rates and the bonus though, they can do it--and they're excited about it. It's been fun to work with."

Rolling describes Vernon and Sandra Gavles' farm as "a fairly big dairy farm. The upper end of the creek they're on is a state-owned, stocked trout stream. Practically the entire corridor they own is in buffers, with 29.2 acres of woody riparian zone and 14.6 acres of grass filter. The CRP rent is around $150 per acre for the 44 acres." The Gavles have installed 6,870 feet of exclusionary fencing to keep their cattle out of the stream and an alternative watering system that draws water from a well on an old farmstead.

The Gavles put in their filters in the spring of 1997 and planted the riparian strip at the same time. They planted about 3,000 hardwoods--walnut, silver maple, green ash, and cottonwood--for close to a mile along the creek and along the Iowa River from one end of the property to the other. Gavle said, "The 50 percent cost share made it possible to hire a forester with a planter who took care of it. I guess if there wasn't cost share, I probably wouldn't have done it." A certain percent of the new CRP ground will be in switchgrass "wherever I choose." On one 10-acre field, the Gavles plan to leave switchgrass for 10 to 15 years. "Pheasants love that--they're already coming, and we hope for more," says Gavle.

Near Monona, Eugene and Joanne Kramer's 129-acre farm is on Scott Hollow Creek--10 miles "as the crow flies" from the Mississippi River. The Kramers have 54 acres of tillable ground and 75 acres of pasture for a cow-calf operation. The farm is on steep, rolling terrain--"a beautiful part of Iowa here, not so flat"--so, 42 highly erodible acres are enrolled in the regular CRP. Eugene is "a country lawyer and retired clergyman. After 23 years as a pastor I went to law school; I wanted to try something different."

The Kramers rented out 12 acres of bottomland along a creek to a neighboring farmer. Eugene said, "But, when the continuous CRP came along, we enrolled all of that ground along the creek, plus another 8 acres of highly erodible pastureland." Rolling says there are 10 acres in grass filter strips and 11.9 in riparian woody vegetation. The Kramers put up a fence to keep cattle out of the creek and installed nose pumps for their water. "In the spring of 1997, we planted 6,000 trees and shrubs; NRCS helped line it out, and we had cost sharing to hire a forestry outfit to plant Russian olive, willows, and shrubs near the creek--and some hardwoods farther out," Eugene said. By planting hardwoods he's taking the bottomland permanently out of production--"probably not a bad idea; it wasn't meant to be row-cropped. Topsoil is a renewable resource, but it takes a long, long time to come back."

Kramer says, "This is all quite new and I'm excited about the future. In years to come, I think we're going to have a park-like atmosphere down there. I have very rich soil--Downs soil--so the CRP rent per acre is pretty good. I'm very conservation-minded, but I'm no heroic conservationist. I'm getting more rent from CRP than I would by renting it for cropping." He adds, "I think these programs have a good purpose. I feel I'm a very tiny part of a very big and important program."

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