Natural Resources Conservation Service

Provide conservation professionals in seven upper Midwestern states (IA, KS, NE, MN, ND, SD, WI) with training and curriculum tools for a targeted outreach program to women farmland owners, to help them meet their soil and water conservation goals using accepted best management practices.

Improving Conservation Outreach to Female Non-Operator Farmland Owners    - Curriculum  

2010 Center for Rural Affairs Final Report    - Final Report   PDF, 79 KB

During 20 years of work on women’s agricultural outreach, the Women, Food and Agriculture Network has verified that women inheriting land, if they have not been actively involved with agriculture, are at an enormous disadvantage when it comes to awareness, understanding, and confidence in conservation on their land. Trends in land tenure in the Midwest show a generational turnover of land ownership and women inheriting farmland need conservation resources. This is an innovative project as it targets an audience that currently has no specialized outreach, and it will require innovative strategies to be successful.

Women now own or co-own 50 percent of the farmland in Iowa, and the percentage of those who are sole landowners is rising as they inherit land from spouses and fathers. Comparable data are not available in neighboring states, but similar demographics and agricultural systems are present. A typical Midwestern female farmland owner is 65 and older, leases farmland to a tenant, and is highly interested in conservation and preserving her farm for the next generation. Women, Food and Agriculture Network has been working with Midwest women farmland owners for 16 years. The project goal is to improve soil health across seven states in the upper Midwest by increasing soil health literacy among area women farmland owners, and supporting their efforts to improve soil health on the land they own and lease. The women landowners will learn the basics of what constitutes healthy soil, some simple soil testing methods, and best management practices to support healthy soil that they can discuss and adopt with their tenants. A set of publications for women farmland owners about managing for healthy soil will also be developed in consultation with an advisory group of women farmland owners.

Stimulate adoption of no-tillage, cover crops, and manure injection through education and an interactive outreach approach.

In 2003, the State of Wisconsin adopted the Livestock Siting Law, enacted to facilitate the siting of new and expanding livestock facilities in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has developed an initial odor standard as part of the administrative rule developed to implement the siting law. Through public hearings held on the proposed rule, concerns have been raised about the odor standards. In particular, questions have been raised about the relationship between odor and livestock-generated ambient air concentrations, especially for dairy operations. These are significant issues in Wisconsin, particularly where land use is changing and residential development encroaches on agricultural operations. There are currently about 15,250 dairy operations in Wisconsin and over 1.2 million dairy cows. The livestock industry accounts for a majority of Wisconsin's $51.5 billion agricultural economy. It is critical to Wisconsin’s dairy and livestock industry that producers implement best management practices to reduce odor, ambient air concentrations, and overall environmental impacts. This project will attempt to make the connection between agricultural ambient air concentrations and odor and evaluate various best management practices installed on dairy and other livestock operations. It will field test the odor standards developed as part of the administrative rule to implement Wisconsin's Livestock Siting Law, and evaluate changes between pre- and post-installation levels of ambient air concentrations and odors.

Keywords: dairy, odor, ammonia

Wisconsin Family Forests, Inc. will define and pilot a multi-owner planning and management program for landscape-level, sustainable management on fragmented, family forestland. Develop a business plan that identifies a realistic mix of public funding and participant fees that will encourage long-term survival and growth of sponsors that host the program. Evaluate the project as a statutory program for countering forest fragmentation, improving forest health and generating certified forest products. Efforts will focus on the three pilots in the first phase. Two are being administered by Wisconsin Family Forests in the Baraboo Bluffs and Door County. A third is located in the central sands area (near Wisconsin Rapids) as part of the Stora Enso Family Forest landowner assistance program. The initial phase includes establishing the operational elements of the sustainable forestry plans and coordinated harvests, developing an effective marketing strategy, recruiting participants, providing them with management assistance, developing a tracking system, etc. The second phase (concurrent with follow through on the pilots) will be to shape future public policy toward family forest management in Wisconsin, thus institutionalizing multi-owner forest management. We will collect data on results from the three pilots, write and present reports to evaluate the project, complete the scoping assessment and organize public forums to discuss the project's future potential.

Keywords: forest fragmentation, forest health, certified forest products

Establish a leadership group of Vermont dairy farmers to implement ecologically sound winter pasture feeding and bedded pack management practices. Project will reduce feed and energy costs, improve soil and forage quality, and increase carbon storage.

The purpose is to validate and demonstrate the use of windrow composting to manage agricultural organic residues as a resource for nutrients and organic carbon in Puerto Rico.

Demonstrate an improved system of conservation practices to benefit tribes and natural resources in the Upper Great Lakes. Project will connect 100,000 acres of habitat, improve 50 miles of stream, and improve 2,500 acres of critical corridor lands.

Louisiana State University proposes to develop and improve fallow season cover crop (winter and summer) strategies as a component of overall conservation programs for soybean, field corn, cotton, and sugarcane. The primary goal is to increase the adoption of soil health management practices by demonstrating the effectiveness and efficiency of cover crops to reduce sediment loss and N and P contaminants at the farm and watershed scale for agricultural production systems in the state of Louisiana and the Mid-South region.

Demonstrate the methodology, technology, and cost effectiveness of performing a water balance approach for seepage measurements from liquid dairy manure storage ponds, and to develop and disseminate a technical field manual to facilitate technology transfer nationwide.

Final Report    - Final Report  

Water Balance Methodology Fact Sheet    - Fact Sheet  

Protocols for Measuring Dairy Lagoon Seepage Using the Water Balance Method    - Technical Guide  

Successful cultivation of cranberries requires cool temperatures, sandy soils, and an abundant supply of fresh water. The water is used to hydrate the cranberry vines and to protect the buds and berries against frost. Water is moved into bogs through sprinkler systems or flooding practices. Currently, irrigation of cranberry bogs must be done manually, which can result in excessive or insufficient irrigation, reducing yield. The purpose of this project is to implement and evaluate an automated, internet-based system to increase irrigation efficiency and improve yields.

Keywords: frost protection, sprinkler irrigation, temperature sensors, water conservation

Conservation Innovation Grant Helps Cranberry Farmers Conserve Water, Shield Fruit from Cold    - USDA Publicity  

Reduce odors caused by an existing egg wash water treatment system. Project will demonstrate and share innovative technology that is environmentally safe, economical, and technically feasible to install and operate for other egg producers.

Washington State University proposes to increase irrigation efficiencies throughout Washington by encouraging adoption of proven irrigation monitoring technology, irrigation efficient equipment and conservation practices through the following objectives: (1) Educate and enroll farmers in the Irrigation Scheduler Mobile (ISM) system; a tailored, wateruse efficiency monitoring application associated with a water savings value of 20%. (2) Increase water-use efficiency by providing voluntary irrigation assessments and delivering a tailored compilation of recommendations for irrigation system improvements. Quantify changes in wateruse efficiency rates of participants. (3) Facilitate the adoption of irrigation equipment upgrades by providing consultations and technical assistance for EQIP grant proposals.

Plant 3,070 acres of warm season grasses. Project will produce an estimated net profitability increase of $169/acre over corn and reduce annual nitrogen and phosphorus pollution by approximately 164,000 pounds and 13,195 pounds, respectively.

West Virginia University proposes a three-phased approach to develop and implement a water quality credit trading program in the WV area of the' Potomac River Watershed. The first phase will focus on developing accurate watershed specific information and data to properly inform the trading development process. This information and data will be used to modify the World Resources Institute's NutrientNet electronic trading platform that has been developed for the entire Potomac River watershed. This process will provide an accurate baseline to evaluate potential credit supply and demand, incremental cost of credits and pollutant reductions. In the second phase West Virginia Research Corporation will launch broad public outreach and education to constitute a trading stakeholder process. Informed stakeholder input into the development of the trading framework and infrastructure will improve the trading program design and increase stakeholder trust and support for it. This broader process will be supported, informed, and facilitated by a core team of official project collaborators and other key players. Stakeholders will address and resolve critical trading infrastructure and element issues such as structure and function of the bank or board of trade, trading ratios, liability for non-compliance, enforcement, allowable trades, oversight, legal authority, transparency etc. In the last phase, West Virginia University will use the outcomes from the stakeholder process to establish the program rules and infrastructure and to execute a pilot-trading program. West Virginia University will build administrative functions into existing funding, procedures, staffing and infrastructure of the state agriculture cost-share program. A trading bank will be capitalized by providing incentives for early point source participation. This revenue will be used to offset cost share requirements and kick start the trading process. NutrientNet will serve as the electronic registry and marketplace for facilitating and conducting trades and determining optimal BMP applications and loading reductions. The program will be overseen by a Board of Trade with the responsibility to ensure that trades are conducted in accordance with established rules and to adapt the program in order to encourage maximum participation and efficiency.

Final Report    - Final Report  

The National Center for Water Quality Research?s Heidelberg Tributary Loading Program has one of the most detailed and long-term water quality data sets available in the United States, particularly for agriculture-dominated watersheds. The data show that sediment and particulate phosphorus runoff to Lake Erie has been reduced since the 1970?s and is still decreasing while total phosphorus load has remained relatively constant. However, from the mid-1990's the dissolved reactive phosphorus loads have been rapidly increasing in the monitored tributaries. The overall goal of this project is to improve soil health and reduce nutrient and sediment exports from agricultural farms. The specific objectives are to: 1) demonstrate and quantify the economic and environmental benefits of a suite of best management practices (BMPs) through edge-of-field studies; 2) calibrate and verify the Agricultural Policy Environmental eXtender (APEX) model and the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and scale-up the BMP effects at different spatial scales in Northwest Ohio; 3) calibrate and verify the Nutrient Tracking Tool (NTT) for the Great Lakes basin; and 4) promote and train the producers and stakeholders of NTT to estimate farm yield and nutrient loss. An innovative way to entice producers to adopt and implement BMPs is to make available user-friendly models (e.g., the web-based NTT) that help producers verify the effectiveness of BMPs and estimate the corresponding farm yields in their own fields and demonstration farms.

Commercial poultry and livestock farms supply 95 percent of the meat, eggs and milk the people of this nation consume. However, they are at the threshold of a sustainability crisis. This project will demonstrate and multiply the adoption of five conservation impacts of planting buffers and biomass on these modern commercial farms. Vegetative buffers can scrub exhaust fan emissions of odor, NH3 and particulate matter comprised of fine particle dust, endotoxins and microorganisms, reducing their impact on those working or living near the farm. Riparian buffers can filter nutrients, hormones and bacteria associated with runoff events from barn roofs, access roads and barn yards. Shade and windbreaks can reduce the solar load and winter winds drawing heat from the poultry barns for energy conservation. Biomass crops such as switch and Miscanthus grass, willows and poplar can be grown for bedding materials and the spent litter can be burned replacing fossil fuels utilized in brooding birds and heating animal facilities. And lastly, the screened and landscaped appearance of farms with visually pleasing trees and shrubs can improve the image of these modern high density animal enterprises at the urban-rural interface. The environmental impacts of these conservation practices are highly transferable among the Chesapeake Bay states and the rest of the nation. Environmental assessment indicators for water and air quality show there is potential emissions reduction and contaminant filtration of 28 to 50 percent.

The project results will detail the best practices for irrigation pumps with an existing variable speed drive (VSD) and future VSD systems. Actual energy savings, water savings and emissions reductions will be reported for each of the three years. Practical control algorithms will be provided based on energy conservation, watering uniformity and simplicity of operation. The data collected and criteria’s established will be transferable to all irrigation pumping systems that utilize VSDs. The project is innovative because it builds on an energy savings device that is currently being used and takes the technology to the next level resulting in additional energy conservation. The focus is on energy efficiency, reduced water consumption and meeting the producer’s needs.

This project will advance phosphorous management in the U.S. by developing and demonstrating procedures that ensure Phosphorous Indices are appropriately tested in accordance with the 2012 NRCS 590 Standard by meeting the following objectives: Identifying the most effective strategies for using the Agricultural Policy Environmental Extender, an existing fate-and-transport model, to evaluate Phosphorous Indices using data from existing watershed and large-plot studies; Evaluating and improve current Phosphorous Index formulations in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska; evaluate and compare potential P Index formulations for use as a regional P Index in the humid regions of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska; Engaging farmers, technical service providers, stakeholder groups, state and regional regulators and state NRCS staff to facilitate acceptance of recommendations in each state, facilitate more consistency across state borders, and demonstrate the utility of validated, calibrated P-indices for reducing P loss and protecting water quality; and Collaborating with similar projects in Chesapeake Bay, the South, and the national overarching CIG project to facilitate application of results to humid regions of the U.S.