Innovative Conservation: Education, Implementation, and Research

Through the summer of 2014 the staff of the DeKalb County and Steuben County Soil and Water Conservation Districts met several times to construct an application for the 2015 Clean Water Indiana Grants Program.   Funded through the Indiana State Department of Agriculture these grants assist partnering SWCDs in getting conservation on the land that addresses local natural resource concerns. 

The planning efforts of the two SWCDs resulted in a grant project titled Innovative Conservation: Education, Implementation, and Research.  The purpose of the project was to promote the adoption of conservation practices that reduce sediment and nutrient loading through education, incentive and cost-share payments, and to provide support for on-going research to understand phosphorus loading of waterways in the Western Lake Erie Basin Watershed.   

Specifically, the project would provide a $20 per acre incentive payment on a maximum of 100 acres for new or early adopting producers to experiment with Cover Crops, Gypsum Application, and Variable Rate Technology as part of their farming operation.  Because no-till planting is the foundation of a complete conservation farming operation, the grant would also provide a 75% cost-share payment up to a maximum of $2000 for converting to no-till for planting corn.  Additionally the grant would continue and expand partner based education events such as Agronomy Field Day held annually at a local Ag retailer facility.  Finally, the budget included support for on-going research conducted in the area by the Agriculture Research Service on phosphorus movement across the landscape.  When completed the grant application requested funding of $75,000 for implementation.

On December 19, 2014 the DeKalb and Steuben SWCDs received word that our application had been selected for full funding by the State Soil Conservation Board.   Work on the project got underway in January of 2015 and completed with the final report submitted in December of 2017.  Accomplishments of the grant are as follows:

  • 1745 acres of Cover Crops were planted
  • 861 acres of Gypsum was applied
  • 384 acres used Variable Rate Technology (VRT) for application of nutrients and/or herbicides
  • 6 education events were held
  • 434 individuals attended education events
  • 1 edge of field monitoring site was installed
  • $23,153 of SWCD in-kind services were leveraged
  • $142,384 of partner funds were leveraged
  • $112,679 of partner in-kind services were leveraged
  • $3.71 was leveraged for each dollar funding the grant

 

Most unique in the grant was the partnering between the Agriculture Resource Service, a local producer, and the DeKalb and Steuben Soil and Water Conservation Districts for the installation of a 4R Edge of Field monitoring site.  This site will provide long term, field level monitoring of the effectiveness of conservation practices used in agriculture.  Clean Water Indiana Funds were used to reimburse the producer for expenses incurred over and above normal tile installation to divide the field into two equal sized watersheds and insure the results from each site were not affected by unknown sources through sub-surface drainage.   

The site is in its final year of establishing base line date.  The next step is to introduce a change in the producer’s management practices on half of the site and monitor surface and sub-surface run-off and compare that with the run-off from the other half of the site not receiving the change in management.  This will determine the effectiveness of the conservation management practice introduced. 

The investment of CWI funds has made this a premier site for conducting research.  Results from the site will provide important data for addressing the issues of the Western Lake Erie Basin long past the end of this grant.