Soil Health
Plugging the Leaks
In a sense, the idea for the Olmsted County Groundwater Protection and Soil Health Program has its seed in 2013 — that’s when extreme rainstorms flooded area fields, leaving large swaths of corn and soybean fields unplanted. Desperate to keep washed out “prevent plant” fields covered during the growing season, the USDA’s Can One County’s Approach to Soil & Water Health be a Model of Disruption? Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provided farmers cost-share funds in thousands of acres of cover crops being By Brian DeVore to pay for planting cover crops such as ceplanted, as well as land diversified into real rye. For many of the farmers who took water- and soil-friendly alternatives such as part in this cover crop program, this was the ark Thein’s family has been oats. Farmers have even used the program first time they’d had experience growing tapping into Minnesota’s to convert row cropped land to deep-rooted a non-cash crop on their land as a way to aquifers since 1893, and in the perennial hay and pasture. The SWCD estiprotect soil. southeastern Minnesota region where his mates that as a result of acres enrolled in the “Before that, nobody believed you well drilling company operates, the cracks, program, along with fields utilizing similar could get a cover crop to work in a corn basins, and underground streams that make practices that aren’t officially part of the iniand soybean rotation this far up its karst geology have north,” recalls Martin Larsen, a long been an excellent source conservation technician for the of drinking water. But Thein Olmsted SWCD. Larsen used has noticed a troubling trend cost-share funds to plant cover the past two decades: wells crops on his own farm that year, are increasingly contamiand, like many other farmnated with nitrates, and the ers, found that it was not only pollution is diving deeper possible to grow cover crops in into the earth. This puts him Minnesota, but that they added in an awkward position when numerous benefits to the soil: it comes to balancing the less erosion, better water maneconomic and the ecological. agement, and a lower reliance “It’s not in my best interon chemical inputs as a result of est to save the aquifer beadded fertility and the breakcause there are other aquifers ing up of weed cycles. At about deeper that I can make more that time, news was coming money drilling wells to,” he out of North Dakota about how says. “But it’s not in society’s farmers like Gabe Brown were best interest to look the other building soil health profitably way. I don’t think it’s fair to the next generation.” “Protecting water quality is a perk, but the main reason I’m doing it is to using a system based on cover Drilling deeper is a try to be more profitable,” says farmer Alan Bedtka of his use of practices crops, no-till, managed rotational fruitless race against gravsupported by the Olmsted County Groundwater Protection and Soil Health grazing, and diverse rotations. In 2015, the Land Stewardship ity as water, and any polProgram. (LSP Photo) Project’s Bridge to Soil Health lutants along for the ride, program was launched out of its steadily percolate through southeastern Minnesota office in Lewiston. the fractured rock. Eventually, well drillers tiative, over half-a-million pounds of nitrates Through that initiative, the Soil Builders’ like Thein will run out of depths to plumb. have been kept out of the area’s water. Network was developed — it now brings As a result, a little over a year ago, he and The program is still too new to be considtogether hundreds of farmers in the region to fellow Olmsted County Commissioner ered a game changer that reverses the water share information on regenerative farming Gregg Wright approached the local Soil and quality trends in the region, but it’s shown techniques. Water Conservation District (SWCD) office potential for taking a fresh approach to hitThis was all occurring as public health and asked a question: how can we preting that sweet spot of balancing farmers’ experts and other local government officials vent nitrates from entering that downward profitability with a public good. Could it be in Olmsted County became increasingly geological escalator in the first place? That a model for similar initiatives in other counalarmed by the amount of nitrates that were conversation has resulted in an innovative ties — even statewide or nationally? showing up in water tests. Karst geology program that takes a holistic approach to “We’ve paid and we’ve paid and we’ve is made up of porous limestone that allows helping farmers implement a system that not subsidized for the way that farming has surface contaminants to easily make their only hangs on to nitrogen better, but is not gone,” says Shona Langseth, a soil conserway into underground aquifers. Nitrates are as reliant on commercial applications of the vation technician for the Olmsted County a particularly troublesome pollutant, given fertilizer in the first place. A little over a year Soil and Water Conservation District. their ability to escape the surface and seep into its implementation, the Olmsted County “We’re going to have to help transition deeper into the earth. High nitrate levels can Groundwater Protection and Soil Health farmers into the next way of thinking, and Program (olmsted-soil-health-programwe’re going to have to be creative about it.” Rooting, see page 23… gis-olmsted.hub.arcgis.com) has resulted
Rooting Out Nitrates
M
22
No. 2, 2023
The Land Stewardship Letter
