Incorporating conservation practices: County SWCDs, farmer resources & successes
Hi. And welcome back to the Advancing Nitrogen Smart podcast series from the University of Minnesota Extension. I am Jack Wilcox in communications with Extension.
Jack Wilcox:Today, we're doing something a little different. We are at the annual MASWCD convention that is the Minnesota Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts.
Jack Wilcox:I'm here with Brad Carlson, who is an Extension educator. Today we're very happy to have Mike Schultz with us, is the district manager of the Le Sueur SWCD.
Jack Wilcox:Brad and Mike, talk to us about the general categories of conservation practices first, and then maybe some avenues to get conservation practices out onto the land.
Brad Carlson:So we talk a lot about state nutrient reduction strategy and we talk a lot about there being nitrates in water. Ultimately people ask, well what are you going to do about that stuff? And of course, one of the things that we talk about nitrogen smart a lot are the various practices that help reduce the loss of nitrates into the water. And so these amount to conservation practices. There's a few general categories.
Brad Carlson:One is fertilizer and nitrogen management, which is is aimed at really finding the exact right amount of fertilizer for a given year and a given site. We tend to focus a lot on that when in the Nitrogen Smart curriculum and and we've you know, throughout the years because that's really the cheapest thing that we can do.
Brad Carlson:There's really two other general groups of practices. One are what we call edge-of-field practices, which is retrofitting drainage systems so that we could capture the water and then employ a some kind of an engineering structure of some sort like a bioreactor, saturated buffer, something of that sort where we actually try and remove there or have the nitrate removed from from the water either by denitrification, one of the processes in the nitrogen cycle, or by being taken up by plants, and so forth. And then the other general suite of practices is is just what we call land practices, land cover practices, which includes cover crops.
Brad Carlson:That includes potentially retiring the land if it's in a real sensitive area. It may include ultimately extended rotations of crops. You know, at this point, we don't have a lot of really good viable economic crops. But all of this stuff, you know, when the rubber meets the road, it happens out in the counties in the farm fields, and it's your county soil and water conservation districts that have been charged with getting these practices out on the field. Minnesota has been blessed with a lot of extra funding that comes from the state for conservation practices.
Brad Carlson:Historically, most of that funding came from NRCS. Now we're a little different because we've got a significant funding pool from the state, and it's the SWCDs have been. So Mike and I have had a working relationship with him in Massawa County. I actually own farmland in Massawa County, and we've done some things on my property. I just thought it'd be kind of fun to bring in Mike and and talk just a little bit about how this all plays out on the local level.
Brad Carlson:So, Mike, you guys have a lot of kinda competing concerns that you wanna take care of. There's people who wanna plant trees. You've got erosion problems and so forth. Now we have the state nutrient reduction strategy, and that as well as all the other things that are of local concern all get rolled up into our watershed plans in Minnesota. So you in your county actually have three different watershed plans.
Brad Carlson:Why don't you tell us a little bit about how those plans get written and how how you kind of balance the interests of all of the things that need to get incorporating those plans?
Mike Schultz:Since '20, I think, '16, we've been slowly working on watershed plans. We've kind of picked them up periodically as as we started with the Cannon Watershed, which is in the eastern part of our county. We were the second round of funding for those, relatively early stage, planning. This was new for all of us, and we knew that we wanted to have a comprehensive plan to bring all the things that we had been talking about to make one watershed one plan. You know, that's where the nutrient reduction strategy fit in.
Mike Schultz:That's where the wraps fit in. All these other planning efforts, and then all the local concerns and resources that we've literally known about, but really just didn't know how to put somewhere or bring together. And I think at the end of the day, these plans we learned is that we're gonna get some funding to do conservation, through our dedicated clean water funds. And that was the driver to bring us all to collectively together. So in those early stages, we sat in.
Mike Schultz:I mean, I remember, I think we we finished around 40 plus meetings or so, but we had a meeting number on our our agendas, and we would bring our collective partners together and have these discussions as a watershed. And we had 14 entities that sat in on that group that helped make these decisions. But as we had those discussions, you know, priorities rose to the top and discussions continue to be had about what type of conservation we needed to put on the landscape or what were the current concerns or gaps of potentially the work that's going on out there. You know, that was our very first plan in 2016, and it was relatively new for us and a new process. Fast forward to 2020, we finished our Lower Minnesota River East.
Mike Schultz:That watershed is really just a handful of partners for Rice Le Sueur and Scott Counties. We had a better understanding knowing what we were doing. We worked with different consultants to get that written. And more recently, we're working on the Minnesota Minnesota watershed in Mankato. And, actually, I think that goes out to final for final comment approval this this next coming week or so.
Mike Schultz:All these had a little bit different avenues as we were working on the plans and bringing in the advisory groups together, which would involve our partners, and it would be the state, department of Ag, department of Health, DNR, any other partners, and we kinda just talked through with these priorities. But as they grew, we ended up picking up best management practices that we really wanna bring to the top or reaches of the county that had sensitive groundwater areas that we looked at. And so those kind of were brought forward in each of those plans.
Brad Carlson:So let's talk a little bit about the the the the different practices that have been employed, you know, as far as what what's the level of interest and all, like, statewide, there's not been a lot of the edge of field practices put in place. I think part of that is because they're a little more complex and and they're expensive. Part of that is also just a lack of of knowledge, if you would. I mean, maybe you'd say enthusiasm, but I think the bottom line is a lot of farmers just aren't familiar with those practices and what they're gonna get out of them. So what all is actually being done on the landscape as far as is addressing the state's nutrient reduction strategy?
Mike Schultz:First and foremost, you talked about the edge of field practices. Saturated buffers are what I was thinking of. We've actually tried to look at some sites in the county to do some of this work. And and, really, what our biggest holdup is is when our landscape isn't the greatest to work with it in the land of we it's the only willing landowner that's willing to with us. It's very hard to retrofit some of those things.
Mike Schultz:But the constructed wetlands, Le Sueur County has been relatively, I would say, proactive in some of that work as we've been doing a big, push for water storage, which has constructed wetlands in that case, and in in general, just some wetland restoration, your enhancements. We got to that position by we've had flooding events that have kinda accelerated that conversations. But by default, we are benefiting those those those nutrient reductions. I would say that that has risen to the top in all of our planning efforts because flooding has been a huge issue in our region, and that's kind of driven that conversation. Plus, currently, Minnesota has several different pots of funding outside of our watersheds to fund some of that stuff.
Mike Schultz:So it's a little bit easier to get to, and it's less of a cost for maybe a landowner or maybe no cost in some cases. Whereas some of the bioreactors or other practices may come with some form of land or input through a a match, which Brad would understand is like as we've done conservation on his field, we the landowners are covered to required to cover some portion of match usually in these conservation practices. So it's really difficult to get some of these things across finish line in those discussions. We've had some sites identified to do the work, but it's the cost really really holds them up and and bringing them forward. But the other thing that runs into this is land order interest.
Mike Schultz:Right? We're we're constantly working with land owners, and I would say we're very fortunate that our relationship with landowners in Le Sueur County is pretty good. But we have a great staff at Le Sueur, SWCD that I think we feel comfortable reaching out to just about any landowner and having these discussions. But, you know, I think there's also another hesitation on us that we ultimately know some of these landowners on a a personal level, and we know what their reactions are on some of the sports. So it's really difficult to find the right time to present the work to these folks.
Brad Carlson:So given that, you know, what percentage of the practices that get out there are there because the the landowner came to you and said, got a problem I need to deal with. Now what percentage are are the cases where you've kinda gone out and you've seen, boy, we got an issue here, and you've tried to, you know, to massage your relationship with the landowner into convincing them that they need to deal with something?
Mike Schultz:I'm gonna just use an example in our lower watershed. We're doing a lot of targeting and reaching out specifically on maybe some of our habitat practices. We have some a habitat priority that has some, you know, pry perennial cover, things like that that we're trying to break forward that's eligible for some of our funding, and we're reaching out to a ton of people like that. And and some people don't even know that there's an opportunity that exists. A lot of people come in and just try to understand what we're offering.
Mike Schultz:And sometimes the conversation turns into a project and others say, well, let me let me sit on this. And I always call this planting the seed. Right? Reaching out. Give them some information.
Mike Schultz:There's a good chance even if they don't respond through a letter, they bring those letters back six months, a year later, be like, hey. What was this all about? Or I want to do this now. And so that happens more often than I would say we're targeting 50% of the time, and the other 50% of the time landowners are coming to us with actual soil erosion issues. That's that's usually the biggest thing we get.
Mike Schultz:The other thing that's happening is the federal government is not funding projects like they used to, and so there's a lot of work coming from the federal government side saying, hey. Can you guys help these landowners? And so that's something that we've been jumping on. I I would say we're very fortunate from the state side to be able to implement those practices.
Jack Wilcox:Mike Schultz, can you talk to us about any surprises that you can think of during this process? Any success stories? Any great questions from farmers?
Mike Schultz:I'll I'll use an example. I remember we I was sitting I asked to meet with a landowner I know pretty well. Long story short, they were gonna drain this piece, and, it was two weeks after sidebuster, so they weren't eligible to do it thirty years ago. You know? And and so the land just sat there as hay land, and it's been partially drained.
Mike Schultz:And in one of our watersheds, we have some wetland restoration goals or water storage goals. And I asked, you wanna meet with me out here? We sat in the truck. I read them the actual stuff right out of our book or out of our plan, and and and he's like, what did you get me into? I I read them the requirements and what we're trying to do for these goals, and and he's like, get something together and show it to me.
Mike Schultz:Well, fast forward, let's just say it's been five years. Fast forward four, five years, we've officially started construction here this fall on this project and found funding to do it. And it's been a pretty huge success story to kinda start that little planting that seed all those years ago, work on trying to figure out a plan and funding, and and and here we are doing construction.
Brad Carlson:Yeah. There was a situation that always has stuck with me throughout my career. I started way back thirty plus years ago as a county agent. And working at Rice County, I always had a close relationship with the NRCS and the SWCD offices there. And I remember them talking about a particular wetland restoration they wanted to do, not in a productive farm field.
Brad Carlson:That was an area that was really poor quality. It was reed canary grass. It really wasn't serving anybody any good. And it was actually on a corner of property, and therefore, it involved four different landowners. And three of the landowners said, yeah, that's fine.
Brad Carlson:One of the landowners, when they approached him, wanted no part of this. He wasn't interested in working with the government. And they said, well, here's out. This is what we want to do. Nope, he wanted nothing to do it.
Brad Carlson:Five years later, that guy walked in the office and said, you know, all these years I've been thinking about that, and I guess that really makes sense. And that wouldn't have happened if they hadn't taken the time to just simply lay out to the individual, the landowner, the farmer who owned that land, and say, here's what we're planning and here's what we'd like to do and here's what we hope to accomplish by that. And so I really give kudos to you guys for being proactive on some of this stuff because ultimately, if we're going to make a difference environmentally, we're going to have to start targeting your problems. We're not going to just simply have to count on people walking through the door because, in general, the people inclined to walk through the door probably have taken care of a lot of their problems unless they're too big for them to handle themselves anyway. And, you know, I think that probably my last question for you, Mike, is so we get this pool of funding that trickles down from the state, and it goes into a a a watershed.
Brad Carlson:They're a watershed that's roughly the size of about a county, but they don't follow county lines. Who makes the decision on how that money gets gets kinda divvied out as far as what practices? How much of it goes to cover crops? How much of it goes to erosion control and so forth? You know, how are those decisions made?
Mike Schultz:Well, I would say that there's no silver bullet on exactly how that works, but I think in our first plan, which was the Cannon, we kind of set up a 10-year window of how we're gonna spend money in the tiers of, like, our priority. Let's gonna go put our money where our worst problems are first. So in the in that scenario, that's how that kinda lined up is in the Upper Cannon Straight River watershed.
Mike Schultz:We know that there's needed a serious amount of work, so we put a lot of money in that direction. Now as that plan moves on, we're supposed to navigate to maybe some other second tier priority areas and so on and so forth. And so in my case, we weren't in that higher tier area, but we were getting some funding. And so we're implementing practices through our region periodically. I mean, it hasn't been overwhelming in that watershed just because there's been some funding and there's been some opportunities at best.
Mike Schultz:But in our lower watershed, we have a lot of problems that we've identified. And really, as the money comes in, we kind of talk about what our potential future wear fold looks like, what we know what's on our radar, what's potentially been designed and or being designed so we know what that dollar looks like. So so that kinda helps drive our funding every other year.
Brad Carlson:At this point, the entire state's been done as far as the the watershed plans. We're now actually I think we're coming back around to revisiting, rewriting them for the ones that were done first. What's that process gonna look like? And if you're a farmer or a landowner out there and you want to proactively get involved in that process, how do you do that?
Mike Schultz:I would say I would reach out to your SWCDs or even if not every one watershed when planned is fully organized with, like, a board. They might be a mix up of SWCDs. Reach out to SWCDs. Ask who sit on those boards of some sort. They're either a joint powers board or a memorandum agreement board, a collaborative.
Mike Schultz:They're the ones that will help with that. And then there's opportunities for steering team option opportunities. They usually meet periodically and then potentially for advisory groups as well. Sometimes in some of our plans too, we have a a public input, like, maybe update maybe once every year, another opportunity there. So just reach out to SWCDs, especially maybe the watershed you're specifically concerned about, and ask how it's function and how it works.
Mike Schultz:And, you know, that's a good way to get started. And if you got any questions on actual specific projects, ask what if it's for your crop or a farm or operation. So
Jack Wilcox:Mike Schultz, district manager of the Le Sueur County SWCD and Brad Carlson, Extension educator, thank you both for being here.
Brad Carlson:Thank you.
Mike Schultz:Thanks.
Jack Wilcox:Do you have a question about something on your farm? Just send us an email here at nutmgmt@umn.edu. Thanks a lot for listening, and we look forward to seeing you next time.
Jack Wilcox:Advancing Nitrogen Smart is proud to be supported by the farm families of Minnesota and their corn checkoff investment through Minnesota Corn.
