By: Sarah Feehan The Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance (IAWA) and the Iowa Soybean Association will soon lead their third Iowa delegation to the upcoming One Water Summit, convened by the U.S. Water Alliance. Last year, the diverse Iowa delegation included Lee Gravel, watershed coordinator for the Headwaters of the North Raccoon Water Quality Improvement Project[…]
Recently, the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy (NRS) turned five years old. Sean McMahon, Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance Executive Director, reflects on the progress made to date and the work still required to improve water quality. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Iowa’s farmers have made tremendous progress reducing soil erosion by adopting practices such as no-till or strip-till, grass waterways,[…]
Steve Berger, a demonstration farm participant in the Soil Health Partnership, started to no-till in 1978. He has experimented with cover crops since 2000 and has planted all of his farm to cereal rye for the past 10 years. Berger knows that adding cover crops to your farm’s system isn’t simple. The Wellman, Iowa, farmer[…]
Wayne Fredericks, a strong conservationist and former president of the Iowa Soybean Association, began no-till soybean planting in 1992 and started strip-tilling corn in 2001. He began testing strips of cereal rye cover crops in 2012 on his farm near Osage in Mitchell County. Last fall, he seeded rye ahead of all of this year’s[…]
Kevin Sprung had mixed feelings about the two saturated buffers installed last summer on his farm near Osage, Iowa. “At first, I resisted the idea. I spent a lot of time and money on tile and on improving the tile,” he says. His initial reaction was, “I don’t want to put a shutoff at the[…]
John Swanson has a lifelong fondness for Fourmile Creek. “I grew up playing in Fourmile Creek as a kid,” he says. Swanson is the watershed management authority coordinator for Fourmile Creek, along with two other watersheds in the Des Moines area. Following is an overview of improvements planned and underway in each of Fourmile Creek’s[…]
Urban and rural stakeholders continue to work together to determine the right combination of practices needed to form an integrated system that best meets local watershed and priority resource needs. A rusty mailbox is all that remains on a house lot on a nearly abandoned street in Des Moines. It marks one way the city[…]
One Water Summit 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana By: Sarah Feehan The Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance (IAWA), in collaboration with the Iowa Soybean Association (ISA) and the Iowa Corn Growers Association (ICGA), led a diverse, 30-member delegation to the One Water Summit 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana, last month. The delegation included both expert and[…]
Partnerships Are Key to Addressing Water Quality Challenges and Implementing Lasting Solutions By Sarah Feehan “Public-private and urban-rural partnerships are vital to implementing the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy,” says Sean McMahon, executive director of the Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance (IAWA). “We are all in this together.” Iowa continues to lead the way in building partnerships[…]
Across Iowa, it’s people who are building a new green infrastructure to improve water quality. (2nd in a 2-part series) Across Iowa, it’s people who are building a new green infrastructure to improve water quality. People like landscaper Lucy Hershberger, who took a Master Conservation class and told North Liberty city leader Tracey Mulcahey about[…]