Watershed coordinators’ hands-on work improves NE Iowa streams By Dan Looker The Turkey River winds and ripples past limestone bluffs in Northeast Iowa and is a favorite of paddlers and anglers. But where the river starts, at a gently sloping corn field in Howard County, it looks more like an easily jumped ditch. Hunter Slifka,[…]
By Dan Looker Iowa (IAWA) – Iowans can track nutrient reduction progress using two sources: the Iowa Nutrient Research and Education Council (INREC) and Iowa State University’s online reporting dashboard. INREC conducts statistically reliable surveys of ag retailers each year, meeting with agronomists to pick 1,000 representative locations. Other sources rely on data from government[…]
By Dan Looker, IAWA Writer Iowans have heard a lot about nitrogen fertilizer in recent years. Nitrogen and phosphorus are the two key nutrients that the state is working to manage better through the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy. In May, the Strategy will be a decade old. As that anniversary nears, it’s worth taking a[…]
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[…]