News

MO NRCS: Ephemeral gullies pilot sign-up

Missouri is one of six states picked by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to take part in a pilot project that provides farmers with financial help to take care of ephemeral gullies on highly erodible lands. Those are gullies that usually appear after rainfall.

George Henshaw, assistant state conservationist with NRCS Missouri, tells Brownfield Ag News that disking those gullies is only a ‘Band-Aid,’ “The ephemeral gullies will just keep reoccurring, so it’s not a fix. So what we’re going for is installing some conservation practices, some measures to help fix it more permanently so (farmers) don’t have to keep continuing to disc those in, just to get a crop planted.”

Practices can include cover crops, no till, crop rotation, planting permanent vegetation and installing grass waterways.

Iowa and Nebraska are also in the ephemeral gullies pilot program.  The deadline to apply in Missouri at local NRCS offices is May 17^th.