Special Report
Maintaining the ‘Water Quality’ momentum in 2014
Iowa’s Nutrient Reduction Strategy got off to a great start in 2013. Last summer, Iowa farmers lined up to snag 2.8 million dollars in state-provided matching funds that helped them plant cover crops and implement other conservation practices on some 230-thousand acres.
So how do officials plan to maintain the program’s strong momentum in 2014? We put that question to Matt Lechtenberg, who was recently appointed to the new position of Water Quality Initiative Coordinator in the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.
“We want to make sure that the folks that tried the practices for the first time last year are successful and minimize the amount of failures out there,” Lechtenberg says. “We don’t want anybody to have a bad taste in their mouth from trying something new—to get discouraged and not want to try it again.”
One way they’re doing that is by identifying local “farmer champions” who have experience with the various conservation practices and are willing to answer questions on a “peer-to-peer” basis.
“We think it’s more effective for them to learn from their peers than from maybe a government agency or somebody on the research side who just looks at the plot level,” says Lechtenberg. “Looking more at the farm level is what we’re trying to do with these first-time users.
“Many of these practices that we did last fall are annual practices and we need to make sure that these are practices that are going to be implemented in the long term to see the benefits in water quality.”
AUDIO: Matt Lechtenberg (4:40 MP3)
in response to water quality. Your own NRCS / DNR wetlands restauration needs to be stopped. I can prove the wetlands are polluting our small rivers and streams and lakes. You have created cesspools of rodent feces and rotten vegetation that flow directly into the county intakes in our county tile systems leading to our lakes.