Environmental challenges have always driven innovation and advancement in agriculture.
From extreme drought leading to enhanced seed genetics and flooding resulting in prescriptive fertilizer applications, farmers have pivoted their practices and adapted their operations to continue producing food, fiber and fuel.
We face another driving force with nutrient runoff and the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and producers have responded by deploying a range of conservation practices across their farms.
Practices like no-till, strip-till, cover cropping, buffer strips, wood chip bioreactors and others are all playing a significant role in keeping nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil and out of our freshwater supplies.
Environmentally sound practices like these are the foundation of Illinois farmers’ continued commitment to implement long-term solutions that protect our nation’s water supply and improve soil health.
Illinois Farm Bureau has supported that commitment by distributing more than $1.17 million for 150 conservation projects in 75 counties through its Nutrient Stewardship Grant Program, which began in 2015.
In fact, farmer conservation efforts in Illinois have led to measurable progress in reducing total nitrate loss and shrinking the size of the Gulf of Mexico’s hypoxic zone.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Hypoxia Task Force reported last December that Illinois was one of 12 states to meet interim nitrogen goals for 2025 by reducing total nitrogen loss by 20%. The 2023 Illinois Ag Retail Survey also found that in 2022, across 917 Illinois fields, 24% of corn and 44% of soybeans were no-till. Cover crops were found on about 9% of fields in fall 2021, and while 49% of respondents reported fall application of anhydrous, 97% of the producers reported use of an inhibitor to reduce the potential for leeching.
These indicators suggest significant progress toward meeting the goals outlined in the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy. While the conservation efforts of individual farmers are important, we cannot overlook the value of moving the needle through a collaborative approach.
A leader in this space has been Ohio Farm Bureau, which partnered with the state’s environmental community and government agencies in 2019 to launch H2Ohio, a statewide initiative aimed at improving the water quality of Lake Erie and the surrounding Western Lake Erie Basin by reducing nitrogen and phosphorus loads.
Backed by $270 million in state money, and with the support of groups like the Ohio Environmental Council, one element of the H2Ohio program is a mix of financial incentives for farmers in the basin to deploy conservation practices that align with specific field conditions.
For each on-farm practice, like planting cover crops and developing a nutrient management plan, farmers can earn a per-acre payment that stacks together on the same acre. Specific practices, such as strip tilling or applying manure in lieu of chemical fertilizer, can also result in higher payments.
The flexibility within H2Ohio for Ohio farmers to use a menu of voluntary conservation practices tailored to their farms led to 2,400 producers enrolling 1.4 million acres in voluntary nutrient management plans in fiscal 2023, representing about 35% of the basin.
Altogether, those efforts have resulted in reducing phosphorus loads in Lake Erie by 232,000 pounds in 2022, and by more than 315,000 pounds in 2023.
The willingness and understanding of all parties in Ohio to take ownership and investment in the responsibility and value of clean water and healthy soil leaves some of us green with envy – and not just algae.
A similar opportunity for this kind of collaboration exists in Illinois, where producers have demonstrated their serious commitment to conservation practices and made meaningful investments to protect the environment. The state-level $5-per-acre crop insurance discount for planting cover crops has proven an effective first step. Illinois farmers across the program’s five years have enrolled nearly half a million total cover-cropped acres and annually exceed the program’s acreage cap.
Imagine the progress we could make if armed with additional state conservation incentives.
• Evan Hultine is vice president of the Illinois Farm Bureau.