 Good afternoon everyone. We're just going to get started here. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Jesse Stollark, a policy associate at the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Our topic this afternoon is Farming and Water Quality Conservation Policies to Reduce Nutrient Loss. Today we will hear from five experts from the agricultural water and policy community to discuss this important topic. This is a very timely topic as water quality challenges have played out this year and in previous years in multiple regions of the country. Discussion of these issues in local and national media have raised the national consciousness on the challenges we face in providing cleat and safe drinking water. At the same time, farmers have long understood the connections between nutrient management and water quality. In the Mississippi River Basin, farmers, stakeholders, and federal agencies continue to work to address this issue. Our speakers today will expand our understanding of what makes economic and environmental sense in conserving nutrients and explore what federal programs are helping farmers address nutrient management and water quality. We're going to start with our first speaker who is Jonathan Capis. Jonathan is currently a clinical assistant professor of law and policy at the University of Illinois where he teaches and conducts research on a variety of agricultural policy topics. Prior to this position, Jonathan was chief counsel to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry where he helped to shape the current Farm Bill. Jonathan has also served as the administrator to the Farm Programs at USDA and he started his career here on Capitol Hill as a staffer for Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. I'm going to turn the mic over to Jonathan. Thank you, Jesse, and thank you to EESI for having us out for this timely and important discussion. So I'm going to go through some just sort of basic overview, introductory type materials, and then we'll dig deeper as we go. Of course with the University of Illinois you know we think about water quality challenges right now, the big issues, the big three, we look at the Gulf of Mexico hypoxia issue where you have nutrients in the Gulf of Mexico resulting in the hypoxic or dead zone down there. Of course the Des Moines Water Works lawsuit has gotten a lot of attention recently and then both the state of Iowa and the state of Illinois working through nutrient loss reduction strategies at the state level to try to cut the amount of nutrients that get into the waterways and down to the Gulf. So these are the big issues. Of course, and I apologize, the words are a little small on this, but the picture itself is probably worth a thousand words. If you talk about Gulf hypoxia, you look at that Mississippi River Basin, everything in green is farmland. This is not a small problem, and this is not something that can just be easily addressed. So there's a lot of work to be done throughout here. We're looking at nearly 41% of the contiguous United States and over 240 million acres of cropland. So this is a big topic, a big scope. Of course, Des Moines Water Works, we've been watching this one closely. It's a lawsuit that has been filed just this year. So we're still very much in the initial stage of this. And nobody yet knows how this is going to play out. But what we're seeing is what is a fairly novel legal theory. You know, under the Clean Water Act, ag storm water is exempted. So what runs off the field, what comes off the field is exempted from the Clean Water Act regulations as a non-point source of pollution. Des Moines has filed a lawsuit claiming that the drainage districts, so many of our farms and they drain, they drain into districts, which is made up of the land and landowners in the area. And they're claiming that when that water comes out of the district level tile, that it's no longer qualifies under the exemption. This has the potential and this has gotten a lot of attention because it has the potential to really change this conversation. If we start looking at lawsuits on drainage districts, particularly in states like Iowa and Illinois and Minnesota, where we have a lot of a lot of drainage and a lot of districts, you know, they're alleging over four million dollars on nitrate removal equipment. So they're alleging that the cost of the nitrates in the water, they're having to clean out at the drinking level. Or at the drinking water range. And then of course, this nutrient loss reduction strategy. So the state of Illinois has moved forward with a strategy, Iowa has done as well, to how do we work with farmers, with municipalities, with everybody in the state to try and reduce the amount of nutrients that are getting into the water supply. With the goal right now you see about 15% nitrate reduction by 2025 and moving from there. And this is really looking at this at this Gulf of Mexico hypoxia issue and how do we reduce what's happening. And of course, this is a while on one hand a tough conversation. It's also a very timely and important conversation for farmers because when you apply nutrients to your field, you do not want them to run off. They are important to fertilize crops and help you produce a crop. And so there's a lot of thinking that we can do a lot of work here to reduce that loss that both both benefits the farmer at the farm level in the field, keeping those nutrients for the crop and as well as keeping them out of the water supply and then eventually out of the Mississippi River and down to the Gulf of Mexico. And I mentioned Des Moines and some of the things that are going on. We look at a state like Illinois with about 9.7 million acres of tile-drained land. So a huge undertaking just in the state of Illinois as well as the entire Mississippi River basin. And some of the estimates we've seen in the science assessment about what is being lost from these fields. And again, I think a lot of times the importance of this conversation, we can lose the discussion in lawsuits or the hypoxic zone and miss the point that farmers themselves have a very strong motivation to keep those nutrients in the field and keep them for the crop. And so a lot of farmers and farm groups have been very active in trying to develop the strategy and find a way to work through these issues that benefits them as well as our water supplies. And so a lot of work is going on and this has caught a lot of attention and is gaining attention with farmers as we have these conversations around the state throughout the region. And again, just looking at this, we go deeper into what has been a science-based strategy to try to find ways to reduce nutrient loss, to keep the nutrients in the soil. Different components, different things like conservation-based practices, so everything from nitrification inhibitors, right? Something I have with my nitrogen I put on the field to hold it in that soil longer so it doesn't leach out. Everything down to bioreactors at the tile level and how much do they reduce the nutrient loss? How much are they holding in the soil, keeping out of the river? And then of course, what does it cost? Because these practices all come with a cost to the farmer, are all challenging to put in place in many respects. You know, we think of things like cover crops as a great example. There's a lot of talk right now about cover crops and how do you use them? How do you manage a cover crop? You know, my dad farms in Ohio and has been experimenting with cover crops for many years and has had varying success. And you're managing something outside of your commercial crop. And so how do you do that? What advice can we learn? What techniques can we learn? Because you do get a fairly significant amount of nitrate reduction or you're holding that soil because that cover crop then is going to scavenge the nitrogen after the corn or soybean is harvest. And so these kind of practices are all being looked at, all being investigated and worked on, but they come with costs and they come with management challenges. They come with the addition of risk for the farm, particularly with something like cover crops. If you do not get that terminated in time or dealt with in the spring, you're going to have a hard time planting your commercial crop. What does that mean for your farm's operation? How do you manage through that? So we see these issues coming up and we see a lot of work trying to sort this out for the farmer. And of course I think this cost aspect is a big, big part of this right now, particularly as you see margins coming down in a lower commodity price scenario for farmers. These cost issues get magnified. And that's where conservation programs come in. So as we dive deeper into this, we think about the federal assistance that's in the Farm Bill that goes out to farmers to help them offset the cost of these programs, these practices. This is just looking at Illinois briefly of what we've been seeing the last couple of years in Illinois between CSP and Equip. So I've picked those to the Conservation Security Program and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. From a policy standpoint, we think of these two, these are our working lands conservation. So we're using these programs and these federal dollars to work into the farm practice, these conservation practices, into the farm's operation as opposed to some of the more traditional conservation programs that will remove land from production. So if you go back and think back through places like Illinois where you see a lot of the red there is where we expect a lot of the tile drainage to be, that is incredibly productive farmland. That's an incredibly expensive farmland and the tile itself is an expense on the farmland and a value of the farmland. So you want to begin to think of these working lands policies because we're probably not going to take much of that if any out of farming. And so it's important to think about how these policies have adjusted to try to deal with these on-the-ground infield issues and how can they be adjusted going forward to better target these type of challenges that we have. And as an example of that, and then I will get out of the way for the rest of the speakers, but one of the things that we've been working closely on with Illinois corn growers, Illinois Farm Bureau and many of the other farm organizations in the state of Illinois is this idea of looking at precision technology and basic farm business management. How do we combine the things that farmers do now for their commercial operation and adapt them or adjust them or use them for conservation? Basic things, we look at yield maps and how we look at soil and field elevation and hydrology and water movement. How do we begin to combine these things that farmers are doing? So what are the business management components of conservation? And we're working on a regional conservation partnership program proposal, RCPP, which was in this most recent farm bill, to look at addressing these type of regional conservation challenges across multiple farms, trying to coordinate, trying to get a little innovative at the ground level to help farmers address some of these challenges. And we kind of think that the more we do this from a business management standpoint, the more we understand the economics of nutrient loss, the economics of conservation, and can take technology to help farmers manage through the complexity and the risk. Combine those issues, we will see significant advancements on the ground and we'll learn a lot about conservation, conservation policies and how it works in agriculture and for farmers. And so we're working through these issues as we are today even, trying to find the solutions that will help address these issues, addressing in a way that makes sense for the farmer at the farm level and reduce the nutrients that get into the water. So with that, I will get out of the way with that brief introduction and turn it over to the experts on the panel. And I guess, Adam, now that you're here, we're going to pull you right in. Thank you. Thanks, Jonathan, for an introduction to this complicated topic and how all these pieces start to fit together. So next up, we're going to hear from Adam Sharp. Adam is the Vice President of Public Policy at the Ohio Farm Bureau, prior to his role at the Farm Bureau, he served as Acting Counselor on Agricultural Policy to the Administrator of EPA, where he also served as Political Deputy over EPA's Pesticide Office. Prior to his positions at EPA, Adam was Director of Government Relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation. Adam is also involved in his family's farm located in Fairfield County, Ohio. I'm going to turn it over to Adam. Thank you. Let's see if we can get this to work here. All right. So I'm going to talk, Jonathan's presentation is perfect lead-in to my discussion, which is going to be very specific to on the ground level. So what we're doing in Ohio, very specific to a unique problem for our state, but not necessarily unique within the Midwest or even across the country, but certainly the way we've gone about dealing with it. Water quality in Ohio. When we're looking at our watersheds and how Ohio is laid out, southern two-thirds of our state drains south, right, heads down the Mississippi. And of course nitrates and other discussions are part of what we're looking at, but the top third of our state drains north up into the Great Lakes. So just a little bit about Ohio. So when we're talking about water quality in Ohio, this is what we're talking about predominantly. Now we are talking nutrient management in general and certainly with nitrogen and other issues, but phosphorus runoff, specifically in the form of dissolved reactive phosphorus that contributes to lakes turning green is our issue. Now our politicians are very keen to this obviously when they're running for office both locally and nationally. They tend to not like the idea of having a green lake. They can't necessarily see the mouth of the Mississippi River. They do know there's issues and they do know we need to do things and we are doing things to deal with issues at the mouth of Mississippi. But right in our own backyard is the issue that we're tackling with. So May of 2010, that top picture is Grand Lake St. Mary's. It's an inland lake in the western part of the state of Ohio. It was one of the first kind of indicators, if you will, wake up call for agriculture and for the state that we do have some phosphorus issues in our state and certainly a phenomenon that's driving these harmful algal bloom issues across our state. Now you see all the stars. Those are all lakes that are very diverse in nature that have had this same problem. So not always just a lake like Grand Lake which is heavy agriculture but a number of these lakes down across the southeastern part of the state are in Appalachia. Not a lot of agriculture where that's actually happening. The next two pictures, that's Toledo's water intake. That's a glass of water there next to the intake. And the last picture of course is Lake Erie. That was a cover shot of National Geographic. So it is a statewide issue for our state, not just western Lake Erie Basin and Lake Erie which is what's getting most of the focus because of what happened in Toledo. We're talking about cyanobacteria. It's a blue-green algae. They call it blue-green algae. It's actually a bacteria. So it does have of course some harmful effects depending on the type of exposure. Arctic in Ohio has been both mandatory and voluntary. There has been several mandatory actions taken that agriculture has been very involved in as well as a number of voluntary actions. So what I'm going to do is just highlight several of those for you here as my presentation. First Senate Bill 1. This was a bill that we passed in our state legislature. It wasn't driven by agriculture originally but we got on board and we absolutely supported the bill, supported its passage as we made sure it was going to work for agriculture. What it does is specifically, it's about 24 parts of 24 counties in the northwestern part of our state where it does restrict the application of nutrients both manure or commercial fertilizer to frozen or snow-covered ground or saturated ground or potentially saturated ground. So that's the extent of that legislation. It is just now coming into fruition and really as this winter moves forward we'll have the rule package out and it'll be starting to be enforced for some operators this winter and then others over the next two winners depending on the size of your operation. Senate Bill 150 is the first of its kind in the country where it does require a certification to apply commercial fertilizer anywhere in our state. So any farmer who's going to apply fertilizer on more than 50 acres to go through the certification process, state law. Again, both these bills were bills that when they were initially being discussed you can imagine agriculture's response was of mixed emotion. But as we got involved with these pieces of legislation and moved them forward and found ways to make sure that it was going to work for farmers as well there was support across the board from our agricultural groups to make sure that we could support these bills and ultimately pass both these pieces of legislation. In fact, you see the card on the bottom which is certified now over 6,000 farmers. Many of those focus this first year in the Western Lake Erie Basin. But we've really focused Farm Bureau on actually getting folks to certify even quicker. It's a three-year time frame to get certified. We're pushing hard to get everybody certified here within the first year or two and we're well on our way toward doing that. So backing up a little bit 2011 and 12 following Grand Lake one of the things that we did, I'm going to slide through a series of actions on the voluntary side that go hand-in-hand and in fact are pushing and leading the mandatory actions that we've taken. What we did is agriculture groups, a very diverse group of agricultural organizations and others including our So-and-Water Conservation Districts, our Ohio State University and others led by first saying to our farmers, to ourselves we expect you to do the right thing. We expect you to use for our nutrient management. We expect you to be leaders in dealing with nutrient management. In fact, even some of our county Farm Bureau next to Grand Lake St. Mary's told some of our members, if you don't comply with what's being required of you in this lake, we may actually consider booting you out of the organization. Which is something that you don't hear often in any organization, right? Throwing people out. But that was the expectation, it was set very high. This letter laid that groundwork. We then put in a million dollars, just Farm Bureau's dollars. Now corn and soy and other groups also put in a very significant amount of money as well to do work that we saw was important on the voluntary side. So we approved and we've spent a million bucks. We actually just approved again last week another million from our organization, which is enormous when you look at our operating budget. It is a large investment on the private side, private investment if you will from our Farm Bureau members across to our state to do what's right for water quality. So what are those things? First, voluntary coordination with our Ohio State University. We're putting a lot of dollars straight into the university to help hire staff to do the fertilizer implementation, the fertilizer certification implementation. That task has been taken from state government. They asked the Ohio State University in contract to conduct the certification trainings and they're the ones who are doing it. That said, they don't have enough resources to do all that. So we've actually stepped in with our own money to help make sure that happens in a very timely manner. But we're also doing all kinds of other things like updating our soil fertility recommendations. We're exploring a whole series of projects and a number of them are actually in the works. I'll hit on a couple of the big ones. One of the biggest, corn and soy in our Ohio Agribusiness Association and Farm Bureau have led a very strong effort, coordination with USDA and with OSU to do this several million dollar study that looks at runoff from our fields, both surface and subsurface. Everybody says, well, you can research just the death and that's right, you could. But we also know that things have changed dramatically in agriculture over the last 20 years. Things have changed in our environment. Things have also changed dramatically of what's moving off of our urban landscapes and from our wastewater treatment facilities, from our drinking water facilities and how they manage water. A lot has changed. So we needed to make sure we were looking at specifically what's happening with surface and subsurface drainage in our farms given changes of practices. We've ripped out fence lines. We have much more tile now. We're putting in more tile. We have bigger fields. We have bigger equipment. Things have changed dramatically of how we're managing our fields and our operations. And we needed to make sure we had good, accurate data in our field so that we know when we're making recommendations, we know it's going to actually work. Conservation tillage is a terrific example of that and also setting aside ground but also in particular when we're talking about no-till. What is the effect of no-till? There's a lot of good that's come from no-till. Some folks are quick to judge and say, well gosh, maybe no-till is a big contributor to this issue. Well, how? In what ways? Because in fact, there's probably a lot of benefits we can understand by both looking at no-till practices mixed with even other additional practices. There's a lot that we have to learn. This is a six-year study. We're three years in. We have already some very good data. Nutri-management project, we've put several hundred thousand dollars into hiring four individuals to specifically work with farmers in the northwestern part of our state to do nothing but write nutrient management plans for farmers. So this is just getting off the ground. We've got the four folks hired and in place and they're starting their work right now. The guy on the right, Don Ralph. That is the name of his boat, the farmer. He is one of our larger farmers in the northwestern part of our state and he is, you could tell, as a big fan of fishing on Lake Erie and frankly, he's telling people, I'm going to fix this problem. We farmers are going to take care of our part of this issue. Now, we know there's other parts, right? We can't do it all because there are certainly other contributors to this problem, not just agriculture. But for our part, we're going to take care of it. So Don's very engaged. Voluntary, RCPP. Jonathan, I mentioned the RCPP, the Regional Conservation Partnership Program. It's a new Farm Bill program. We're one of those first block of states of this program's dollars, $17.5 million between Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. There's a lot of wrinkles with this program. One, we're very excited about it. The first sign up went like gang busters. We actually could have given out every single penny and the very first sign up back in July. But instead, it's going to be managed over a couple of year period just because it sure weight a volume of the applications and moving through the process. So terrific response from the farmers, but on the management side for the state, with NRCS, there's things we got to keep working out. Demonstration Farm. Another project we're very excited about. Wisconsin's the first one to do a demonstration farm series in their state. We're the second one. Ours is just getting off the ground now. theirs has been in place for a couple years. This is a combined project where NRCS and Farm Bureau were putting in together over a million dollars into this project just in itself to set up a series of demonstration sites for a whole series of practices and research on conservation, everything from conservation management, nutrient management, et cetera, right in the heart of the western Lake Erie Basin. We hired our full-time manager to run this program just a couple months ago. We had about eight months of dealing with NRCS and they've been great partners, but there's a lot to do with those contracts. So we got it sorted out and it's moving along really well right now. We have a number of landowners who've already said farmers who said we want to volunteer and be part of this. We have a lot of landowners who said we want to volunteer and be part of this conservation farm project. Voluntary road trip, we took 100 of our farmers from all over the state, we took them to Lake Erie. We put them on lab boats, we took them out in the middle of the lake. We pulled water samples, we looked to see what was happening in the lake and we made sure that they didn't understand very well what's happening. They were excited to do it, they were excited to see it and frankly I was surprised at how many of them had not seen what was happening. Our farmers have said I believe some of the most progressive water quality policy of any farm organization in the country. County programs, we know we don't have all the answers so we put out a series of grants and we said to our county farm bureaus, if you guys can find projects that are going to benefit water quality we're going to incentivize you to do so but you've got to come up with 60% of funding on your own and we're also looking for a lot of partners. We've got a lot of projects lined up, we funded a dozen of them, spent all the money that we had, 10 fold they galvanized on the cost share side from other entities and some of the things they did, I can't talk about all 12 today but you can see this technology out here, a lot of work that we're doing in Ohio about how can you apply manure to growing crops at later stages so that you reduce the impact and potential for runoff. So new equipment that we've been testing and working on, we helped our own app that is specifically designed for our farmers to be able to comply with Senate Bill 1 and Senate Bill 150 so the requirements that are in Senate Bill 1 and Senate Bill 150 we've put into an app for farmers to download and use specifically so that they, it will also tell them right on their phone, right now it is GPS located, right now in this field you're fined by those laws to apply manure, to apply fertilizer, it tells you right on your phone that you're clear, you punch it, you get it right there, this is free to farmers, we did it with our money with a grant with our county farm bureau, Knox County Farm Bureau who just received a national recognition for this in conjunction with the Soil and Water Conservation Districts so a great project and we're very happy to have it move forward. There's all kinds of additional voluntary projects that we're working on including just educational displays around all of our farm shows, any place farmers are getting together, we're putting information out there, we appreciate your time with us, this project and some of these displays, we're also working on getting lower interest loans for farmers who are investing in nutrient management, we actually secure debt through our state government, so you actually can knock off a percent or two off your loan rate if you're going for a conservation practice or equipment that will help you in conservation. Media campaign, we're making sure we're telling folks what we're doing, so we're very proud of what we're doing but we know we have to do more, so we hosted this media event up in Toledo Food Dialogues, studying next to me to the left is the head of tourism for the city of Toledo, next guy over is the head of the water treatment plant for Toledo, the next lady over is the head environmentalist in the northwestern part of our state, so we're sending down with the people who matter, the folks who are directly impacted and of course we're directly impacted and we're having good positive discussions, we're moving forward together, this is my last couple of videos about this voluntary project we're doing, what we've seen is a lot of states put together good programs of how they want to do nutrient management but the big problem we always hear is there's no money, there's no money to fund these things, so what are we going to do about that, so we got together a whole group of folks, everybody from Anheuser-Busch to the League of Conservation Voters to the Nature Conservancy to Environmental Defense Fund to Farm Bureau, Scott's Miracle Grow, all the ag commodities providers and board for Lake Erie and we said how are we going to work on this, what are we going to do to fund these projects that we need to do to better our water quality and what we came up with was a proposal to create a state trust and a state bond focused just on water quality, so we've been pushing that now, we're talking to legislators and I feel very positive about passing this as a bonding measure in our state so the entire public so we can all help achieve our water quality goals, so why are we doing this, why such a thing is the right thing to do, we also know that we have to do our part for agriculture, we also know that there are federal laws we have to deal with, there is also a series of lawsuits, state politics, right, tends to be of some governor of ours, tends to be running for higher office, we'll see how that goes, and in a state we do have 40% reduction goals in Lake Erie for phosphorus, I don't just preach this stuff, I do it on my farm, I farm full-time and according to my full-time job at Farm Bureau because there are a lot of different practices in place on our farm, these are my kids enjoying water quality, we want a series of environmental awards on our farm for the first time on our farm we have all of our crop acres are either under cover crop or under a small grain this year which I'm very proud of but as Jonathan said it ain't easy, we farm a couple hours east of where his dad farms and it's not easy, it's time consuming, it's costly, it takes a lot of work to deal with cover crops and you're going to have to move in those directions and talk about these things and explore these areas, so I'm doing it on my farm too and not just talking about it in the policy room, thank you very much. Thank you Adam, it's great to see not only what you're doing on your own farm but to see all the voluntary and mandatory measures that are being taken in your state in Ohio and next we're going to move and talk more about the farm, Len Corzine is going to talk about the practical side, what farmers are doing, Len Corzine is going to talk about the agricultural side where he farms corn and soy and reines his angus cows with his wife and son, previously Len served as the president of both the National Corn Growers Association and the Illinois Corn Growers Association he has helped shape both biotech policy and the renewable fuel standard during his tenure with the Corn Growers Association, Len has received numerous awards for his work on biotechnology, renewable energy and farm conservation and serves for the country. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to come to a meeting like this and applaud EESI for having me so that you can talk directly to farmers because we want to work through these issues but you need the farmer input into that so I'll try and do that a little bit today. I want to show you a little bit about who is on that farm and what we're doing, what my son and my wife and I are trying to do on our farm. This first slide is kind of a fun shop of increased productivity that we've had that is really truly amazing in the past few years and the issue right here is we can't get it away from the combine quick enough and that's my son standing right up there and he's not real happy because dad's not back with the truck so he ran it over. This is my wife and I and we grew from being married we both grew up in assumption to three kids and Craig the big guy there is the one that helps direct things on the farm actually more than I do somehow grew into this big gang that we have a lot of fun with and this is important for you to see because this is a family that is on the farm breathing the air drinking the water playing in the dirt so these things we're talking about are important to us because what can be more important that's the issue so we're working hard on that and I want to try and help convey that. We're also what we call a heritage farm my family moved my ancestors and landed in assumption Illinois about 140 years ago so I think a lot of the states have century farms and things so that's what we have there. This is in off season a little bit because otherwise when we're in season and harvest and planning time we don't get to take a break when there's any sun shining and so here though Craig and I are kind of relaxing having a drink and talking about the future and what we're going to do tomorrow next month next season and a mantra that we have on our farm is leaving the farm better than we found it and I think that's really important to explore new technologies new things you can do and how do we continue to make that kind of improvement. Sustainability or sustainable development you know that word we all have our own definition for it and there are multiple definitions but I like to talk about sustainable development and I hope you can read it because it's development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs and that talks about the future and what is the landscape, what's our farm going to look like for that next generation. So what is sustainability? One of the things that is key and what we try to do to be a sustainable farm and you include the word stewards of that to be stewards of our farm is decreasing soil erosion and increasing efficiency with responsible use of pesticides, fertilizers and fuel and with that yields continue to increase which means profitability and productivity needs to increase and economics always need to be part of the discussion about sustainability. So how do we do that? How do we make this all work? So Craig and I talk a lot about and Yellow doesn't show about but new market opportunities because in every part of the world we grow corn soybeans we don't have any irrigation which is a good thing for us or it's a savings dust with natural water but there are various contracts for everything from different classes of corn, there's yellow corn that we grow mostly but there's white corn, there's food grade we do a lot of seed production and so we can segregate a lot of things and so we take a look at those but also included we explore new technologies so how do we make a determination whether it's a seed technology whether it's an equipment technology but these tools that are going to help us number one is it safe is it going to make us safer number two is it an improvement from what we're doing currently is it an improvement for the environment is it an improvement for the farm is it an improvement for our customer and we never lose sight of who our customer is to you all so it doesn't make economic sense and I touched on that because we can come up with some of the best things in the world but if we lose money in the deal we aren't very sustainable at the end of the day because we have to be able to be profitable at the end of the day just like any other business so another thing back to the customer will we deliver a higher quality product for our customer at the end of that day one of the things that we do with that higher quality product we have to talk a moment about GMOs because we do deliver a higher quality product using that tool because we don't have the insect damage that we once had whether it's for food use or whether it's for feed use for our livestock their insect damage is when you start getting mycotoxins and aflatoxins which are damaging to all of us so the GMOs really do prevent that we have a higher quality product so I show this picture because those are some of our cows and that's one of the granddaughters and it's just a really cute picture an important thing to remember is not one animal or one person who's gotten sick or died from a GMO after 20 years of use of these products I show this back to the equipment technology and tools we have this 40-20 is special to me because my dad bought it in 1968 which I'm showing my age was about the time I graduated from high school and it was a leading edge technology of the day it had a power shift transmission and we had a lot used in the clutch which was awesome a lot of neat stuff on that tractor but we have evolved to this back in that other era we were still plowing the soil covering all the residue and you can see from this photo the residue that's on top of the ground and actually we've improved from this photo but this also shows this particular planter that we've replaced these small boxes about here are for insecticide insecticide is the most toxic chemical it was our only way to control corn rootworm and the guy in the tractor had to handle it and the guy in the tractor now is my son and I don't want him having to handle that so with technologies, with biotechnology we're controlling that pest without that chemical so we've completely eliminated a class of chemicals and this new planter it's the same size, a couple things different but the main difference no insecticide boxes completely eliminated a very toxic class of chemicals that's toxic not only to the user but also to the person that might be buying it from there's no residue that we have to worry about and we're not putting that into the soil either this is another photo that shows the tractor give you an idea of the equipment we're using today and the technology because this is a receiver for global positioning it's a radio receiver to make it even more accurate we can go right in and we are site specific and that gives us geo positions it also makes sure our rows are straight which are pretty but also make us more efficient and the result of this and using technologies and this is an important slide and try to remember this one now in 30 years this is what we've been able to do and this is what the amount of these elements that it takes to produce a bushel of corn so we have lowered the amount of land that it takes by 30% and the important thing here is now to provide for the needs of society or our customer base we don't have to encroach on those fragile lands as demands grow we're able to do more on our ground the soil loss that I talked about has gone down by two thirds that's pretty phenomenal we've been able to reduce soil loss by those amounts irrigation water used per bushel is 53% which speaks a lot to what the new hybrids do but as I mentioned in our own particular case we use rainfall anyway so the amount of energy which we don't till the soil near as much as we used to so we're talking about less diesel fuel used per bushel of corn the equipment we use today we may work the ground about two times and when we do that we only use maybe a half a gallon of fuel per acre where we used to use a couple gallons and some of the other systems they do use more fuel which is important as far as greenhouse gas emissions so this is on our farm this slide kind of shows we track the nitrogen amount that we we apply and then our corn yield starting in 1980 now this line going we're making an improvement and then look what happens and somebody asked me actually what happened did you just make a mistake putting your data in and no and I said that what's important to remember is when we're talking about programs and trying to have strict protocols or rules we're working with something that we can't control every year and that's mother nature and you know what rainfall weather conditions can throw us a curve and it certainly did in these three years right back up and that's the important thing to remember because we went way off the charts last year 2015 we're coming back a little bit but that's an important to remember when we're looking at setting up the rules for some of these things we have to have flexibility built in so this is a nice harvest picture and this is how we do it and see that global positioning is on there because that's our big data collector every three seconds that records how many bushels of corn or soybeans that we have produced and it puts it on a map for us, establishes that not only in the combine but sends it back to our office computer or in these days also onto the iPad right and it's a great management tool for us to take a look at problems we have when we look at what could be the problem could it be a drainage issue a nutrient issue and it helps us also with writing prescriptions which I'll talk a little bit more about in a moment this is all important because we've got this next generation like I mentioned before that they're really interested in the farm and they love writing on the tractor in the combine but it's kind of like a lot of you may have your kids you ever have one of your little ones that the best way to put them to sleep is put them in the car and drive around the block a couple times right well they spend a half an hour in the combine I mean it goes to this generation goes clear back to when my son was writing and sitting on a bucket they have these now so they still go to sleep so where do we go from here from here we are looking at nutrient management in fact we're doing this today split applications of nitrogen we make three applications on our farm in our system agronomically it's good to get some nitrogen on in the fall of the year but we've really reduced that amount and using a stabilizer to help with the soil microbial activity then in the spring we make an application just ahead of planning and then we do a side dress application so with that site specific application we do that with writing prescriptions so each field we have a prescription and the equipment that we've invested in will adjust that on the go using the satellites using positioning and it will change the rates of seeding rates it'll change the rates of what we're doing with nutrients so the big deal here is we are getting much more efficient in utilizing our nutrients we're reducing them per field but we're getting more efficient and that's what is important seeds are included in that because because the genetics and biotechnology make a better plant and when you get a better plant you get better roots, you get better stalks so they're able to utilize that nutrient so that's part of what we're talking about here too you've got to get that nutrient from the ground, from the soil up into the end product and biotechnology and biotechnology is part of that answer because it protects the potential of the seed genetics and we have more choices than we've ever had and that continues to improve because of that science and what the seed industry is doing for us so I already touched on the reduced tillage that we're doing and we continue to get improvements in seed placement with doing less tillage some are complete no-till or reduced till and looking at continuing to move forward in that area the field prescriptions I touched on and that better utilization another thing we're using I have an FU that has one or use of drones to help us with part of being efficient and doing what needs to be done in the summertime when you get a crop that's taller than me it's hard to go a half a mile through and see what's going on so drone technology is playing a big part of that there's a lot of potential there I got to speak a moment about partnerships because that's what this is about as well the partnerships that we're doing with folks like Environmental Defense Fund with Walton Foundation National and State Corn Growers and even folks like a number of your organizations here we can come up with answers we think in our own silos but you know that really doesn't get us to a solution very quickly we've got a lot of our silos and work together and that's what these partnerships do and that's why that's really important and just like initially some groups were looking at nutrient reduction well you don't just look at nutrient reduction because you can get things out of balance agronomically when you get out of balance why then you actually go backwards so you need nutrient loss reduction so keep that in mind the word loss needs to happen so with that I'll finish the voluntary part we all know about and we've got things to work the other folks have talked about so thank you again this is kind of the sunset of where we have been and the sunrise you can use it as a sunrise of where we're headed and we're going to continue improving our farm thank you very much thanks Len it's so interesting to hear about all the tech advancements and how you're implementing them on the farm I was in Iowa this summer actually and that was the topic du jour which was how big data is really driving a lot of the advancements in agriculture so next we're going to switch gears a little bit and we're going to hear from Tariq Balak Tariq is the water utility plant manager at the city of cedar rapids Iowa at the water utility Tariq is active in the middle cedar partnership project a collaboration between the water utility agricultural producers Tariq has been working with the water utility since 1989 and he has worked in both drinking water and wastewater systems Tariq good afternoon my name is Tariq I was a farming state it's an agricultural state not a big surprise correct if you look here this is the cedar river watershed and that blue area right there is our project area so my heroes here today are Adam which I haven't met yet and Len I'm one of the leaders of these collaborations and of these activities and really what they're interested in is good production keeping their soil on their land but soil is much bigger than that as well it's a healthy environment helps farmers in Iowa cleaner water and this is different for a drinking water professional we talk about water quality and we're trying to change our mindset and our frame of thinking to address our talk and conversations that are meaningful for our partners this is a 2015 map of the critical conservation areas and if you take note of the the Mississippi river basin here it actually expands out to the Rockies here up into Canada about a million plus acres of watershed and drainage pretty expansive and these are the high priority watersheds and we're going to drill down into where we are in the middle cedar with with what the Cedar Rapids is involved in we mentioned that the Iowa nutrient reduction strategy was one of the key things that came out of the hypoxia task force the first draft was developed in 2011 and updated in 2014 it's really science and technology based there's point source and non-point source information the Iowa Water Environment Association the League of Cities and Iowa Association and business industries really helped to help define what that point source contribution is in terms of this strategy and the non-point USDA the USDA Ag Research as well as the DNR the Department of Ag and land stewardship in Iowa and Iowa State University Iowa State University really was a key player in developing the strategy but from a local perspective for Cedar Rapids Cedar Rapids is a community of about 120,000 people we have about 50,000 plus metered service accounts but the driving factors for us and we'll go into the flood impact here shortly but it's water retention and the contaminants it's a water quality and flood impact is completely in terms of health and welfare and industry and economy in our area and you'll see why this is a picture of our 31 foot stage flood in 2008 this is downtown Cedar Rapids and within that downtown area that flood affected area you can see a lot of these names up here on the slide here they're just the industry piece of it so why is that significant? we're doing a lot in terms of flood mitigation but I wanted to point out that some of our key service or metered accounts are big industry and you know that's vital to the economic development and growth of our community as well as our region let me go back to this slide here the USGS is also a partner with Cedar Rapids in terms of water quality monitoring and for the last since the late 90's the USGS has been doing water quality testing throughout the Cedar River area and as you can see in this period here we went through a drought in Cedar Rapids and that following year when we had a wet year the Cedar River spiked up dramatically with this concentration of nitrates and that nitrate that's in the river even though it's attenuated when it gets into our water source it still is an elevated amount which our plants are not capable of treating Cedar Rapids does not have a method to remove nitrates unlike Des Moines so we're really relying on close monitoring and doing some in terms of balancing our wells that are lower in nitrates with other wells that will shut off wells that have high nitrates that's the only method that we have in terms of how we put out that good drinking water from our water source as you can see here the trend is slightly climbing in the Cedar River this image right here is a nitrate monitor, it's an online monitor, it's running 24 hours a day this was taken in June so as you can see 5.9 is pretty high 10 is the max level so we're approaching that and we see that in the spring and the fall time periods, we see an elevated amount coming through our plant but the cumulative impact of our project is food processing 100,000 bushels a day of soybeans come through Cedar Rapids or come to Cedar Rapids a million bushels a day of corn are processed and used every day it's a vital part of our economy more importantly consumer safety and health and we have to think beyond our borders we have to look upstream as well as being mindful of our downstream communities in terms of what the city and our wastewater plant is contributing to this to the environment I like this slide, partnering okay Steve Hirschner, my boss sitting in the audience, when Steve said a year ago to our small group said let's put in an application for this are you guys up for it and we were all kind of scratching our temples like this and that meant a lot of work but it's actually been a good ride it's been a lot of fun and it was about a year ago this time that Cedar Rapids was informed that we could go ahead and submit that full proposal that meant we were one of a couple hundred applicants that were sitting good to be approved we're excited at that point NRCS puts in a couple million dollars our partner group pretty diverse group putting in about 2.3 million primarily of technical assistance that leaves about 4.3 total that's available for our watershed in terms of contribution working with the lens and the atoms of our communities and it's been just an unusual and really positive experience so the clock started June 5th and we're at almost the end of the year here we've worked on developing some aspect of our 5 year project which is actually I'll get into that here in just a bit but the approach we're using improving soil health that's what farmers like to talk about water quality that's what water professionals love to talk about and water quantity yes it's a rain event and a series of different environmental situations that led to a 31 foot flood stage healthy soil will help retain the water but who knows we're going to have floods of cedar rapids again we're hopeful that it won't be as high as it was back in 2008 so working together that's our approach but we're expanding on a good thing the RCPP partnership project is a new thing for us but we're building on something that was already on the ground with two other demonstration projects one is the Miller Creek water quality initiative and the other is the Benton Tama County nutrient reduction demonstration project this is what that project area looks like and this yellow yellow area here is primarily cover crops that's what the plan looks like so in our proposal we said three objectives objective number one develop a watershed plan objective two based on those plans determine what the best management practices are for those areas and objective three reach out and educate communicate pretty simplistic approach this is near La Porte City which is about an hour from speed rapid so as you can see we're well beyond our corporate limits this is a group of people that are installing a bioreactor a lot of wood chips big hole in the ground it's all connected to a tile system that's doing it's best to capture any nutrients that are flowing through that tile system and the bioreactor is in essence reducing the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus going into the waterway there's Steve right here this bioreactor cost about 20,000 bucks to put in takes about three days to install and cover crops on this particular field the cover crops that were here what I was told was the farmer did not have to use any weed control that the cover crop actually did an effective job of not allowing not allowing weeds to grow within the cash crop there soybeans again an illustration of what our practice area what the watershed area looks like here and we have a wide suite of practices from cover crops to bioreactors prairie strips wetlands it's part of our objective three which is outreach and education the city of Cedar Rapids team is learning a lot by going to the field days talking with the farmers out there that are hosting these these activities and it's just a thrill to be involved my hope though is to get more individuals the farmers in our area to step up and be the leaders and take charge of these activities rather than a group of agencies coming in to try and get them to come along you follow that? so this is the list of partners and each of them is excited about this next five years because we're going to see some positive results but as you can see thanks again to the NRCS partners together and as you can see farmers and producers they are really the important partner in this they're going to make the changes on their land they're going to realize the benefits of their hard work whether it's profits or soil retention or water quality all of those things they can realize by having our farmers be the leaders and the soil and conservation districts very important personnel there we work with them they're part of the NRCS within the community and they've been doing this work for a long time conservation plan let's start with the conservation plan and understand what you're doing understanding when you're going to apply your chemical and how much and when and Jesse thanks for inviting us here to speak with this group thanks Tarek it's a very interesting discussion and we're going to wrap up here with John Larson John is the Executive Director of the American Farmland Trust American Farmland Trust is a non-profit organization that advocates for voluntary conservation practices and programs that preserve land, soil and water supplies American Farmland Trust estimates that its efforts have helped conserve five million acres of farmland nationwide prior to joining AFT as the Executive Director of the National Association of Conservation Districts John also owned and operated his own family farm in Royal City Washington John Thanks Jesse I'm going to try and put a bow on this when we look at the intersection of how we provide a stable food supply for not only our citizens but also for the nine billion people that are going to inhabit the planet in 2050 we also need to look at protecting our natural resources and one of the most important and compelling challenges as we face as a country is water quality let us not forget that Dr. Norman Borlaug predicted to feed nine billion will acquire us to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the past 10,000 years combined so with that in mind keeping agricultural land productive and in production will be critical not only to meeting the food demands but also protecting the health and resilience of our environment to keep that land in production is critical since we first came to this country more than 400 years ago 114 million acres in the lower 48 states and Hawaii have been developed American Farmland Trust is very concerned about this trend of taking that base natural resource issue where all these other practices get implemented and making sure we are thinking about that because this means that 37% of the land developed in the United States over the past 400 plus years was developed in the last 30 so as we must do while meeting our environmental challenges we must do it in a way that also is impacted by an erratic climate 31 feet that's a lot I don't think there's a levee that can be built that takes care of 31 feet water quality is one such issue that becomes a part of the national conversation we've already talked about algal blooms in Lake Erie we've talked about the Des Moines Water Works lawsuit we've looked at all these different issues around Mississippi river basin and the hypoxia zone for farmers there is a real possibility of a regulatory framework being thrust upon them in these regions highlighting the need for effective, voluntary incentive based conservation on privately owned farmland, ranchland and forest land in the United States 70% of land is owned by private individuals with that majority of that land devoted to agriculture the development let's say the maturation of the farm bill conservation programs is an ongoing process the current suite of farm bill conservation programs is far different than the ones of the 1985 bill Jonathan mentioned working lands which is an important transition away from set aside programs as these programs have matured we've seen an evolution to what I think is a very important part of the solution to our natural resource concerns the concern of regulation for farmers is real and the purpose of many USDA workings lands programs is designed to help with those issues so as was already mentioned the environmental quality incentive program equip is designed to assist producers in complying with local, state and national regulatory requirements concerning soil, water, air wildlife surface and groundwater conservation and to avoid the need for resource and regulatory programs by assisting in protecting soil, water and air and related natural resources so as this focus of assisting in complying with and better yet helping to avoid the need for regulation is important focusing conservation programs on solving problems and preventing problems in the first place instead of doing just what's known as random acts of conservation I think is one of those things that we really need to focus on an important step I think in the 14 bill was the creation of the regional conservation partnership program when we look at the new approach of focusing on specific resource concerns in specific regions and concentrating on solutions rather than just putting practices on the ground so the additional part of RCP that I think is really innovative is that we're leveraging when we look at the place-based approach and we look at the buy-in from local communities we see an ability to maximize the number of participants along with assisting NRCS in solving those natural resource concerns RCPP also looks to promote innovative projects that integrate multiple conservation approaches to deliver comprehensive and measurable results so the program looks for participants not just on one practice or program but looks at that suite of solutions both inside and outside of USDA initiatives like the greater sage grouse initiative RCP program can be a model for solving these comprehensive water quality problems in multiple regions nationally across the entire breadth of our country so specific practices needed for each situation will be different in western Lake Erie the focus on dissolved reactive phosphorus as we've talked about without farm bill cost share programs that focus on these best management practices and nutrient management with also this infield monitoring we get to that infield nutrient management that the producer then has confidence in so as was already mentioned a more collaborative approach focusing on partnerships will also make lasting cultural change the ability to for example the 4R concept of applying nutrients at the right time in the right place the right type of nutrient and the right source is an example of that industry-led approach that can produce considerable results outreach and education from private partners also is an incredibly important part to tell in the story of the judicious use of nutrients this collaborative approach will also be important in avoiding duplication of effort we must remember that the beneficial effect of these types of practices take time so one such example is the goal to increase organic matter in the soil health partnership and renaissance that is occurring increased organic matter by just one percentage point can take many many years but when technical assistance is provided to a producer and I think a couple of things that were already mentioned everything we're talking about as we're working on the farm is a management decision and within a business model that has to be recognized so that return though for one percentage point of increased organic matter can hold an extra interrain which as we saw in 2012 can be extremely valuable when a drought one of those variables that we don't have control over so the regulatory incentive based conservation is moving into an exciting time of change and evolution precision agriculture and I'd like to say even precision conservation activities and new technologies should be integrated into what we the conservation community like to call that precision conservation type of an outreach technological advances should play a major role in preventing and we look forward to further research and adoption within the agricultural community you know I think as we listen to our panel this afternoon we heard a number of different things we heard about how there is an interest for stewardship I think that it is it is fair to say that there were also discussions of the regulatory component a regulatory backstop in place as we know in the analogy to a baseball game is important but with regulation we get potentially compliance with incentive programs and with technical assistance thinking about it from not only the component of the environmental outcome but also of the importance to maintain that business profitability because we have to remember in working lands which are the majority of those acres that we're talking about there is a necessity for a profitability aspect there with incentives and with the right technical assistance we get stewardship which is exponentially better than just potentially compliance so I think that as we look at these new opportunities and as we look at the regional conservation partnership program we've got non-traditional partners that are coming to the table with ideas with influence with networks and also with financial resources which help us to achieve those outcomes that we all as a society desire so excited about the opportunities that are right in front of us it will take a collaborative approach to getting to those outcomes though and first and foremost we need to think about as it was already stated how do we collaborate with farmers that have multiple decisions that many times are at the mercy of a very erratic I think we can say and at times very harsh climate how can we put in place different policies different incentives that really help them to make it through and to weather that storm pardon the pun so that we can get to those societal goals that we have so with that I will leave time for question and answer thank you thank you John for that overview of all these different issues so we have a few minutes now about 15 minutes for question and answer and we have a microphone so if we could wait until you receive the mic because we have a lot of I know we have people watching remotely before you ask your question but with that we'll open up to question and answer right here right down in front hey Adam can you say a little bit about the research program what are the top research gaps that you're working with OSU and ARS on to resolve to help farmers do a better job yeah efficiency is going to be one of the biggest ones if you're thinking about the type system you're managing within given all these weather variables and other types of conditions you know if you fill a cup with phosphorus about one pound of phosphorus would fit in this cup and now you're talking about an acre of ground the size of a football field and right now some of the data is suggesting that if you modify your application of phosphorus within a pound per acre that might make significant difference depending on weather conditions in a given year that is talking as Leon said we're getting very prescriptive of how farmers and how tight we're managing our resources so what are those very specific practices within a system that dynamic that we need to understand as farmers to be able to manage just that pound if you will right or that application rate that we're applying so there are gaps there are a series of gaps this project was actually looking at one of the ones I mentioned is looking at just that surface and subsurface what's happening with dissolved reactive phosphorus but other gaps a terrific gap is this question that came up with one of our OSU scientists who said you know we had this terrific advancement in dealing with acid rain and the Clean Air Act has vastly reduced acid rain and what falls on Ohio is worth about 20 pounds of phosphorus per acre that's what used to fall out of the sky under our farm fields that no longer happens just in the last 20 years that's changed what does that do to the pH balance of our soil this OSU scientist took data back the last 20 years and showed an actual shift in pH balance in Northwestern part of our state because of cleaner air well who would have thought of that now you know again we gotta manage for that so the farmer now has to manage for that the movement depends on pH balance in the soil so that's that's one example of a gap there's probably about 30 actually we've listed of gaps that we need to fill in order to make sure that when we're going to be prescribing practices and even recommending and discussing practices and practices that should be within these conservation cost share programs we want to make sure we're saying the right things and recommending the right practice we got a lot of gaps to fill down here in the purple I've got a question for Adam about SB1 you mentioned that it restricts the application of fertilizer on frozen saturated or potentially saturated ground how do you determine potentially saturated ground what information goes into that and how do you verify it afterwards it's a weather forecast so it's rainfall amount within the next 24 hours or 12 hours whether or not it's fertilizer or manure and then it's for a half inch of rain or an inch of rain so it's the prediction now the reason why we developed the app was to make sure that as we know 50% prediction of rain sometimes that means it rains and sometimes it doesn't so we wanted to make sure farmers were covered as well right so if you're doing the right thing and it says there's only a 10% chance of rain you now have an application you can just punch a button record and this is the weather data is linked to this is a USGS and NOAA data so it's linked to the federal weather predictable model that they have which most of the weather services are based off of it records that weather forecast for you right then that day that time so you have that as protection so if you get the 10% prediction and you know three hours later within that 24 hour window you get an inch gusher well or two inch rainfall that's not your fault and you have now you have the data you the farmer did everything you could do to manage that nutrient and you have the data to protect yourself so that's how it's based it's not an easy model to deal with it's difficult stuff but we think it's something that we're working with and we'll see it's brand new so the next several years you can imagine there'll probably be a lot of tweaking on this there'll be a lot of discussion about compliance or not and how these these methods are going to work together try to keep it as simple as possible and then put in some of these some of these types of technology to help make sure that farmers have the technology in their hand to know when to apply and then when they do everything in their power if something happens like Mother Nature often does that you're not held accountable for that Great, Bill Brandon right behind you there I have a general question probably more for Leon and Adam and this is in general the relationship of renewable fuels and of soil quality and nutrient retention because my understanding is that with the increased productivity you also get an increased productivity of residues in 1970 maybe it was two tons per acre for corn and now it's like four tons per acre and if you're not managing that through landfilling through mo-board plowing what are you doing with it do you not have to remove it to do cover crops and that sort of stuff what is the relationship there of your soil quality and this large amount of residues you were getting well that is a good point of what we've been able to do with as yields increase that amount of plant material increases and that's a good thing because we've had some farms for example let's see John touched on building soil organic matter and that's an important component and so that really helps us do that we have a farm that we've raised the soil organic matter because we went eight years of continuous corn to get that plant material and where we're not using a the mo-board plow where we clean plowed would kind of layer everything and that wasn't a good thing because it wouldn't really degrade or mix in or really help the soil health that we have today now it becomes more of a challenge and different regions are different the soil types are different so all that soil structure is different some places no-till works really well and some places it just doesn't work as well so we use reduced tillage and for example on our own farm we've tried no-till just wasn't quite working for us we weren't getting layering the other way for what you just mentioned is yields increase you start getting layering okay what are we going to do with that residue and some of the folks with renewable that's where some of the cellulosic folks are looking at that maybe you can remove a certain percentage but you have to be careful there anything you remove you're removing some nutrients and it's like talked about and Adam touched on as far as we have to see what the nutrient levels are and keep everything in balance we're finding with the new equipment technology that is doing a better job of mixing and the planning equipment is helping us plant into those residues whether it's a cover crop residue and I failed to mention we're working some with cover crops mixed results yet for us but the planning equipment will plant a good seed and good placement and soil contact into more residues than we ever used to do with my dad's era ever did that help you? excuse me about a 5% increase in early germination that too much residue makes the soil too cold insulates it too much and affects germination I don't know how you balance that into the situation and that sort of stuff that actually is one of the issues that we had in regards to no till we were to get the soil warm up and to get that was affecting when we could go in and plant and get a good seed bed or get a good seed bed for that seed to germinate so that can be the case but now really and that's the hats off to all of the equipment manufacturers really have we have things called trash whippers I don't like the name because we don't call it trash it's residue because we use that it's important to us so actually what we are seeing improvement because over time even in no till situations or in where we use a conservation tillage why we get better mixing so you actually get soil warm up can be a little better and as well as keeping you don't you aren't having the runoff you're getting the any rainfall has chance to to soak in and so you're also when you plant you aren't getting the what we used to call you know it gets real as hard as this table and then the seed can't grow through it we don't have near as many of those issues that we did it once upon a time either so it's one of those things it's a good question but we've really been able to turn it into a positive I just mentioned different cover crops to right for different practices and depending on the farmer depending on the operation you do all kinds of things with cover crops but a lot of it's experimental right you're trying to figure out what's going to work for your farm your situation with with residue one of the things we do for example we have a dairy as well in our as part of our farm and in some of our cover crop fields will actually so we'll mow it off and bail it so we get the benefit of having that growing crop out there all winter long in the spring comes along we'll actually mow it off bail it and feed it to the cattle so we'll get another benefit if you will out of the cover crop so it depends on the farm there's a lot of different a lot of different types of cover crops for lots of different types of reasons great any any other questions down in the suit in the blue jacket question for Lenna my name is Alan Kovsky Bloomberg you mentioned being able to avoid using pesticides to deal with corn rootworm what was the solution what are you using that prevents the corn rootworm it's a biotech solution so it's a I don't like the term but a GMO event that we're actually able to get the rootworm protection that's a better protection too because it does several things for us it protects the seed without the chemical like I mentioned but also a thing that is important with eliminating that class of chemicals is before that chemical we were using you know they aren't they don't target just the rootworm the pest I mean it kills pretty much everything in that zone around the seed and with the biotech event they are so site specific that they control what we need to control in this case the rootworm the other microbials everything in the soil is affected so that's a real plus of what this new technology is able to do that in reality isn't talked about near enough because people need to understand that aspect as well great I think there is a question behind this gentleman hey I'm Robin Shane from the National Academy of Sciences first of all thank you all for your efforts in recognizing the responsibility of agriculture for the environment and water quality I think that science has a lot to offer and I missed the beginning of your talk Jonathan but I see that you have had a slide of many different conservation tools and with different degree of ability to manage nutrient loss my question is really one of numbers I mean you know they are calling for 40% reduction elsewhere 45 and some of these methods like wetlands or bioreactors what penetration is there even cover crops I've heard said how many people are doing cover crops oh about 5% of farmers how are you really going to get to those numbers that you need is it and I'm not saying regulation but maybe policy obviously NRCS with the partnerships that's a step in the right direction but I know markets determine the prices of things you know what tools are needed to get everybody on board to really solve the problem that's the big question it is complex I mean just listening across the conversation today you've got a whole host of different what might work on one farm this year won't work on the same farm next year so the complexity of it is key I think you know the science continuing the the investment that we're doing through conservation programs but at the end of the day a lot of what we're looking at is how are you thinking of conservation the way the farmer is thinking of farming so things like technology this precision technology the capabilities we have in the cabs right now on the laptops and the ipads trying to find ways to get that more focused on conservation and on helping sort out these practices and in the business management what are the economics of this how do we address those economics and help the farmer manage through additional complexity in some cases with cover crops and other practices additional risk and kind of combine those up and so I think this is a long running effort and we're not going to you're not going to turn it around in a year or two but you begin to work through those issues and I tend to think that each one of those is going to drive the need for more research more science more understanding of what's going on across the regions across multiple fields and these watersheds and it's just a building effort and we're seeing it and I think you see a lot of farmers taking very seriously throughout the midwest and trying to come up with solutions and we see more and more companies and interest groups universities trying to dig deeper and deeper into this to try to find a way to help resolve the issues and so it's a building process and it's going to take time but there's a lot of tools out there that we can use if I might add to that the soil health partnership is that's kind of the objective and that's why I'm involved because on the farm Illinois for example is a very diverse state as you go from north to south and let alone clear across the midwest or across the corn growing regions of the country so what works in one area doesn't work so well in another and so the soil health partnership for example I'm part of that and we're doing that on a 50 acre plot of our land and we're able to use our technologies to track where we're seeing improvement but more than that it's getting those initiatives into the neighborhoods for example me in central Illinois is a lot different it doesn't matter what maybe the university research farm said in southern Illinois where they had a station working on cover crops so you can see my neighbors can see what we're doing and we have little machine shed meetings and so they can come see okay this worked or quite frankly a year ago nothing worked because of the way the weather was we didn't get it established so you have to be a little careful with how expensive a cover crop you look at because we're still kind of in that learning mode that maybe it's working maybe not but to your point we're learning that as we go in these areas in what I was trying last year now all of a sudden we had three folks around us that are doing it some are flying things on some are you know there's a lot of things happening and it's kind of learning watching the neighborhood and then having those type of meetings to share information and it takes some effort by for example soil health partnership I think I mentioned includes state grower associations as well as national corn but but also environmental defense fund is involved somewhat people like Walton foundation the seed industry is Monsanto and Dupont so there's a and that is how we're going to do it and like Jonathan said it's not going to be an overnight deal because we're looking at expanse we're looking at okay what happens with that cover crop to the insects in my soil right so if I go start using a cereal rye for example am I going to increase the wireworm pressure so is that going to be a problem that then we're going to have to address so there are a whole host of things that we're going to have to go through and I'm glad that you folks are here to see that there's no easy answer to this deal right but we are trying a lot of different things and that's how we're going to collectively come up with solutions to continue to improve okay great unfortunately I think we're out of time if you have additional questions our panelists I'm sure will be more than happy to talk to you individually we should have the video online very soon in the next couple of days join me in thanking our panelists today