Farm News
04-21-06
Iowans celebrate Leopold’s legacy
DARCY MAULSBY- Farm News staff
Maybe “conservationist” is a dirty word in your mind. Those are the city people who’d like nothing better than to break all the drainage tiles and return your fields to prairies and wetlands, right? You might be surprised to learn that some of the state’s leading conservationists support agriculture and are working to find solutions that benefit farmers as well as the general public.
“People have a right to farm,”î said Inger Lamb, president of the Iowa Prairie
Network and a project coordinator for the Prairie Rivers RC&D based in Nevada.
“I inherited a corn-and-soybean century farm in Monona County, so I see both sides of conservation issues.”
As farmers head to the fields to plant the 2006 crop, Iowans have been joining prairie rescues and participating in conservation activities throughout the state in
April to celebrate native son and ecologist Aldo Leopold. Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack has proclaimed April 2006 as Aldo Leopold Month. The resolution honors
Leopold’s lifetime contributions to natural resource management philosophy and practice and to the science of wildlife management.
“Too often farmers and conservationists tend to oppose each other, but they have many co mmon goals,î” Lamb said.
Honoring Iowa’s conservation pioneer
Born in 1887 in Burlington, Leopold spent his early years hunting, fishing and exploring the natural environment of the Mississippi River, nearby streams and bluffs. In 1949, his essays on nat ure were published in “A Sand County
Almanac,Ӕ which has been compared to the works of John Muir and Henry David
Thoreau.
Leopold believed that conservation was more than simply preserving natural resources. Those resources also need to be part of a healthy, working landscape that has the ability to renew itself. His philosophy led to the creation of the
Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in 1987. “The Leopold Center recognizes the vital role that Iowa farmers play in conserving our natural resou rces,”î said Jerry DeWitt, interim director of the Leopold Center . “Our research in grass-based dairies, rotational grazing, diversified cropping systems, and ways to more fully integrate livestock operations into the landscape demonstrates that Aldo Leopo ld’s land ethic is possible in Iowa agriculture.”

The Iowa Soybean Association also supports a number of conservation-based programs, including the On-Farm Network, which helps producers conduct research on their farms. The investigations consist of replicated, side-by-side, field-scale strip trials that allow farmers to evaluate alternative management practices. Throughout the growing season, soil tests, guided stalk sampling, lab analysis, GPS, yield monitors, aerial imagery and other tools and technologies are used to determine what has worked best in each field. At the end of the growing season, the Iowa Soybean Association helps farmers aggregate their data and use the information to protect the environment.
Native prairie provides lessons for farmers
Although conservation practices may be demonstrated and implemented at the farm level, how they impact watersheds and communities are also important. In 1990, the Leopold Center brought together a team of agronomists, foresters, geologists, wildlife biologists, economists and farmers to set up the state’s first long-term research plots for streamside plantings along Bear Creek north of Ames. Researchers and farmer-cooperators found that buffers can cut sediment in runoff as much as 90 percent and nitrogen and phosphorus by 80 percent. Buffers also support five times as many bird species as row-cropped or heavily grazed land.
Conservation doesn’t mean turning your whole farm into a buffer or a prairie,
Lamb added. Although she has 480 acres, a significant portion of the land remains in a corn-soybean rotation. She has planted high-quality, high diversity prairie seed collected in Iowa, however, in parts of the farm. In one 80-acre tract, for example, she maintains 35 acres of continuous prairie. “I hope my farm serves as an example of a successful marriage between row crops and CRP.”
Farmers have the option to plant native flowers and plants in CRP, said Brian
Fankhauser, land stewardship specialist for the Iowa Natural Heritage
Foundation (INHF). “The benefits of these plants far exceed non-native plants like red clover. The native plants are much better from a water-quality and soilbuilding standpoint.”
He points to the lessons conservationists can learn from the Kothenbeutel prairie remnant that INHF purchased in Franklin County in late 2005. The 32 acres of remnant prairie have never been tiled or tilled. “Native plants’ root structures are very dense and go very deep. It’s amazing how much rain can fall on a good mix of native grasses and wildflowers without runoff. You’ll see much greater runoff if the land is dominated by brome grass, however.”
That massive root system also works magic beneath the soil surface. “All that organic matter helps build the soil,”î Fankhauser said. “After all, it’s why we have such rich, fertile farmland in Iowa.”

If you’d like to use native grasses and plants on some of your acres, Lamb and
Fankhauser offer the following tips:
Use local eco-type seeds collected as close to your farm as possible. They will have the genetics adapted to your area and will prevent contamination of any native prairie remnants that may be in your area. “Some of the prairie seed mixes have come down in price significantly in recent years,î” Fankhauser said. “In addition, the cost share can be as high as 90 percent with CRP programs.” To find prairie seed dealers, log onto the Iowa Prairie Network at www.iowaprairienetwork.org/mgmt/seeddealers.htm.
Be patient. It takes a minimum of three to four years to get a prairie established.
Remember th e words of Aldo Leopold. “When land does well for its owner, and the owner does well by his land,”î Leopold wrote in 1939 in “The Farmer as
Conservationist.”î “When both end up better by reason of their partnership, we have conservation. When one or the ot her grows poorer, we do not.”