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Your county's Soil and Water Conservation District office is the place to get answers and assistance for conservation concerns that will help maintain the value of your land. Both professional staff and volunteer commissioners who are passionate about preserving natural resources are ready to help you with your plans.
Water Quality
The quality of our water supply both above and below ground directly effects everyone in the county. The economic impacts of having to cleanup water is becoming a larger issue. Our SWCD is committed to helping producers manage their crop inputs and practices to reduce losses that impact our water. |
Forestry Programs
There are several state and federal programs that can assist landowners in either establishing or managing forest stands. Our office can help you with some of these and also put you in touch with the District Foresters for our area. |
Donate to the Cerro Gordo Soil and Water Conservation District
Your support will help us to continue our conservation education efforts and support staff that will promote practices in the district
Cerro Gordo SWCD
1415 South Monroe Ave. Ste. B
Mason City, Iowa 50401
641-424-4452
1415 South Monroe Ave. Ste. B
Mason City, Iowa 50401
641-424-4452
Earthworm Middens in a corn field with no tillage for 35 years
Articles in the Globe Gazette
The Globe Gazette has been generous enough to print one article a month in their Sunday business section dealing with conservation issues. The articles are written by Dennis Carney, one of our local commissioners, often with the help of the office staff. A wide variety of subjects have been covered over the past 10 months and many more articles are planned. Check them out.
Article for December 2018 - Conservation Stewardship Program
The Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) is a five year contract between the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and a producer to continue and expand conservation practices on the farm. Most producers that are approved to participate in CSP have already been actively using conservation practices. The program helps to expand on these practices by offering a 50% cost share to implement new management ideas.
Cerro Gordo County led the state in 2018 by awarding thirteen new CSP contracts that encompass 10,500 acres and will have a total five-year payout of over $1.14 million. Across Iowa over $25 million was awarded to 439 producers for conservation minded management on over 233,000 acres. CSP is the largest conservation program in the country for working lands, with over 70 million acres of agricultural land and forest enrolled.
The CSP process begins with a visit to your local NRCS office and an appointment with a conservation planner who will assist you in evaluating your current management system and the natural resources on your land. The planner will present a variety of CSP enhancement alternatives for you to consider implementing on your land based on your current conservation practices. There are many activities to choose from, which allows a great deal of flexibility to select those that will help you meet your management goals. These new activities are designed to work naturally with your land to bring out its best long term potential.
Once you choose the enhancements that best fit with your operation, CSP offers annual incentive payments for installing these practices on your land. The program represents a real commitment to conservation by being five years in length and requiring that a producer not only continue current stewardship practices but add new ones throughout the five year contract. Payments are based on both the ability to maintain current conservation practices and to implement additional activities to address resource concerns. At the end of the contract the producer will be given the opportunity to re-enroll for an additional five year contract if you agree to adopt additional conservation activities that will meet or exceed two additional priority resource concerns.
Every farm has its own unique characteristics that present opportunities to improve the condition of the natural resources contained in and affected by its farming activities. How we farm affects not only our livelihood but the resources available for generations to come. CSP is an effort to help producers recognize the resources on their land and develop a management plan to improve them. If you would like more information on CSP or any other program please visit your local NRCS and Soil and Water Conservation District office. In Cerro Gordo County call (641) 424-4452 or visit us at www.cerrogordoswcd.org.
Article for February 2019 - Farm Bill
Late in December, Congress finally passed the much debated and delayed 2018 Farm Bill. This legislation authorizes five years of spending on a variety of farm related programs and agencies, and on several programs unrelated to agriculture.
The Conservation Reserve Program’s (CRP) acreage cap was raised from 24 million acres to 27 million acres, This will allow new signups to again proceed; however, rental rates for any new general signup acres will be reduced to 85% of the county average and continuous signup acres will be dropped to 90% of the county rate. Also, the cost share rates for the seed needed to plant the CRP acres will be reduced to 50%. The stated reason for these changes was a desire to retire the most sensitive land while not competing with local farmland rental markets.
The managed grazing of CRP acres as a Mid Contract Management option is another welcome addition to the Farm Bill. Also, a new initiative within CRP, called Clean Lakes, Estuaries, and Rivers (CLEAR) acres, was added. These contracts will support conservation practices aimed at reducing sediment loading, nutrient loading and harmful algal blooms in these water bodies to better address water quality. Of the total CRP allocation given to Continuous CRP, a minimum of 40 percent of these acres must be dedicated to the CLEAR initiative. This program is a direct result of growing public concern about the condition of our rivers and lakes, and agriculture’s role in helping to resolve the issue.
The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) was authorized in statute in the Farm Bill for the first time rather than it being a State/Federal partnership as in the past. CREP projects are traditionally large water quality projects. In our area they consist of water retention basins surrounded by permanent vegetation that reduce the amount of nutrients in both the surface and subsurface water that leaves the site. There are two large CREP sites along the Avenue of the Saints east of Mason City and a new site will be installed along I 35 south of Clear Lake in the summer of 2020. The CREP program was also expanded by incentivizing more enrollment of riparian buffers, including forested riparian buffers, through cost share payments for maintenance throughout the contract lifetime.
The Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), the largest conservation program in the U.S., was kept as a separate program rather than merged with EQIP as was debated. CSP provides financial assistance to producers who have begun to implement conservation practices on their farms and commit to doing more. The entire farm must be enrolled in the five-year program where resource concerns are prioritized and addressed.
Several more changes and pilot programs were announced which producers will be hearing about as the regulations are written. One big change was the much overdue reclassification of industrial hemp by removing it from the Controlled Substances Act. This will allow the growing of hemp across the country, and hopefully sprout many new industries involved in using hemp to make textiles, paper, building materials, and food additives. Hemp holds great promise as a potential third crop for the Midwest that requires less inputs than our other crops and has a root system that might help hold our soils in place.
If you have questions concerning the new Farm Bill or are looking to do some conservation work on your land, please visit the Cerro Gordo Soil and Water Conservation District at www.cerro gordoswcd.org or give us a call at 641-424-4452.
Article for March 2019 - Make a Change
It is a stretch to think of spring, as I write this article during the biggest and wildest snowstorm of the season, but it will come. With spring’s arrival, producers and landowners will have another opportunity to either do what they have always done in regards to field practices and tillage or make a positive change.
The rains and early freeze last fall prevented a huge amount of tillage and fall application of fertilizer across the state and especially in our area. This has many producers concerned about the amount of time available to do the tillage operations that they have always done. Now with heavy snows, spring seems even further. This is an opportunity to take a long hard look at why we do what we do to our soils. Cropland tillage is the single biggest cause of soil and nutrient loss. The adoption of a drastically reduced tillage program, preferably no tillage at all, will make a positive change to your farm’s environmental footprint and its bottom line.
Making a change to a farm’s tillage practices is really difficult because the majority of producers were raised on the farm and tillage was always used as a way to control weeds, to bury plant residue from the last year’s crop, and to allow planting equipment to operate properly. All of these were valid reasons forty years ago, but not since. The prudent use of herbicides to control weeds is a much better alternative to laying the soil bare to the elements and watching it erode into waterways and rivers. Also, there are not many planters today that don’t have some sort of disc openers that allow planting into undisturbed soybean stubble. The old ideal that the field should be nearly clear of residue prior to planting is archaic and damaging.
Iowa has lost half of its topsoil in the past 150 years. The average soil loss from an acre of Iowa farmland continues to be five tons per year. This represents a layer of the best soil, the thickness of a dime, from each acre. With heavy rain events on tilled soils whose surface is not protected, it doesn’t take much imagination to see how that soil is lost.
Now with the advent of a better scientific understanding of soil health and the interaction of soil biology with growing plants, the case for eliminating tillage is much stronger. A healthy undisturbed soil provides a home for thousands of earthworms per acre that help recycle plant residues and whose burrows provide for better water infiltration. A healthy soil biology increases soil structure which in turn increases water infiltration, reduces the need for commercial fertilizers, and helps to increase soil organic matter that improves water retention. Tillage destroys the soil biology, the much needed earthworm, and soil structure.
This spring could be a turning point for many producers; please do some research on how reducing tillage will save your soil, your time, your bottom line, and your community’s water quality. For more information on cost share opportunities for adopting no-till, call the Cerro Gordo Soil and Water Conservation District office at 641-424-4452 or visit www.cerrogordoswcd.org.
It is a stretch to think of spring, as I write this article during the biggest and wildest snowstorm of the season, but it will come. With spring’s arrival, producers and landowners will have another opportunity to either do what they have always done in regards to field practices and tillage or make a positive change.
The rains and early freeze last fall prevented a huge amount of tillage and fall application of fertilizer across the state and especially in our area. This has many producers concerned about the amount of time available to do the tillage operations that they have always done. Now with heavy snows, spring seems even further. This is an opportunity to take a long hard look at why we do what we do to our soils. Cropland tillage is the single biggest cause of soil and nutrient loss. The adoption of a drastically reduced tillage program, preferably no tillage at all, will make a positive change to your farm’s environmental footprint and its bottom line.
Making a change to a farm’s tillage practices is really difficult because the majority of producers were raised on the farm and tillage was always used as a way to control weeds, to bury plant residue from the last year’s crop, and to allow planting equipment to operate properly. All of these were valid reasons forty years ago, but not since. The prudent use of herbicides to control weeds is a much better alternative to laying the soil bare to the elements and watching it erode into waterways and rivers. Also, there are not many planters today that don’t have some sort of disc openers that allow planting into undisturbed soybean stubble. The old ideal that the field should be nearly clear of residue prior to planting is archaic and damaging.
Iowa has lost half of its topsoil in the past 150 years. The average soil loss from an acre of Iowa farmland continues to be five tons per year. This represents a layer of the best soil, the thickness of a dime, from each acre. With heavy rain events on tilled soils whose surface is not protected, it doesn’t take much imagination to see how that soil is lost.
Now with the advent of a better scientific understanding of soil health and the interaction of soil biology with growing plants, the case for eliminating tillage is much stronger. A healthy undisturbed soil provides a home for thousands of earthworms per acre that help recycle plant residues and whose burrows provide for better water infiltration. A healthy soil biology increases soil structure which in turn increases water infiltration, reduces the need for commercial fertilizers, and helps to increase soil organic matter that improves water retention. Tillage destroys the soil biology, the much needed earthworm, and soil structure.
This spring could be a turning point for many producers; please do some research on how reducing tillage will save your soil, your time, your bottom line, and your community’s water quality. For more information on cost share opportunities for adopting no-till, call the Cerro Gordo Soil and Water Conservation District office at 641-424-4452 or visit www.cerrogordoswcd.org.