Iowa State developing Watershed Innovation Farm to demonstrate conservation practices

AMES, Iowa – As awareness of water quality continues to grow across Central Iowa, Iowa State University is expanding its efforts to research and educate farmers and the public in conservation practices.

The university is using a $1 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a new Watershed Innovation Farm demonstration about two miles south of the Iowa State campus near the ISU Dairy Farm.

The demonstration site is expected to open next year and will bring together farmers, industry leaders, teachers and students to learn ways to improve water quality.

The site will feature several nature-based water quality practices, including saturated buffers, bioreactors and wetlands. It will also showcase advancements in sustainable woodland management and monitoring technology, including drones.

Some of the conservation measures are already in place. Iowa State also plans to demonstrate the use of cover crops in a field. The displays will be located within about three miles of each other along maintained trails and will include educational signs.

“We just thought that it’s time we had one central location where we could take people so they could see all of these practices at work and, more importantly, that you could come out here and see this, and with really excellent signage,” Jacqueline Comito, Ph.D., Program Director for Iowa Learning Farms at Iowa State.

“We're really emphasizing the integration of technology into the site. So it’s not just the passive, slow-through system that we’ve seen in the past, but this is an example of an agro drain structure which is used to control the flow to the bioreactor,” Michelle Soupir, Ph.D., an Iowa State Professor of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, said. “Here the public can come to the site and actually see what the integration of all these different pieces can look like.”

Researchers say there is a significant labor need to implement conservation practices across Iowa. For example, there are about 300 bioreactors currently on Iowa farms, but experts say roughly 100,000 would be needed to achieve the state's goals of reducing nutrient runoff by 45%.

“I think there’s kind of an urgency as far as the understanding of what different mixes of pollutants and chemicals are present in our waters. And then also to be able to pair that with understanding of the agricultural system and what kind of practices can actually be implemented in order to help mitigate some of the concerns that we’re seeing downstream,” Soupir said.

“Not one practice is the magic bullet. So we need to stack practices, and we need a suite of practices,” Comito said. “So it’s really important because the investment that we’re going to need from everyone is huge. Everyone needs to be on board if we want to improve water quality in the state of Iowa.”

Iowa State hopes the Watershed Innovation Farm will help educate current farmers while also introducing future farmers, students and environmentalists to conservation practices and water quality research.

Funding isn’t just coming from the EPA for this. Iowa State is working with several partners for this project, including the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Iowa DNR.

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