While conservation lags behind, progress is also being made in reducing the Gulf’s “dead zone” | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — The cover crop that covers Dan Voss’s farmland from late fall into spring gives the eastern Iowa farmer peace of mind, knowing that heavy spring rains won’t wash away his topsoil. These out-of-season plants also soak up excess fertilizer.

But for every Dan Voss, there are a thousand U.S. farmers who do not plant cover crops or use other conservation practices proven to reduce runoff.

Other agricultural practices – such as more drainage pipes that direct water more quickly into ditches and rivers, more livestock and more fertilizer – are thwarting plans to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where excess nutrients threaten wildlife and the fishing industry.

“We farmers have to get involved,” said Voss.

With just one year to go before the 2025 deadline for reducing nitrate and phosphorus emissions into the Gulf, success seems unlikely.

The Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force, a coalition of state, federal and tribal agencies tasked with controlling fertilizer pollution, told Congress last fall that nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi River basin had decreased 23% from the baseline period through 2021.

But the five-year rolling average – which takes into account the extremely wet and dry years that are becoming more common with climate change – tells a different story. By this measure, nitrogen levels are just below the baseline and well above the 20 percent target. Phosphorus pollution has worsened since the baseline period.

The low-oxygen “dead zone” in the Gulf this summer is expected to be 5,827 square miles, 5% larger than average, according to a forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week. Two longtime Gulf researchers predict a smaller “dead zone,” but only because of rising ocean temperatures and not because of ongoing nutrient depletion in the Mississippi Basin.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created in the 1970s to protect water, air and land from pollution. But when it comes to fertilizer pollution in the Gulf, the EPA – which leads the task force – sees its role as one of funder rather than enforcer.

“This is one of the areas where we have some regulatory authority, and I’m confident we’re using it to the extent we can,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, the journalists’ cooperative that reported on this story, in April about the EPA’s role in the task force’s goals.

“This is an area where we need to partner, not only with the Department of Agriculture but with the agricultural community to really develop more creative and rewarding voluntary programs as we think about how we look at farming, farming and other practices in this country,” Regan said.

“FAR BEHIND”

Progress so far in reducing nutrient inputs into the Mississippi is attributed to stricter standards for water treatment plants and other “point source” polluters. But 70 percent of the Gulf’s nitrate pollution comes from diffuse sources – primarily agriculture.

According to the U.S. Census of Agriculture, the amount of U.S. cropland planted with cover crops increased 75%, from about 10.3 million acres in 2012 to nearly 18 million acres in 2022. Cover crops such as rye, hairy vetch and camelina absorb excess nutrients and hold soil in place. Reduced tillage area—which reduces runoff—increased 27% during that time, and no-till area increased 9%.

These procedures are carried out on a small part of the total harvest area.

“We need every other field to have some sort of winter protection to reduce nutrient loss,” said Sarah Carlson, an agronomist and senior program and member retention director for Practical Farmers of Iowa. “We’re way, way behind. Not even close.”

Even though the government subsidizes conservation projects, many farmers do not want to risk reducing their short-term income – the money they use to feed their families and pay off debts.

Doug Downs, who grows corn and soybeans on about 2,000 acres in Champaign County, Illinois, experimented with cover crops in 2019. He planted one side of the road with cover crops and the other side without. It was a wet spring, which meant Downs had little time to finish his cover crops, and his beans on that side were planted late.

“My soybeans were yielding 80 or 81 bushels … on my conventional farmland,” he said. “I was losing $200 an acre just by planting a cover crop.”

Carlson said farmers who experience yield losses when using cover crops likely do not have enough labor to plant and kill the crops at the right time.

BIG MONEY

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) invested $14.2 billion between fiscal year 2010 and fiscal year 2021 in voluntary conservation programs and technical assistance in the 12 task force states: Arkansas, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

The Inflation Reduction Act provides an additional $19.5 billion for climate-friendly agriculture across the country, which could include projects that improve water quality.

Some states also have their own programs to fund water quality improvement projects. The Iowa Department of Agriculture has spent $1.17 million, including federal funds, to install saturated buffers and bioreactors that filter water from underground drainage pipes before it flows into rivers. Farmers do not have to pay for the projects and even receive $1,000 for each additional measure.

Two dozen saturated buffer zones in Linn County, Iowa, are designed to reduce nitrate levels in runoff from 1,200 acres of farmland by 45 percent, but the Nature Conservancy has relaxed standards to make the projects eligible for federal funds, according to Chris Jones, a former University of Iowa scientist and water quality advocate. He said the minimum filtration required has dropped from 5 percent of design flow to “the level that is practically feasible.”

While the federal government is providing more money to farmers to encourage them to promote voluntary conservation, the Biden administration plans to cut by 18 percent the research budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NAO), which has been measuring the size of the Gulf’s “dead zone” since 1985.

It is not clear whether this cut will jeopardize research into nutrient-runoff-induced hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico, but researchers have expressed concern.

BAD PRACTICES

While there have been improvements in agricultural practices in the Midwest that reduce runoff, there has also been an increase in practices that exacerbate the problem.

The area drained in the United States by underground pipes that serve as highways for runoff into streams and rivers has increased 9.5% from 48.6 million acres in 2012 to 53.1 million acres in 2022.

In addition, farmers are raising 12% more pigs, from 66 million in 2012 to 73.8 million pigs in 2022.

Total fertilizer sales in four Midwestern states – Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota – increased 10.6% from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2020.

“What we never want to talk about is that on the one hand we adopt certain practices, but on the other hand we do things that make things worse,” Jones said.

Agricultural scientists across the Midwest report that farmers are using too much fertilizer, whether it’s chemicals from the cooperative or manure from the nearest dairy.

“Many of our corn fields are over-fertilized,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at an event in Illinois on May 3. The farm bill currently being debated in Congress would provide money for research sensors that would allow farmers to know exactly where and when to apply fertilizer, he said.

However, some farmers see the addition of a little more fertilizer as a guarantee for a higher corn yield.

“People are creatures of habit,” says Jason Pieper, a farmer in Trempealeau County, Wisconsin. “If you use less fertilizer, you risk a loss of yield.”

Minnesota State Rep. Rick Hansen, a farm boy who worked for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture before being elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2004, said the strategy of paying farmers to voluntarily implement measures to reduce nutrient loss had “failed.”

He and other Democrats pushed this year for a 40-cent-per-ton fertilizer tax that could raise an estimated $1.2 million a year to help southeastern Minnesota residents whose drinking water wells are contaminated with nitrate, which has been linked to some cancers.

“We need to move away from the polluter pays model instead of making the taxpayer pay for it,” said Hansen.

The bill passed the House Agriculture Committee but did not become law this year.

Minnesota lawmakers are also examining how much fertilizer is used on 12,000 acres of public farmland. Some of that land could be converted from corn to native vegetation and trees, Hansen said.

Carlson suggested requiring farmers who lay new drainage pipes to plant cover crops on those areas for three years. “We can try it again. I guess we can put more money into it,” Carlson said. Or “maybe we should try something more radical.”

Information for this article was contributed by Madeline Heim of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Eric Schmid of St. Louis Public Radio. The story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting collaborative funded primarily by the Walton Family Foundation.