Nebraska Conservation Agriculture News

What to Consider When Farming the Sun

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 19:01:32 GMT

For Indiana farmer Tom McKinney, adding solar to his farm was a “no brainer.” The output from the installation meets his drying demand for half a million bushels. He sees the long-term solar benefits outweighing the possible burdens.

After a few years of high grain prices, McKinney installed a 12-kilowatt solar farm to reduce his on-farm costs.

“When we had $6 corn, I wanted to park some of that somewhere I could reduce or eliminate some of my expenses in the upcoming decade,” he says. “I receive no payment for the power I produce. But, at the same time, I don’t pay for any power.”

Community Support (Or Lack Of)

Community support for solar tends to waver, at least in McKinney’s experience. But he says many concerns are based on misinformation.

“For example, a couple people said, ‘We don’t want these because if a windstorm or a tornado hit them, all that liquid would fall into the ground and contaminate our water,’ but these solar panels don’t contain any liquid,” says McKinney. “It’s no different than if somebody broke a window on the passenger door of your car.”

Solar panels are made of mainly nontoxic materials, so they offer minimal health hazards, says John Hay, University of Nebraska Extension educator for bioenergy. Additionally, the electromagnetic fields are low intensity with fences and setbacks for added safety.

The burden of field maintenance was also considered an issue in McKinney’s area. Nonetheless, he prefers to groom the land himself rather than seek his leasing company’s assistance.

He says his community also actively brainstorms ideas for solar grounds maintenance, sharing, “A couple of our local schools who are looking into solar have toyed with the idea of putting the solar panels up a little bit higher and grazing livestock, establishing gardens, or even academic learning areas,” McKinney said.

McKinney sees the long-term solar benefits outweighing the possible burdens. But he encourages farmers to do their homework before taking the plunge into solar.

Questions to Ask

Before you sign a long-term solar lease, find the answers to these questions, suggests Todd Janzen, president of Janzen Schroeder Agricultural Law.

Is the developer paying you enough to close the door on competitors? The solar lease will likely seek to tie-up the property for a period of years while the developer arranges permits, funding, zoning, and other items necessary for construction.
Do the lease payments take inflation into account? A 30-, 40-, or 50-year lease should have a built-in rent payment escalator.
Who receives the carbon and tax credits? Understand you may be giving up an enormous upside if these markets take off years from now. and companies are willing to pay farmers to sequester carbon as part of their farming activities.
Is the developer committed to keeping the solar farm maintained to your standards? A field of solar panels seems harmless enough, but what happens if the solar field is full of noxious weeds that spread onto neighboring fields?
Will the developer provide a removal bond? If the solar company goes bankrupt, you could be left with a field full of salvage-value solar panels. Insist the developer provide some form of security that will pay for the cost of removal if the solar company goes bankrupt or disappears.

How Bazile Farmers Use Conservation To Tackle Nitrates And Protect Nebraska Groundwater

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 20:27:41 GMT

Building trust in food begins with empowering farmers through one of the largest and most diverse conservation- and sustainability-focused public-private partnerships in our nation’s history: America’s Conservation Ag Movement. To find the latest news and resources related to the Movement, visit AgWeb.com/ACAM .

The Ogallala Aquifer is one of the world’s largest freshwater resources. It’s been described as an underground spongelike lake that covers portions of states from North Dakota to Texas. It contains as much water as Lake Huron, provides an estimated $25 billion of agricultural products and supplies approximately 1.8 million people with drinking water daily.

In northeastern Nebraska, farmers in the Bazile Groundwater Management Area who rely on this precious resource know its value. Yet conservationists caution that without proactive attention to local water-quality challenges such as nitrate contamination, the Ogallala—the singular water source for producers and rural communities in the region—is at risk.

Watch the complete webinar “Farming for the Future: Fostering Resiliency” here:

The Challenge

The Bazile encompasses 756 square miles of land across Antelope, Knox and Pierce counties. It’s home to 10 communities and 7,000 residents.

“The Bazile is characterized mostly by sandy soils and intensive crop production,” explains Connor Baldwin, project coordinator for the Bazile, who serves with the Lower Elkhorn Natural Resource District. Unique to Nebraska, the district is among 23 such local units of government responsible for stewarding water, forests and other natural resources.

Those factors, in combination with a shallow water table in which 50% of available water is less than 100 ft. from the surface, have led to leaching issues within the Bazile. The permeability of the Bazile’s soils doesn’t allow excess nitrogen to stay near the root zone once a crop is harvested, especially when no living roots remain in the soil’s surface. For six to seven months out of the year, it’s common for soils in the area to go without any significant live organic matter taking up and using surplus nitrogen.
Legacy nutrients add another layer of complexity.

“The nitrate levels we’re seeing today aren’t the results of yesterday’s activities, nor will our efforts today make a difference tomorrow,” explains Austin Baldwin, resource conservationist with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in Nebraska, and brother to Connor. “Nitrogen, in average soils, can travel through the soil at a rate of around 12” per year. The rate of travel within most soils of the Bazile is closer to 30” to 48” pear year. Nitrates entering the groundwater right now are from nitrogen applications years to even decades ago.”

To alleviate those challenges, state and federal agencies have been working with farmers to encourage adoption of production practices that can help mitigate the risk of leaching. Those who have tried to lose weight understand the premise: You might not notice a difference from one day to the next, but if you remain consistent with your diet and exercise, you’ll begin to see improvements.

Solutions

The silver lining is that resource concerns facing the Bazile are complex but not unsolvable. “We’re not suggesting we decrease corn and soybean production in the area, and the last thing anyone wants is for mandatory, strict regulations to come into play to address the issue,” points out Austin Baldwin of NRCS. “There are a lot of procedures that can be implemented to mitigate and even decrease nitrate accumulation, and the most exciting news is that many of these efforts can have a positive impact on a farmer’s bottom line.”

That’s especially true when farmers move toward adoption of a suite of practices, provided it’s appropriate for their operation, Baldwin says. Those practices are:

• Spoon feed nitrogen when and where crops need it. Do not apply more than crops need, either at one time or over the crop’s lifetime.

• When nitrogen cannot be spoon fed, use nitrogen stabilizers to slow the release of nitrogen into the soil. Stabilizers keep applied nitrogen in a plant-usable form that is less likely to leach.

• Use good irrigation management to avoid over-application of water, which forces excess nitrogen into the ground further and faster.

• Implement soil health practices that build up soil organic matter and allow topsoil to hold more water and more nutrients, preventing them from leaching into subsoils. These practices include cover crops, which can improve organic matter, create revenue streams such as through livestock grazing, and limit the need for synthetic fertilizer; conservation tillage or no-till; and diverse crop rotation such as with small grains, which can help lower farm labor and equipment needs and input costs.
Considerations

Economics is the primary—but not the exclusive—factor for many local farmers evaluating how to improve their resource stewardship.

“It really comes down to ‘Will this pay off?’,” explains Jeremy Milander, Bazile educator with University of Nebraska Extension. “Especially in times when narrowing margins in the farming business make turning a profit more difficult, people aren’t looking to drastically change up their approaches. Many of these practices often require investing in new equipment, and there’s uncertainty that the investment in cover crop seed, different equipment or soil testing will pay off in the long run.”
A cooperative approach to water-quality conversations is often the most productive.

“We want involvement and uptake of practices to be completely voluntary by farmers and landowners of the area” says Connor Baldwin of the local Natural Resource District. “Farmers are the original stewards of the land. We work with farmers daily who are as invested in achieving a solution to this issue as anyone. After all, it’s their own and their family’s drinking water and health we’re talking about here.”

Insights From Local Farmers

Nebraska producer Debbie Borg and her husband, Terry, produce row crops and poultry just outside the Bazile, and conservation plays an integral role on their operation.

“We’ve been experimenting with cover crops for about eight years,” Borg says. “We know that when utilized appropriately, they often result in decreased need for supplemental nitrogen, and they add an opportunity for our son to provide forage for his growing cattle herd.”

Yet for Bazile-area farmers just getting started with conservation, she advises first exploring ways to reduce tillage. “We started no-tilling over 30 years ago with the purpose of decreasing fuel costs and reducing labor needs. Although the first three to five years can make sticking with it tough because your fields don’t look like you’re accustomed to, you’ve got to stick with it,” Borg shares. “We would never consider going back. If you appreciate a lower fuel bill and want to improve your soil health, reduced tillage practices can’t be underestimated. It’s time to start thinking about conservation not just as resource conservation but conservation of a dollar.”

Along with other Bazile-area farmers and conservation experts, Borg recently spoke about her experiences with conservation during a Farm Journal webinar titled “Farming for the Future, Fostering Resiliency”. (Watch the complete webinar on this page.) It addresses several key soil health practices and principles that can help producers.

Borg is a local Conservation Steward in the Bazile helping farmers both get credit for existing stewardship practices and evaluate the next steps they can be taking. Conservation Stewards are part of America’s Conservation Ag Movement. The Movement brings farmers and the sustainability community together around the future of farming, by bringing profitable, planet-friendly farming practices into the mainstream. It connects the dots, giving farmers a platform to share their journey, meet other farmers on the same path, and access the resources they need to undertake change. The Movement is organized by Trust In Food, a Farm Journal initiative, in partnership with the Farm Journal Foundation. Financial and technical support is provided by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and leading agribusinesses, food companies and nonprofit organizations.
Other farmers in the region are seeing the value of investing in conservation as a business strategy.

“I think there are many farmers out there who haven’t experienced discussions about conservation, sustainability or soil health from an economics perspective,” says Justin Doerr, an organic grain, grass-fed sheep, and heritage pork producer near Plainview, Neb. “Many impactful conservation efforts can be attributed to input-cost savings with the opportunity to improve a farm’s bottom line. On our farm, our main goal is to cut down on the number of inputs we have to buy. Incorporating cover crops and livestock into the operation has allowed for us to reduce fertility inputs and decrease some weed control measures.”

What Farmers Can Do Next

To learn more about evaluating your conservation farming practices, reach out to Connor Baldwin at cbaldwin@lenrd.org or visit the Natural Resource District’s Bazile website for information about local demonstration sites and events.

To discover how you can join America’s Conservation Ag Movement, email Cody Dvorak at conservationag@farmjournal.com. Then visit AgWeb.com/ACAM for additional information, videos and resources.

You can also dive deeper to learn more about the Bazile by viewing this report published by the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy.

ABOUT OUR GUEST EXPERT

Dr. Charles Shapiro, Emeritus Professor of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska

ABOUT OUR CONSERVATION STEWARDS

Debbie Borg, Borg Family Farms near Allen, Neb.

Brian Doerr, farming northeast of Plainview, Neb.

Diversifying Adds To Sustainability

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 20:25:19 GMT

This article was written by Debbie Borg. She and her family produce beef, chicken and row crops in northeast Nebraska, near Allen. Debbie is a Conservation Steward in the Bazile Creek watershed, helping farmers evaluate conservation farming practices on behalf of America’s Conservation Ag Movement, a Trust In Food initiative.

Sustainability is such a buzz word today and means so many different things to different people and industries. And now we have to talk about climate smart ag, too!

But I believe if you ask a farmer, most likely they will tell you that sustainability means passing the farm on to the next generation.

Looking back to 2018 when we signed a letter of intent to build a chicken barn for the Costco project in Nebraska, we didn’t write a business plan and detail all that we were doing to contribute to the sustainability of our fifth-generation family farm operation.

At the time, it wasn’t a real hard decision to sign on. My husband and I both grew up doing animal chores and have been feeding cattle ever since. We understood the daily chore commitment. We told people that we were doing it for our kids, and I want to delve into what the decision we made three years ago has brought to our farm and family.

First, it has brought a lot of change. Most importantly, it has provided opportunity – the opportunity to offer a paying job to our oldest daughter, Hannah, after college graduation. Just recently, our other daughter, Heidi, joined us. Had we not signed on as a contract grower for Costco, both daughters would have had to find careers elsewhere – away from the farm.

Back to change. We now have daily chores with rigid time schedules. Unlike with cattle feeding, where timing isn’t quite as critical, chickens demand being in the barn and eating at the same time every morning, every day of the year. But that’s provided another opportunity. Adding chickens has given us a resource for additional plant nutrients, thanks to the chicken bedding. We have had access to poultry litter for over 40 years in our area. In fact, our family used poultry manure when the local provider had to give it away. Today, the demand for poultry litter is high and generally costs more than what the NPK nutrients are valued at. However, I like to say that chicken manure is magic. It does things that commercial fertilizer doesn’t do, and that’s what has also driven up the cost in this area of northeast Nebraska.

Getting back to sustainability, as farmers learn more every year, we have seen the benefits of using both cattle and chicken manure as plant nutrients. That has especially been the case as we have seen Mother Nature bring more extremes to our weather conditions. Soil that has been treated/covered with animal manure has more resilience.

We also know that circular economies result in increased sustainability. I often share the story that we grow the corn that we feed the cattle, then we spread the manure on the field to nourish future crops to feed the cattle. Around and around it goes. People outside of farming say, “Wow, I didn’t understand that, and your transportation costs are reduced, too and your carbon footprint is reduced.” Yes, that is correct. Here in eastern Nebraska, the crops grown to feed the livestock are cultivated real close to where they are consumed, and the animal manure is then applied on nearby fields as well.

It has been an interesting journey over the last three years with some major bumps and turns, as a result of adding chickens to our farm. But when we focus on the increased sustainability, our goal to leave the land better than it was when we got it – and pass it on to the next generation – it definitely has been worthwhile.