A few agricultural partners and area farmers attended an informational meeting to learn about a couple of cost-share programs for conservation practices.

Abby Inman with the Iowa Nutrient Research and Education Council, along with TJ Lynn with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, presented how saturated buffers and bioreactors work to help remove nitrites from the water runoff of farm fields, before the water eventually ends up in the Raccoon River. 

Inman stated that the programs are 100 percent cost-share with the landowner and there is an added incentive from the Iowa Pork Producers of a one-time $1,000 donation to help get a conservation practice started. Lynn noted that the process starts with a survey with conservation officials to determine if an edge of field practice is an option, with about one year to see it come to fruition. 

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig also spoke at the event at the Scranton Community Center and he explained the newer concept of a “batch and build” model where groups of landowners who want to install these practices are virtually done at the same time.

“It’s very efficient, it’s fast, and really what we want to have be the case is that a farmer can say, ‘I’m interested,’ put your hand up, say ‘Yes, I want to do this.’ And the team then springs into action. Conservation is not easy, at all, but we want to make it easy to say, ‘Yes.’ And then we want to drive cost out of this situation, have a better return on investment, get those practices on the ground. That’s how we’re going to improve the water quality the way that we want to is we have to scale up these practices, we have to do it faster.”     

Those who may be interested can contact Inman at ainman@agribiz.org or 515-868-0313 for more information.

Additionally, Naig was also in Redfield on Friday touring a previous Choose Iowa-Value Added Grant in 2024 recipient with LandGrow, an indoor saltwater shrimp farming operation.