The Water Table

#125 | A 30-Year Career in Conservation & Innovation: From NRCS to Family Farms

• Jamie Duininck • Episode 125

Share episode

What happens when decades of conservation experience meets cutting-edge technology? Kent Bohnhoff, retired Illinois grain farmer and former NRCS district conservationist, recently received a grant from One Good Idea to implement automated drainage water management systems on his land. Hear Kent’s unique perspective gained from over 30 years in agricultural conservation, and why he believes the system will benefit both crop yields and water quality.


Chapters:

00:00 Introduction 

00:36 A Long History in Farming and Conservation

01:59 Connecting Farming Passion with a Career at the NRCS

05:03 Satisfaction from Helping Farmers Implement Conservation

08:15 Technological Advancements in Agriculture and Drainage Over 30 Years

11:19 Family Farming Legacy and Future Involvement

12:36One Good Idea Grant

13:51 Initial Observations and Benefits of the Automated System

15:53 The Importance of Water Storage and Slowing Down Runoff

16:46 Landscape Changes and the Role of Conservation Practices

17:47 Looking to the Future and Benefits for the Next Generation

18:42 Staying in Touch and the Impact of Drought

19:38 Closing Remarks


Related content:


Find us on social media!


Listen on these podcast platforms


Visit our website to explore more episodes & water management education.

Jamie Duininck (00:00):

Today on The Water Table Podcast, I am interviewing Kent Bohnhoff. Kent is a retired grain farmer and also retired from the NRCS after a 30-year career. Kent and his family applied and received a grant from One Good Idea Farm to implement drainage water management on their farms. You can find One Good Idea at goodideafarm.org.

(00:36):

All right, welcome back to The Water Table Podcast. I'm Jamie Duininck. Today I have with me Kent Bohnhoff. Kent is a grain farmer in Illinois. He has a long history of being in the farming and agricultural world. Kent served as a district conservationist for over 30 years for NRCS, and he operates a small family farm for over 25 years, but he retired in 2021 from active farming, but still manages farms through a 50/50 crop share with his tenants.

(01:10):

The reason why I wanted to get Kent on the podcast today is he was the recipient of a grant from One Good Idea where he partnered with Iowa based Agricultural Drainage Management Coalition, which The Water Table has had on many times, and to install two automated drainage water management systems, which is a promising practice throughout the Midwest. And we just want to talk about that a little bit today with Kent on The Water Table. So welcome Kent to The Water Table podcast.

Kent Bohnhoff (01:41):

Sure, glad to be here.

Jamie Duininck (01:42):

Yeah. So let's just start. Why don't you tell me a little bit about your history and farming, and obviously you were a conservationist with NRCS for most of your career, there in Illinois, but how did both of those things connect and collide?

Kent Bohnhoff (01:59):

Well, yeah, I'd always had a passion for farming and growing up on a small hog and corn, soybean, wheat farm in south central Illinois. So I was about 25 years ago, was able to take over the farming operation and try to implement what I was preaching for NRCS. So that always made it challenging, made some long days and nights in there to get everything done and try to meet down my obligations and all the way around.

(02:31):

So one of the things where I grew up farming was we always had tight soils where we weren't able to get the water off. We used surface drainage. Tile wasn't a prominent practice, but we did three years ago get tile in the ground. Then my wife's farm is about an hour and a half away in central Illinois in Christian County. And so there we've got a little bit better soils, but still it's a wet farm and we're looking for ways to improve it there.

Jamie Duininck (03:11):

Sure. You grew up on a farm, your parents were farmers, is that correct? And so that's how you kind of gained your love for farming.

Kent Bohnhoff (03:21):

Sure.

Jamie Duininck (03:22):

And your farm was near where you live now in Groveland or was that further away?

Kent Bohnhoff (03:29):

It's further away, about three hours away down near Effingham, Illinois. My wife's farm is in the Taylorville, Illinois area.

Jamie Duininck (03:39):

Sure. So tell me a little bit about how you, just starting, how you decided on a career as a conservationist with the NRCS and how that kind played out the way it did.

Kent Bohnhoff (03:52):

Sure. Yeah. I had gotten out of college and I started working as a swine herdsman. Then I decided there needed to be other opportunities out there. So I went and looking and always enjoyed working with farmers and helping them out. And so I was able to get on in the late '80s with the Soil Conservation Service and throughout my career, spent four different locations before I spent the majority in Bloomington-Normal-McLean County there. And then helping with farmers and seeing how the water could be managed and how it could be improved because that was really a lot of our work was water management that caused the soil erosion.

Jamie Duininck (04:43):

Sure. Yeah, that's going to be a good question for me here in a little bit. But as you went on in your career, what was maybe one of, doesn't have to be the most, but one of the most satisfying things from your job, just you've mentioned twice that you enjoy helping farmers. What was one of the practices or things that you were able to communicate that farmers maybe didn't know through your role at NRCS, that really satisfied you and your job and made you feel like you were making a difference?

Kent Bohnhoff (05:18):

Sure, yeah, trying to help them improve their farm and take advantage of what the resources they had out there and looking to do that, whether that was helping them control soil erosion or helping them... We worked with a number of farmers to install wetlands in McLean County and to treat the tile water and so saw the benefits of working with some non-governmental organizations on how that played out with... We could treat some of the soil-related things, but it still didn't impact the water quality that they were finding in the streams and coming out of the tile. So I knew that there needed to be some ways to do that while wetlands is one of those. And one of the things that we talked about was a drainage water management or bioreactors work, a couple other practices that are out there that can help treat tile water.

Jamie Duininck (06:21):

Yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong because I don't know this answer, but just my experience and history of just watching things, it seems like that McLean County and through there, seems like a lot of the storms set up there and there's more water that comes through that area than maybe north and south of that by 100 miles. Is that right?

Kent Bohnhoff (06:42):

Yeah, there is. And McLean County or city of Bloomington has a couple of water supply lakes that we work closely with to try to improve their water quality and reduce the nitrogen loading that's coming there.

Jamie Duininck (06:55):

Sure. So yeah, that's part of this whole story that people forget about is just how storm set up and there can be within 100 miles, even in the bread basket in the Midwest, there can be areas where just historically, they get three to six more inches of rain in a year, which is significant especially at the right time-

Kent Bohnhoff (07:16):

Yeah, I watched that even though I wasn't far away from where I worked, the farm I operated with was 100 miles away and we would get more storms in the spring and when we needed the water in the summer, they would kind of fizzle out by the time they got down to south central Illinois.

Jamie Duininck (07:36):

Yep, so then you're looking at being able to get in, in the spring because you have the right water management system early enough and then pulling those roots down deep before that summer heat comes so that they have a chance to make it by getting to the water.

Kent Bohnhoff (07:54):

Right. The soils were from the Illinois Glaciation, not Wisconsin, so they're a little bit tighter where I grew up and where I operated the farm. And so I think we're going to see some real benefits of having the tile system in and plan on managing it with an automated water table, automated water control structure.

Jamie Duininck (08:16):

Yeah, that'll be fun to talk about here in a minute. So just staying on that NRCS thing for a minute, 30 years is a long time. A lot of things change and agriculture, a lot of people don't realize if you're not in agriculture, how much technology has advanced the industry. And tell me a little bit about that from the standpoint from when you started to when you retired, what did you see? In some ways technology sometimes makes us say, okay, it is time for me to retire or time for me to move on because of technology. And then on the other side of that is, it gives me a lot of hope for the future because we have introduced this technology. So just talk a little bit about how that progressed.

Kent Bohnhoff (09:03):

Sure. Yeah, we started off as part of my career, we would have a level that you look through and had a person holding a rod on the other end to do survey for practices and we advanced to laser levels. And then if we ended up, we had GPS so that we could generate maps and topo maps for the farm and we could see LIDAR and you could see what was going on in the landscape without looking at it on your eyes because I've been fooled many a time thinking water went one way and actually when you surveyed it, it went the other way. And so that was a big change.

(09:40):

And then just the technology that farmers have to be able to see what was going on. I think one of the big things was the yield monitors. They knew that those hills and those wet holes weren't yielding, but they didn't realize how poor the yields were in those areas and they were able to see that and that got them thinking that they've been draining soils and trying to manage water for over 100 years, but then thought, well, if I'm only getting 50 bushels of the acre here and I can get it up to 150, well, how much more profit could I make and if I can invest and make that return on investment pay off in a few short years, it's something they would look to do.

Jamie Duininck (10:23):

Yeah, just how drainage progressed throughout the years. And you were at it long enough with the NRCS to see that from starting tiling, random tiling, moving wet spot from here to there because you ran them tile to pattern tiling-

Kent Bohnhoff (10:41):

Yeah, when I started, there was still contractors that were doing clay tiling, putting it in that way. So in doing the plastic tile and doing plastic water inlet structures on a taro system. So yeah, it's a big change.

Jamie Duininck (10:59):

And being able to go from 100 foot spacings down to 50 to 40, kind of where we're at now and once the pattern tiling happened and just the advent of plastic being so much easier to install so much more in a day's work. So yeah, you saw it all, which is kind of fun. How about just as I'm listening to your talk and you had a career in agriculture, but outside of farming and owned the land and still was very connected to the farm, where does your family legacy, is that going to continue? Do you have kids, are they interested in agriculture?

Kent Bohnhoff (11:41):

I have two children, a son and a daughter, and unfortunately they haven't had that desire to follow in that. So as I aged out and I decided to retire from farming, I've got a brother-in-law that operates my wife's farm and his son and they're doing a lot of things. In fact, they started organic operation about five years ago, so we've been reaping the benefits of that. They fine-tuned their system there.

Jamie Duininck (12:12):

Yeah, cool. That's great. And sounds like that legacy of farming will probably continue though through or legacy of agricultural probably continue through land ownership within your family.

Kent Bohnhoff (12:25):

Sure, plan to keep that and keep it in the family. And both farms have been in the family over 100 years, so look to continue that on.

Jamie Duininck (12:37):

Yeah, that's a great legacy for your family. Congratulations on that. So let's move a little bit to this One Good Idea grant that you received. When did you receive the grant and what was your thoughts on applying for it?

Kent Bohnhoff (12:51):

It was about a year ago or so, I think, we applied, I think we found out about maybe through the only sustainable ag partnership, I'm not quite sure. I try to keep up on what's going on with different conservation projects and activities. And so we made the application for this One Good Idea and thought it was a good opportunity to implement the practice. And so we were looking at installing a drainage water management structure. Like I say, we've got a tile system on my home farm of 40 acres that I had put in and started in 2019 and finished in 2022. And my wife's farm, we just started to implement a tile system there. So we thought it was a good opportunity to combine the two since we knew what the tiling was and where it was and how it would fit in there.

Jamie Duininck (13:53):

Yeah. It's only been a year, and I'm not close enough to Illinois to know what the growing season was like last summer, but have you seen some benefits in both having some rain and also being able to hold some water back if it got dry in the summer?

Kent Bohnhoff (14:13):

Yeah, we really haven't had that. It was a dry fall. We didn't get it installed until late summer, and so it was pretty much there. But by the time we got any significant rain in early November, there hadn't been much flow and we got automated sensors there that tell us what the water level is on the structure. But it was amazing when we did get that first flow and we didn't have the full 80 acres tiled, we only had about a third of it, 25 or so acres, and it jumped up about two feet within a matter of a day or two-

Jamie Duininck (14:53):

Really?

Kent Bohnhoff (14:53):

... holding water back. So at that point in time we opened it up so that we had plans to get the rest of the field tiled, so we didn't want to impede that. So we opened it up and have kept it up open all winter because we've just finished tile in that field last week.

Jamie Duininck (15:14):

Sure. And it's interesting what you just said that so many people misconception, general public, just doesn't understand the opportunity that we have to store water in the soil profile too, was exactly what drainage water management is doing when you have those systems closed. But when you think about it, if you had two feet of water that it came up, that's two acre feet. That is a lot of water you're storing, even if it's only 25 acres. And it's exactly what we can do to help with water quality as far as just slowing down that flashpoint.

Kent Bohnhoff (15:54):

And I've seen in my career, we're working with watersheds and I've been around long enough to see the land use change. There used to be more pastures and more areas that where water would filter through the soil and now it's fed up and we plan on future winters being able to hold that water back and hold the nutrients that go with that water from going downstream.

Jamie Duininck (16:22):

And so we can then, if that happens during the growing season, and allow those plants to use some of those, whether the nitrogen whatever's in there rather than releasing that is just a really good thing. And you're right, we forget, that's another thing we forget about, when you talk about the change in the landscape from the standpoint of how many family farms had livestock had pastures has really changed and another technology change that we've seen over the last 30 to 40 years-

Kent Bohnhoff (16:53):

Yeah, and it's impacted not only the water but also the wildlife and other areas that are impacted. They don't have a habitat then they aren't going to be there. And so that's been coming back with the conservation reserve program and other conservation efforts around the country, but it takes effort to do that and to integrate that in and have a whole farm plan for everything in the watershed to make it all fit together.

Jamie Duininck (17:25):

The diversity of the landscape is what makes it interesting to wildlife and also to us as humans. Yeah, well, I really appreciate you joining me. It's exciting to see somebody that's, I'm not going to call you old Kent, but I'm going to say in you-,

Kent Bohnhoff (17:48):

Well, I received my Medicare card to become active next week.

Jamie Duininck (17:53):

Well, I'm still not going to be the guy to call you old, but I am going to say that it's fun when we have people that have a lot of experience like you do that are looking to the future. This isn't something that this drainage water management practice and grant you're getting from One Good Idea really isn't going to benefit you as much as it's going to benefit the next generation of your children and those to own the farm and the water quality.

Kent Bohnhoff (18:21):

We'll be able to see increased yields and improved environment of what we're looking for, win-win all the way around.

Jamie Duininck (18:29):

Right. So we'd like to stay in touch with you here at The Water Table and see how this is progressing and what you're seeing as Mother Nature gives us droughts and gives us a lot of water and how it's working.

Kent Bohnhoff (18:43):

Yeah, droughts always a major impact. I remember '83 and '88 and 2012, that has impacted our area and they happen every year at some place.

Jamie Duininck (18:55):

Some place. Yep, for sure. And then when you said that 2012 was something up here in Minnesota where we didn't really see the effects of that until really late where we had made a crop already and down where you're at, you didn't make much of a crop.

Kent Bohnhoff (19:10):

No, yeah, I was utilizing cover crops and no-till and I didn't have great yields at 75 or 80, but there were other folks in the same section that were disking their corn crops under.

Jamie Duininck (19:22):

Yeah, isn't that interesting with... So yeah, a cover crop conversation would be fun to have with you too. I've always enjoyed those, as it's a good educational tool for me. So I appreciate your time today on The Water Table, Kent, and best of luck to you with this grant. Let's stay in touch.

Kent Bohnhoff (19:40):

Okay, sounds great. Thank you, Jamie.

Jamie Duininck (19:41):

Thank you.



People on this episode

Head Shot

Jamie Duininck

Host