The Water Table

#129 | The Tipping Point: Accelerating Agricultural Water Quality & Soil Retention

• Jamie Duininck • Episode 129

Share episode


Why is there an urgent need to address soil loss and explore solutions like saturated buffers, bioreactors, and advanced wetlands? Ruth McCabe, Conservation Expert, shares her optimism about reaching a tipping point in water quality and soil retention thanks to batch and build and edge-of-field practices. Hear why farmers are experiencing the positive impact firsthand, and why a new wave of passionate individuals is poised to transform agricultural landscapes for cleaner water and richer soil.


Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:35 Welcome

00:43 Getting excited about water quality

01:30 The tipping point

02:20 Unsustainable soil loss

03:40 Developing infrastructure

05:20 Give us another ten years…

06:20 Is it making a difference?

07:00 Getting the farmers excited

07:26 Small impact to production acres

08:20 Batch and build

09:20 Spreading the model beyond Iowa

10:27 Thanks for joining us!


Related content:


Find us on social media!


Listen on these podcast platforms


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


Ruth McCabe (00:00):

I think every field should have some sort of mechanism in place to hold the soil where it is and to clean the water if possible. Just give us another decade and I think you're going to be blown away. I think there's one that they're working on that drains about 6,000 acres, and the wetland itself still fits within maybe 80 acres. I just want to stop the hemorrhaging. We are losing our soil and we give them these nitrate test strips that they can use, and we tell them, "Go to a tile that you know isn't being treated. Go to an outlet that you know isn't being treated." I've lost count on the number of times they've come back and said, "Holy cow. It was wildly different."

Speaker 2 (00:35):

Welcome back to the Water Table for our third part of our conversation with Ruth McCabe.

Ruth McCabe (00:42):

I wish people would get more excited about water quality, but as you said earlier, people can't really see that and maybe it's not sexy. I don't know. I think it's cool. Hey, cleaner water coming off my field. This is great. It's a win, win, win, win, win. And the wildlife habitat, I mean, I'm a pheasant hunter. So nothing I love more than seeing a good filter strip along a creek, but that's not as interesting to the folks I've had conversations with. It's keeping the soil in the field that usually makes them go, "Wait a minute, show me that picture again. Holy cow. I didn't realize that I was losing that much soil."

Speaker 2 (01:11):

What do you think, and this isn't a question you probably are prepared for or that I thought of, but what's the tipping point in which we can do enough batch and build buffer strips, oxbows, anything that impacts the water quality positively on a farm field? What's the tipping point and where we see the results downstream or we see the results?

Ruth McCabe (01:34):

That's a great question, and I don't know that there's necessarily an answer for it, simply because, I mean, you could get into the discussion around legacy nutrients in our waterways, and that's a whole thing that nobody wants to talk about, but is a reality in that we just have nutrients built up now in our streams and creeks and rivers and whatnot that are going to take a really long time to go down if they ever really will. So there's that discussion. In my book right now I talk about it as, I just want to stop the hemorrhaging, as I said earlier-

Speaker 2 (02:07):

That's what I was thinking when you were saying it.

Ruth McCabe (02:08):

Yeah. I just want to stop the hemorrhaging. We are losing our soil. No soil loss rate. I don't give a fig what the USDA says, that a sustainable soil loss rate is like five or six tons of topsoil per acre per year. I think that's horse hockey. And so-

Speaker 2 (02:23):

What you're saying is you just think it can be zero.

Ruth McCabe (02:25):

I don't think soil loss is sustainable. Yeah, I think it should be, and I think it could get there. Yes. Okay, so I absolutely am firmly in the camp of agriculture is we have intensified agriculture, there is nothing wrong with that, a whole other conversation for another time, but we can implement practices in ag fields in a way that can make them as efficient as possible while keeping our soil in the field, cleaning the water, coming off the field. We can absolutely do this. We have the technology to do this right now farmers are doing it right now. So there's a part of me that's really excited because now we're at this place where you asked what's the tipping point where we'll see a difference? Well, we haven't got there yet, but I think every field should have some sort of mechanism in place to hold the soil where it is and to clean the water if possible. Not every field's going to work for a saturated buffer or bioreactor, but surely every field could benefit from some kind of in-field practice.

(03:17):

And so I'm just like, we need to stop the hemorrhaging right now, but I think we will see the difference. I'll just finish this line of thought with the Iowa Nutrient Reduction strategy is, I think 12 years old or something, and it gets this criticism of, well, geez, it's been over a decade and phosphorus levels have stabilized, but nitrogen hasn't changed and nothing's happening. And it's like, okay, you, a person who lives in the city and doesn't work in the space, you have no idea how much infrastructure, bodily human mental infrastructure has had to be developed over the last decade for us to get to this place where now you have all these young movers and shakers, these very interested, invested, passionate people who are throwing everything at the wall to have cleaner water and prevent losing our soil. Just give us another decade, and I think you're going to be blown away.

(04:02):

I'll just say that my team alone started our own batch and build with saturated buffers and bioreactors. I mean, I got involved with batch and builds like four years ago, but we had our own program started two years ago. We've just installed our 196th practice. We've got another 60 coming down the pike. I mean, we're killing it, and there's 12, 13 of our batch and build teams around the States, and not to mention more that are growing every year because there's so much excitement around this movement. So I think that there's absolute potential for those structures in the next decade to just make a difference.

(04:36):

Also, let's talk wetlands. Do you know how many wetlands have been installed just in the last five years alone, like large-scale nutrient treatment wetlands, wetlands that are efficiently sized to be as small as possible, but treat as many upland drainage acres as possible? The four that I'm working on are anywhere from 500 drainage acres to 2,500 drainage acres, and the team that I'm on is working on wetlands that can drain, I think there's one that they're working on that drains about 6,000 acres, and the wetland itself still fits within, oh, maybe 80 acres. I mean, when you talk about draining 6,000 upland acres and those acres that were taken out of production were not being row cropped anyway, what a fantastic way to remove land that wasn't being used for row crop to begin with, turn it into something way more useful for the landscape, and these wetlands only became possible within the last decade. So anybody that says, "Well, it's been 10 years and there hasn't..." Just give us another 10 years and I think you're going to see some amazing changes.

Speaker 2 (05:30):

Well, it's what it is with everything. It sort of is our culture too as we move beyond something without giving it a chance, you have to put it in place. And I'll predict that I, just what I've seen and you have a different perspective when you are there every day and you see what you're doing every day. And then I'm in Iowa a few times a year or several times a year, and to be able to see that difference, it's like when you see a child and you only see them once a year, they change a lot.

Ruth McCabe (05:30):

Oh, yeah. They get huge.

Speaker 2 (06:04):

The same thing is true with this is it's changing a lot. I can see it. I bet they're going to start seeing some results that look like it's changing much sooner than another decade.

Ruth McCabe (06:14):

Well, so we give farmers that we... And I'll tell you what, another popular question, both among landowners as well as the tenant farmers farming the fields, one of the first things they ask is, "Okay, so you put this thing in. How can I see whether or not it's making a difference?" And we can give them test strips. We give them these nitrate test strips that they can use, and we tell them, "Go to go to a tile that you know isn't being treated. Go to an outlet that you know isn't being treated that's nearby or whatever, and go to the outlets that are coming off your field. It's not exactly a perfect test. There's a lot of weaknesses there. This isn't scientific. We're not going to try to publish this in science or nature," but I've lost count on the number of times they've come back and said, "Holy cow, it was wildly different. I know my neighbor's using the same level of anhydrous that I'm using or what have you."

(06:59):

So I mean, they are seeing it and it gets them very excited. That kind of excitement around this, especially among tenant farmers is what we need to continue the movement with drainage water cleanup, if you will, making it cleaner.

Speaker 2 (07:13):

Right. And being able to do that with the way that Iowa has approached this and attacked it in different ways of so little impact to the production agriculture.

Ruth McCabe (07:25):

Our goal is always to minimize impact on production acres. And I will defend that. That's an anthill I'll die on, if you will. But again, when I meet with more environmental-leaning groups, it's always like, I know you have feelings about row crop production, and that's okay, but we're in a landscape where that's not going to change. And so because of that, rather than raging against the machine, let's find a way to make the system better. And that is through drainage or doing more efficient drainage. We are constantly focusing on, our goal is not to take acres out of production. Our goal is to maximize the acres that are not good for production and make them better and make them work with the acres that are being produced on. It's all about precision and efficiency.

Speaker 2 (08:12):

What else do you want to talk about when it comes to batch and build and that world? And we've kind of just jumped into it without really starting a conversation there. It just flowed there.

Ruth McCabe (08:24):

Yeah. Well, so one of the things that I run into is just a lack of understanding about how saturated buffers and bioreactors work. And so we made in partnership with a bunch of different organizations, we put together a very cool animated video. Iowa Ag Water Alliance led the effort on making that video, and then several other sponsors came to the table and helped fund it, Heartland was one of those, but it's a cool two-minute video about how saturated buffers and bioreactors look. You can find it on YouTube. Ag Drainage Management Coalition has it linked on their website. It is a great, sexy, one minute and 45 seconds or whatever on how saturated buffers and bioreactors work. So that calms a lot of concerns that some people have about how they function.

(09:07):

And then we also made this really cool resource. It's longer, it's five or six minutes, but yours truly is in it for like 30 seconds. We made this cool video that talks about the batch and build model and how that works because edge of field structures like saturated buffers and bioreactors are not synonymous with batch and build. The two are separate things. Batch and build is the method to take to install many of those things all at once in a regional area, but you can get a saturated buffer or a bioreactor without having a batch and build. So the two, they work together, but they're also separate things.

(09:39):

So there's a video that we just made a good resource about how the batch and build model works. And our goal making that video was not to attract landowners or tenant farmers. It was to attract other counties, other municipalities, other states. We want this to spread beyond Iowa. This has been very successful in Iowa, and we want it to come to Minnesota. We want it to go to Illinois. And I've been a part of many conversations with folks in Minnesota and Illinois who are trying to bring that model to their states. So we made that video as a sort of, here, here's how we did it, and now your state's going to be different, but you can find a way, I promise. And so we're hopeful that that will recruit more states and counties in different states to get on board.

Speaker 2 (10:19):

Yeah, that's awesome.

(10:22):

Thanks for joining us, and tune in for the fourth episode of our conversation with Ruth McCabe.



People on this episode

Head Shot

Jamie Duininck

Host