As farmland conservation lags, so does progress in curtailing Gulf's 'dead zone'

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – The cover crop that blankets Dan Voss’ farmland from late fall into the spring gives comfort to the Eastern Iowa farmer because he knows heavy spring rain won’t wash away his topsoil. The off-season crops also serve another purpose, soaking up excess fertilizer.

But for every one Dan Voss, there are 1,000 U.S. farmers not growing cover crops or using any other conservation practices shown to reduce problematic runoff. Not only that, but trends in agriculture – more tile drainage, more livestock and more fertilizer – are doing just the opposite, thwarting plans to slash nitrogen and phosphorus washing down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, where excess nutrients threaten wildlife and fishing industries .

“The agricultural community, we need to get with it,” Voss told the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, the journalism collaborative that reported this story.

The Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force, a collaboration of state, federal and tribal agencies charged with controlling fertilizer pollution, set a 2025 goal to reduce nitrate and phosphorus entering the Gulf by 20%. Just one year away, success seems unlikely.

The oxygen-deprived ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf is predicted to be 5,827 square miles this summer, 5% larger than average, according to a recent forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Progress made so far reducing nutrients flowing to the Mississippi River is due to tighter standards for water treatment plants and other “point-source” polluters. But 70% of the nitrate load to the Gulf comes from nonpoint sources – mostly agriculture.

The number of U.S. acres planted with cover crops went up 75% from about 10.3 million acres in 2012 to nearly 18 million acres in 2022, according to the U.S. Census of Agriculture. Cover crops including cereal rye, hairy vetch and camelina soak up excess nutrients and keep soil in place. Acres with reduced tillage – which cuts runoff – rose 27% during that time, and no-till was up 9%.

But that's a sliver of total harvested acres.

“We need every other field in some kind of winter cover to drive down nutrient loss,” said Sarah Carlson, an agronomist and senior programs and member engagement director with Practical Farmers of Iowa. “We are way, way behind. Not even close.”

Even with the government subsidizing conservation projects, many farmers just don’t want to risk reducing their short-term yields – money they use to feed their families and pay down debt.

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

“My soybeans made 80 or 81 bushels… on my conventional tillage ground,” he said. “I lost $200 to the acre simply by having a cover crop.”

Carlson said farmers who are experiencing yield loss when using cover crops likely don’t have enough labor to plant and kill off the crops at the right times.

In addition to federal effort, some states have their own programs

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

The Inflation Reduction Act will spend another $19.5 billion across the country on climate-smart agriculture, which could include projects with water quality benefits.

Some states also have their own programs to pay for water quality projects. The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship has spent $1.17 million, which includes federal money, to install saturated buffers and bioreactors to filter water from underground drainage tiles before it flows into streams. Farmers don’t have to pay anything for the projects and, in fact, get $1,000 for each practice added.

As the federal government is giving farmers more money to encourage voluntary conservation, the Biden administration plans to cut by 18% the research budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has been measuring the size of the Gulf “dead zone” since 1985.

It’s uncertain whether this cut will jeopardize research on Gulf hypoxia caused by nutrient runoff, but researchers have expressed alarm.

The other side of the ledger

While the Midwest has seen boosts in farming practices that reduce runoff, there’s also been an increase in practices that make the problem worse.

• The number of U.S. acres drained with underground tubes, which act as a superhighway for runoff into streams and rivers, increased 9.5% from 48.6 million acres in 2012 to 53.1 million acres in 2022.
• Farmers also are raising 12% more hogs, from 66 million in 2012 to 73.8 million hogs in 2022.
• Combined sales of synthetic fertilizer in four Midwest states – Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota – went up 10.6% from fiscal 2016 to fiscal 2020.

Agronomists across the Midwest report farmers are applying too much fertilizer  – whether it’s chemicals from the co-op or manure from the nearest dairy.

“Many of our corn acres are being overfertilized,” USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said at a May 3 event in Illinois. The Farm Bill now being considered in Congress would provide money for research sensors to allow farmers to know exactly where and when to apply fertilizer, he said.

But some farmers see adding a little extra fertilizer as insurance to get a higher corn yield.

“People are creatures of habit,” said Jason Pieper, who farms in Trempealeau County, Wisconsin. “If you’re going to cut your fertilizer back, you’re chancing whether you might lose yield.”

Looking at making 'the polluter' pay

Minnesota Rep. Rick Hansen, who grew up on a farm and worked for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture before being elected to the Minnesota House in 2004, thinks the strategy of paying farmers to implement voluntary practices to reduce nutrient loss has “failed.”

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

“We need to look back at the polluter-pays model rather than having the taxpayer pay for it,” Hansen said.

The bill passed the House Agriculture Committee, but failed to become law.

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

Carlson suggested requiring farmers who put in new drain tile to plant those acres with cover crops for three years. “Maybe we should try something radical,” he said.

Erin Jordan is a reporter for The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Madeline Heim of the Journal Sentinel staff and Eric Schmid of St. Louis Public Radio contributed to this report.

This story is part of the series Farm to Trouble from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting collaborative.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: As farmland conservation lags, so does progress in curtailing Gulf's 'dead zone'