Field practices impact downstream users

SAUNEMIN, Ill. — A “From Field Tile to Tap” tour demonstrated what farmers can do on their farms to protect drinking water sources downstream.

The field day was hosted by the Vermilion Headwaters Watershed Farmer-Led Advances in Soil Health, or FLASH, program that included a tour of Fulton Farms, a demonstration on in-field soil health assessments and a tour of the Pontiac water treatment plant.

“This field day is part of our ongoing efforts to connect farmers and landowners in the community and understand how water moves through the water cycle from their farms to the Vermilion River to the community to be used,” said Joe Stuckel, American Farmland Trust farmer consultant.

Stuckel’s role is to assist farmers and landowners in priority watersheds such as the Vermilion.

Stuckel, also an Iroquois County farmer, has been involved with the project for three years through a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant.

The ultimate goal of the tour is to bring attention to the reality that what farmers do in their fields impact downstream users.

“Everything we do is about informing farmers and landowners of opportunities to improve water quality by what they do on their farm, both by introducing the practices themselves, as well as introducing the opportunities that they would have to have those practices funded,” Stuckel said.

“We’re available to help them understand what those practices are and then also how they could fund and finance it for that work.”

Farm Efforts

The tour opened at Fulton Farms on a grass waterway east of Saunemin where adjacent fields featured different cover crops, depending on if the field is going into corn or soybeans this spring.

Jim Fulton, a member of the Vermilion Headwaters Watershed steering committee, continues his family’s legacy of soil conservation on the family’s 690-acre farm with no-till soybeans, strip-till corn and cover crops.

Fulton planted cover crops on all but 100 acres last year.

He also enrolled in AFT’s Batch and Grow Program this past year, a free program offered by the Vermilion Headwaters Watershed FLASH group to help farmers establish cover crops.

Under the program, participants can choose cover crops from several group-approved options. The cover crops can be aerial seeded or custom applied to participating fields in mid-August through December, depending on the cover crop chosen — free of charge.

Two of the fields adjacent to the tour stop were in the Batch and Grow program and were seeded with a drone on Sept. 8.

A cover crop mix of barley and radishes were seeded in one of those fields that had soybeans last year and will be corn this year. The other field was seeded with rye and radishes and will be soybeans this year.

“We plant our soybeans into the green cover crops before they’re terminated and then we terminate the cover crop,” Fulton said.

“Advantages of cover crops is it helps with compaction, has better water-holding capacity, better weed suppression and reduces wind and gully erosion. Cover crops also reduce soil crusting, improves soil structure, helps scavenge the nutrients out of the soil, helps to clean the surface water and improves organic matter.”

Fulton also participates the ADM “re:regenerations” program that offers financial and technical support to producers who newly adopt or continue current regenerative ag practices.

Fulton Farms includes a restored wetland and a separate 4.5-acre constructed wetland to keep nutrients from entering a nearby creek that eventually flows into the Vermilion River.

Craig Swartz, who farms nearby with his father, Gary, and teams up with Fulton in both their farming operations, shared their nutrient management practices.

“Three-fourths of our ground is now cover crops behind corn,” Swartz said.

The Swartz family has been strip-tilling corn for about 30 years, if not longer, and no-tilling soybeans since around the mid-1990s.

They split their nitrogen applications with a pass in the spring and a second at planting and sidedress the remaining nitrogen in the summer to spoon-feed the crop.

“We’ve been really happy with our cover crops. We’re still in the learning years as far as how to seed them, how to incorporate them and everything, but long-term they are a good thing,” Swartz said.

Soil Health

Casey Kula, AFT Midwest soil health specialist, recommended using the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Cropland In-Field Soil Health Assessment Worksheet.

The worksheet is designed to be used as diagnostic tool to help conservation planners determine if soil health resource concerns exist.

“It’s basically an observational guide looking at your field and seeing what’s going on and what are some of the issues that you’re running into,” Kula said.

“This is something that you can go through and you can see if you have one of the four resource concerns or maybe multiple resource concerns, whether that’s compaction, soil organic matter depletion, aggregate instability, or soil organism habitat loss or degradation.

“It’s a low-tech, accessible way that farmers and conservation professionals can see what’s going on and see what has to change.”

The worksheet is available at no cost on the NRCS website at tinyurl.com/Soil-Health-Worksheet.

River Water End-Users

The final tour stop was at the Illinois American Water facility adjacent to the Vermilion River in Pontiac where water is drawn from the river and treated to meet drinking water standards for its over 11,000 residents.

Pontiac, Streator and other municipalities depend on surface water from the Vermilion River to supply drinking water needs.

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency considers all surface water sources of community water supply to be susceptible to potential pollution problems, and treatment is mandatory for all surface water supplies in Illinois.

Mandatory treatment includes coagulation, sedimentation, filtration and disinfection.

“The Vermillion River is subject to a variety of influences including agricultural, municipal and industrial activities. Farm chemicals may be seasonally elevated in the river. Extensive monitoring and treatment ensure high-quality water service regardless of variations in the source water,” according to American Water.

About FLASH

FLASH pairs farmer groups with local conservation professionals to identify and prioritize conservation needs and provide guidance for the successful implementation of conservation practices.

These FLASH groups are supported by AFT, in partnership with the Sand County Foundation, the Mosaic Company Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife, the Lumpkin Family Foundation, and local partners such as Soil and Water Conservation Districts.

This collaborative effort focuses on providing farmer-led groups with financial resources to fund on-farm implementation of conservation practices.

This unique model allows farmers to identify the needs of their local community and provide financial incentives to promote the use of conservation practices.

Illinois FLASH groups are the Vermilion Headwaters Watershed Partnership, Jo Daviess Soil and Water Health Coalition, Black Slough Watershed/Champaign County, Lake Paradise-Lake Mattoon Watershed/Coles County, and Hillsboro Lakes Watershed/Montgomery County.