Iowa is whittling away at one of its most valuable assets: its rich, black soil.
Wind and water erosion are familiar culprits. But new modeling that adds factors including tillage and an undisrupted rotation of nutrient-hungry corn and soybeans shows farmers lose a staggering 12 million tons of their soil’s organic carbon each year, says Jerry Hatfield, a retired U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist.
“This just doesn’t impact rural Iowa,” said Hatfield, pointing to Iowa’s role in feeding the U.S. and other nations. “It impacts everybody.”
Over four generations of farming, Iowans have wiped out at least half of the state’s original bank of 96 billion tons of soil organic carbon, according to data obtained exclusively by the Des Moines Register. This finding comes from a national team, led by Hatfield, that is working to quantify, field by field, carbon loss across Iowa and the Midwest.
The impact of Iowa’s reduced soil organic carbon is broad: Growers must rely more on fertilizers and chemicals to get good yields, eating into farm profits, Hatfield said. Reduced soil organic carbon also decreases the soil’s ability to absorb and hold onto water — an issue that can lead to downstream flooding, soil erosion and fertilizer runoff that can pollute the state’s rivers, streams and lakes, endangering drinking water supplies and degrading aquatic environments.
Soil health also is vital to Iowa’s economy. The state’s legendary farmland, selling for up to $30,000 an acre, is conservatively valued at $278 billion. And agriculture powers 10% of the state’s $179 billion annual economy, supporting thousands of jobs in farm equipment manufacturing, crop insurance, raising livestock, renewable fuel production, and other related industries, an Iowa State University study shows.
Jerry Hatfield, a retired U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist leading a new research project, with an instrument tower that measures the amount of carbon lost from a central Iowa soybean field / KELSEY KREMER/THE REGISTER
The attempt to better quantify Iowa’s soil carbon loss comes as the Biden administration is investing at least $20 billion to reduce farming’s impact on climate change, part of an overall $2 trillion effort to slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by half over seven years.
The challenge is significant in Iowa, where agriculture’s share of greenhouse gas emissions is about three times farming’s impact nationally, 2021 state and federal data shows. Contributing to agricultural emissions: fertilizer production, manure from cattle, pigs and chickens, and the soil itself, as crop residue breaks down.
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Climate warriors: Iowa farmers are joining new initiatives that pay them to battle climate change
Carbon farming isn’t ‘a huge money maker’ now, Iowa farmer Mitchell Hora says, but farmers are struggling with low corn and soybean prices, and it could be enough to push them closer to profitability.
WASHINGTON, Ia. — Mitchell Hora walks to a field on his family’s southeast Iowa farm, where 5-inch-high soybeans grow in alternating rows with 4-foot-tall cereal rye.
The 25-year-old admits that combining the two crops would make most farmers freak out.
“We’re harvesting rye with soybeans on the same acre,” Hora says. “We take a yield hit with both crops,” damaging some soybeans when the cereal rye is harvested in July. “But the combination of the two really pumps up soil health and really pumps up carbon sequestration.”
Hora and his father, Brian, hope the test will boost the farm’s bottom line, helping them earn more from emerging markets that pay farmers who adopt practices that store carbon, a major component of the greenhouse gases leading to global warming.
The basic process of carbon capture is straightforward: Plants suck carbon from the atmosphere for food. When the crops die, the carbon is trapped in the soil, blocked from contact with the atmosphere, where it would combine with oxygen to create carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases that warm the Earth.
Trials like the Horas’ show practices like planting cover crops such as rye along with staples such as soybeans build soil health, help suppress weeds, hold nutrients for plants instead of allowing them to wash into streams, and prevent erosion.
Carbon farming isn’t “a huge money maker” now, Mitchell Hora says, but farmers are struggling with low corn and soybean prices, and it could be enough to push them closer to profitability.
It’s among a growing number of initiatives springing up in Iowa and the nation that pay farmers for practices that can help save the planet, while leaving growers with better soil and more sustainable operations.
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Iowa ag initiative that pays farmers for conservation practices wins USDA climate-smart grant
BOONE — A nearly $170 million Iowa-based initiative that pays farmers for their environmental efforts will be among the first to win a grant from a new $1 billion climate- smart agriculture program, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Tuesday.
The Iowa Soybean Association’s Soil and Water Outcomes Fund “is going to have a profound impact on soil health and water health” in Iowa and elsewhere, the former Iowa governor said while visiting the Farm Progress Show near Boone.
“I think you’re going to see a lot more of that across the country,” said Vilsack. “You’re going to see more productive soil and cleaner water as a result of embracing climate-smart agriculture.”
Alternating annually between Iowa and Illinois, the three-day Farm Progress show attracts thousands of farmers from across the nation and around the world with displays of agriculture equipment and technology and educational events.
This year’s show also attracted Gov. Kim Reynolds, U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra of northwest Iowa, state Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig among other politicians.
At the show, Reynolds touted the passage of a biofuels law that will require more Iowa gas stations to offer fuel with 15% ethanol. She also pointed to tax cuts for Iowans, seniors and farmers, and state and federal efforts to expand rural high-speed Internet services.
Vilsack said the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s climate-smart farming program has received nearly 1,100 requests from groups seeking $20 billion in funding, far outstripping expectations.
The USDA announced the federal initiative in February. It is designed to help farmers get paid for adopting conservation practices that sequester carbon in the soil. It’s funded through the Commodity Credit Corp., an entity formed in the 1930s at the height of the Great Depression.
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