Bohannan visits Jefferson County as part of water-quality listening tour

Money is flowing to landowners to install soil and water conservation measures, but it’s hard to find contractors to do the work, a Jefferson County Soil and Water Conservation commissioner told a congressional candidate last week.

“Right now there seems to be a lot of funding” because of programs to fight climate change, Rachel Engwall said when meeting with Christina Bohannan, the Democratic candidate for Iowa’s First District House of Representatives seat. But “I worry that … we don’t have enough contractors to fix everything” immediately. “It’s a gradual thing and problems come up, so I like a steady supplement” of reliable financing.

Engwall and Jeff Olson, who serves on the Henry County commission, met with Bohannan Aug. 15 at Jefferson County’s Mac Coon Access on the Skunk River east of Fairfield. The visit was part of a five-county southeast Iowa water quality and recreation-focused listening tour. The nonprofit Rural Restoration Project organized the trip. Bohannan’s Republican opponent, incumbent Mariannette Miller-Meeks, didn’t respond to an invitation to join the tour.

Each county has an elected soil and water conservation district commission that monitors farm conservation projects, such as terracing, ponds and cover crops, that receive state cost-share dollars. The commissioners are volunteers, Olson said.

“You have to believe in the system because we don’t get any money for this,” he said.

Engwall said each county may allocate cost-share dollars differently. The state government provides most of the money, although commissions also work with some federal programs.

But with the current market conditions – low corn prices and high fertilizer and land costs – farmers are reluctant to adopt practices or embrace projects that are costly now but promise benefits later. For example, Olson said cover crops boost organic matter in the soil, helping it hold more water and feed soil microbes that, in turn, fertilize crops. But “this is a long-term thing and the guys that are cash renting” farmland “don’t care so much, and they will not pay that $30, $40” for cover crops.

Farmers will adopt conservation practices, Engwall said, “if you can show that they can make money” doing it.

Bohannan, a University of Iowa law professor, was sympathetic. Higher costs, sometimes driven by industry consolidation, force farmers to plant “fencepost to fencepost” and apply commercial fertilizer to maximize yields, she said. “They’re just being squeezed. They’re just trying to make a living.”

Federal programs, however, can give farmers an economic lifeline by subsidizing practices that mitigate climate change-causing carbon emissions, Bohannan said. They’re “barely making it … year to year, and so if we could provide some resources to help make (farming) more resilient and more sustainable, then I think that could pay off in the long term” for agriculture and the climate.

Engwall said Americans could “think of it as the government paying farmers for services to the environment.”

Bohannan agreed: “We subsidize all kinds of things that we want to see happen.”

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