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Binstock spreading positive message about artificial drainage Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Agri News staff writer
KASSON, Minn. -- Leonard Binstock is spreading a positive message about artificial drainage.
Binstock, executive director of the Agricultural Drainage Management Coalition, spoke at the Nov. 28 Corn and Soybean Management Day at Digger's in Kasson.
The Agricultural Drainage Management Coalition has about 60 members from the United States and Canada. The goal of the Owatonna-based coalition is to promote the positive aspects of artificial drainage while serving as a resource for people who have problems with drainage-related issues.
Artificial drainage is vital to agricultural production in southeast Minnesota, said Binstock, who formerly farmed in the Dodge Center area. Without drainage, the land would not be farmable and the tax base would have to shift away from agricultural land.
Artificial drainage has been blamed for increasing nitrate nitrogen losses, Binstock said, but without drainage there would be more phosphorus runoff. Artificial drainage allows farmers to get in their fields earlier and increases land productivity, but it also decreases wetland habitat.
Drainage was first employed in western Minnesota for road building, Binstock said, There was a lot of drainage done from the 1800s through 1915, when the work stopped because of World War I. Drainage would not take off again until after World War II. Drainage was so important to the state that there was a cabinet level position of drainage commissioner through 1954, he said.
There are about 51 million acres of subsurface drainage in the United States, with most of that located in the Corn Belt, Binstock said.
The drainage coalition is keeping a close eye on a new Environmental Protection Agency report on hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. The draft report found that the 'dead zone' in the gulf is getting larger and nitrogen and phosphorus coming from the Ohio and Mississippi river watersheds are to blame. The report's goal is to reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus coming down river by 45 percent in 15 years, Binstock said. If that number can't be met voluntarily, mandatory standards will be put into effect.
Binstock's group is working with land grant universities and organizations in Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois to test the effectiveness of conservation drainage in lowering the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus runoff while increasing yield through a Conservation Innovation Grant.
The project received a $971,790 Conservation Innovation Grant from the federal government in 2006. Participating universities and organizations must match the three-year grant dollar for dollar with in-kind or cash contributions. The land grants are contributing research, staff and laboratory testing for in-kind contributions, Binstock said. The ADMC is carrying the cash cost.
The focus of the project is to take all the information gathered from land grant research on plots and verify it in field-size demonstration plots and secondly, to put together a set of recommendations for farmers.
There are four Minnesota monitoring sites, one each in Windom, Willmar, Dundas and Hayfield. Data will be collected on crop yields, profitability of drainage water management, climatic conditions and drainage outflows at each location.
Using conservation drainage, the water table can be raised or lowered by a control structure at the field. Now, the structures are above ground and must be farmed around, but in three to five years in ground structures will be available for less money, Binstock said. Conservation drainage can only be adapted to pattern tiled drainage systems, he said.
With climate change, it will be more important to hold on to water, Binstock said. The golden rule of drainage is "drain only that which is necessary to ensure trafficability and crop production and not a drop more."
On the Web
www.admcoalition.com |
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