News-Sentinel.com

Friday, 11/10/2000

TROUBLED WATERS

Conservation-friendly farming practices are showing signs of success



News-Sentinel photo by Steve Linsenmayer
Farmer Farmer Scott Dick of rural Edon, Ohio, works the fields where Fish Creek begins. He is an advocate and user of filter strips to help protect the creek from sediment and chemical runoff.

By KEVIN KILBANE of The News-Sentinel

Standing beside one of his pole barns, farmer Scott Dick can see the spot in his wheat and soybean fields where two ditches merge to form Fish Creek, one of the larger tributaries that feeds into the St. Joseph River.

Dick, who is 52, grew up in Ohio near the Indiana-Ohio border east of Angola. The rural Edon man remembers the creek and ditches being thick with frogs, snakes, fish and other wildlife. Today, he said, you still can find "a little bit of everything."

Red-winged blackbirds trill from their perches on weed stalks along the creek bank. A kingfisher lands on a plastic bottle marking a drain-tile outlet. Dick, who farms 600 acres, regularly sees herons, ducks, turtles, snakes, deer and muskrats in the water or in the strips of grass he planted along the waterways to trap topsoil and herbicides that rains wash off his fields.

Although he enjoys the wildlife, Dick says there must be compromises between environmental conservation and the needs of those who make a living off the land.

"You don't want to see them all destroyed," he said of efforts to preserve Fish Creek's three federally endangered mussel species. "But sometimes you wonder whether it's worth it."

Dick's first exposure to water-quality improvement efforts in the St. Joseph River watershed came about eight years ago. Larry Clemens, manager of the Nature Conservancy's Upper St. Joseph River Project office, stopped by to talk about the benefits of conservation tillage and of installing grass filter-strips along Fish Creek and ditches leading into it.

Conservation tillage leaves standing the stems and stalks from the past year's crop to reduce erosion. Farmers don't plow the ground for planting, but use a drill that inserts seeds into the ground with minimal soil disturbance. Buffer strips of grass or trees capture soil and herbicides that wash off fields.

The Fort Wayne-based St. Joseph River Watershed Initiative promotes the same farm practices throughout the river's three-state watershed as ways to protect Fort Wayne's drinking water.

Dick had been experimenting with no-till planting since the 1980s. The efforts proved to reduce his operating costs and improve the soil. Dick believes the federal government eventually could require conservation tillage on hilly land near waterways.

"I thought I'd get started and get ahead of the game," he said.

He and many other farmers understand what is at stake.

Ned Wyse farms 730 acres along the East Fork of the St. Joseph River's West Branch in Hillsdale County, Mich. "I don't think there are any farmers who particularly want to make Fort Wayne drink weedkiller," Wyse said. "I do think we have to be careful."

Wyse has used a no-till drill to plant soybeans since 1981. For corn, he uses a zone-tillage planter that plows a strip only 6 inches wide for each row.

"I just continue to see improvements in soil quality," he said of his no-till fields. But he said no-till planting may not work well in every soil type.

With the Nature Conservancy's financial help, Wyse also has planted a grass filter-strip on one field's border with the East Fork. He has planted hardwood trees in a 3-acre strip of land on the other side of the stream.



News-Sentinel photo by Steve Linsenmayer
Memories As a child, farmer Scott Dick of rural Edon, Ohio, used to swim at this spot where two small streams join to form Fish Creek. He is an advocate and user of filter strips to help protect the creek from sediment and chemical runoff.

The Nature Conservancy began work about a year ago to protect water quality in the East Fork, which is nearly as pristine and diverse biologically as Fish Creek.

"I was excited two years ago when they said this was a special stream," Wyse said. But he said that conservation efforts must be compatible with farming. If trees fall in the East Fork and slow drainage, he said, "That's a problem."

Organizations such as the St. Joseph Watershed Initiative and Nature Conservancy try to make sure farmers don't lose money by planting grass filter-strips or trees.

Last winter, for example, the initiative offered farmers in an erosion-prone area of DeKalb County a one-time payment of $100 per acre to put land in filter strips. The money came on top of a state one-time payment of $100 per acre and a U.S. Department of Agriculture program's annual payments of $90 per acre or more.

Greg Newcomer, a farmer hired by the initiative to promote the program in DeKalb County, found a lot of interest. Landowners eventually committed to planting about 18 miles of filter strips. Farmers who turned him away, Newcomer said, didn't want to take a government payment or didn't want to change their current farming methods.

Like Dick and Wyse, most farmers want to be part of the solution rather than the cause of a problem, said Greg Lake, Allen County Soil and Water Conservation District director and a member of the St. Joseph Watershed Initiative's technical advisory committee.

Lake said farmers know if they don't help protect Fort Wayne's drinking water and the unique aquatic life in streams such as Fish Creek, the federal government will restrict the way they farm and the products they use.

Dick already has begun cutting back on his use of atrazine. The herbicide is one of the cheapest and most effective weedkillers for use with corn, he said. But with concern growing about atrazine being a possible carcinogen in drinking water, he can see a day when the U.S. government bans its use.

He wants to be ready.

"If it is fouling the water," he said, "we need to get it out of there."

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