Podcast Episode 94

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2023– On the Road & In the Studio… Highlights from Our Most Popular Podcast Episodes

2023– On the Road & In the Studio… Highlights from Our Most Popular Podcast Episodes

Episode 94 | 23 min

And that’s a wrap on 2023! It was a great year on The Water Table podcast. We took our mobile studio on the road and caught up with people all over the Midwest, including Iowa LICA Field Days to Minnesota Farm Fest. We also had some great guests in the studio, including a few who kicked Jamie out of the host chair to do their own interviews. Listen in to hear the highlights from some fan-favorite episodes, from the International Drainage Hall of Fame to the Transforming Drainage Project to Married to Drainage, and a lot of topics in between.

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Jamie Duininck (00:00):
Welcome back to The Water Table podcast. Today, we are going to be doing a year in review. 2023 was a year we took The Water Table podcast on the road. Our first stop was the North American Conservation and Drainage Expo Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, where we caught up with multiple guests. One of those people was Dr. Shedeker, who talked about his research into control drainage and who just happens to oversee the International Drainage Hall of Fame.

Dr. Vinayak Shedekar (00:36):
What I’m working on is more smart ways of controlling the drainage. We have more automated systems coming up, smart drainage systems coming up, and we’re looking at automated control structures and what their potential could be in the landscapes compared to the conventional manual control structure. So, that’s something new we’re talking about. We’re also looking at how you can pair up control drainage with other practices. For example, you can use the control structures for sub-irrigation type of a system, where you’re putting water back into that structure that goes back in the field to provide the irrigation benefit.

(01:18):
We’re also looking at, well, where is the water going to come from? We’re thinking, well, maybe we can install a recycling system, collect the drainage water, especially during the months when we don’t need it, collect it, store it, and recycle it back into the system for irrigation or any other purposes. So, those are some of the water management practices we’re working on. We’re also looking very deep into how you can manage the water quality issues, and drainage sits at the perfect position for helping solve some of those issues.

(01:53):
As I mentioned, as part of my position, I also got the responsibility to lead the Drainage Hall of Fame. It’s not as glorious or as big as the NFL Hall of Fame or any other hall of fames, but apparently, Columbus is home to twenty-five different hall of fames and Drainage Hall of Fame is one of them.

Jamie Duininck (02:15):
Drainage is one of them. That’s all right.

Dr. Vinayak Shedekar (02:18):
Yeah. Just to share some history with you, this was started in 1979. Professor Glenn Schwab, who was my predecessor, a very well-known drainage expert, he came up with the idea of this Drainage Hall of Fame, and it’s an international award. So, he’s coming up with an international award for outstanding achievements or contributions to the field of drainage.

(02:45):
What he visioned out was the award can be made to anyone who has made significant contributions towards, not just research, it could be a teacher. It could be an extension educator, could be an educator for non-traditional audiences and so on. It could be an industry person. That’s why if you go through the list of inductees we have had so far, that shows that diversity.

Jamie Duininck (03:12):
Since agricultural water management systems are typically buried in the ground, people don’t realize how valuable they are. We caught up with Dr. Michael Castellano, a professor of soil science at Iowa State University. He is a Midwest transplant from Newark, New Jersey, and says he thinks the underground drainage system is more valuable than the underground transit system.

Dr. Michael Castellano (03:36):
Sometimes, I tell a little story about this before I start talking about drainage systems in the Midwest because I grew up in… Well, I was born in Newark, New Jersey, grew up in the suburbs in New York. My dad took the bus and train to Manhattan every day for work. So, certainly didn’t grow up on a farm, not far from farmers, though. My grandparents and great-grandparents, immigrants, were farmers back in Europe. My dad was out here visiting us in 2019, and you remember 2019, one of the wettest springs on record. We had all sorts of agricultural losses, particularly on the Missouri, but also in the Mississippi.

(04:25):
We’re driving around and he still lives in the New York City area, and he says, “Boy, you guys have got a big water problem here you got to take care of. This can’t be good for growing corn and soybeans.” I said to him, “You know, dad, we’ve got a drainage infrastructure below ground that you can’t see that’s more valuable than the transportation structure underground that you took to work every day when I was a kid.” He was just so stunned to learn about that and got all interested in it. I think it’s just a really neat story because most people in the United States, I don’t think, have an appreciation for the enormous, well-planned, incredibly high-tech engineering approach we have to water management in the Midwest.

Jamie Duininck (05:14):
There’s water quality issues and they’re created by all this drainage infrastructure. In reality, that’s just simply not true. It couldn’t be farther from the truth. There is problems with our water quality. Those problems would be there whether there was drainage systems or not. There’s been problems created obviously with drainage, but what we’re learning every day and what we can do is it can be so positively impactful to our environment. It’s pretty neat for me to be able to have somebody like you on and then be able to talk about those three things, carbon, nitrogen, and water. So, it’s just interesting that you shared that around because it’s absolutely true that most people don’t have a way to understand that because you can’t see it.

Dr. Michael Castellano (06:03):
Yeah, I think that’s right and I think a lot of people don’t necessarily, at first glance, appreciate that like with drainage and all things in life, there are few solutions, really, we need to be thinking about in terms of trade-offs. Drainage presents a remarkable opportunity to minimize the trade-offs between crop production, which we obviously need to feed ourselves, and environmental performance, keeping that high-quality environmental functions that we rely on for clean water and other things every day.

(06:45):
I think a great example for me of that is that we’ve drained the Midwest, that was a decision made over a hundred years ago, and it’s done. Now, the Upper Corn Belt is the most productive grain production system in the world, and it’s because of the drains we have there. At the same time, we know those drains created some water quality challenges by exacerbating nitrate loss downstream, but they also create an enormous opportunity to reduce that nitrate loss downstream.

Jamie Duininck (07:22):
Since we heard about the International Drainage Hall of Fame, we decided to catch up with Charlie Schafer, who is a recent inductee. Charlie is the president of Agri Drain Corporation and a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the real value of water.

Charlie Schafer (07:37):
We had land that you could literally buy pretty good land for 1,250 bucks an acre back then, amazingly enough, and your drainage system could cost that much. Our weather patterns were pretty consistent. We’d pretty much get the rain in those arid regions. The downside risk of too wet, too dry wasn’t as prevalent as is today. The economics were different, and so we put some of these manual systems in place… I should say the industry, but we didn’t really do the follow-through.

(08:13):
Didn’t do automation, didn’t make it easy, didn’t quantify the return on investment. Guys said, “You know what? I’m just going to buy more land.” That was the best choice for them at the time. That was the right thing to do. But now, we see the economics have changed. Certainly, we’ve gone to 12,500, 15,000 land and a big subsurface drainage system still costs about 1,250 bucks or 1500. Then throw some irrigation on top of it, it’s not that much more, especially when you take into account state and federal funding.

Jamie Duininck (08:43):
You are doing this 35, 40 years ago when land was 1200 bucks an acre and so was a drainage system. Today, land has gone up 10, 15, if you’re in northwest Iowa, 20 times maybe, and drainage system pretty close to the same. So, it’s actually cheaper when you think of everything else that’s relevant in inflation and everything. You can’t afford not to do it now. I mean, I know those stories. I started my career on the back end of all that, but the hardest part of selling drainage at the beginning of my career, in a lot of areas, was, well, why wouldn’t I just buy more land and why would I spend this money?

(09:32):
I’m glad you said that. At that time with how it’s played out, that was the right decision, right? It was definitely the right decision. But as we go now, I’m also curious just around water and being able to retain water on your land, what is that worth? What is the value? You’re quantifying that value in yield, which is one way to quantify it, but there’s other potential applications and potential areas where we can compound and store water and reuse it or sell it, or there will be lots of opportunities with that.

Charlie Schafer (10:08):
I think that people now in certain areas are looking at the value of water and the capture and reuse or the capture, storage, and strategic release prior to a rainfall event.

Jamie Duininck (10:23):
We also had a conversation with Dr. Jane Frankenberger of Purdue University about the Transforming Drainage project, a project that was funded with a $5 million grant. The project had thirty-nine sites, and twenty-nine of the brightest minds in the drainage industry and research.

Dr. Jane Frankenberger (10:40):
The hope is that as agencies prioritize among practices, because these are obviously not the only practices, they’ll realize that addressing… Maybe, an innovative drainage management practice is a very important practice to fund and to support in various ways. That’s what the data allows us to do, just talking about it. Every agency I’ve talked with, including EPA, the various USDA agencies, and many state agencies that have been involved have been very supportive and very welcoming of the project. They, of course, need data too. They can’t support a project if there aren’t data that show it’s effective. So, I would say it also helps them.

Jamie Duininck (11:25):
Yeah. It’s interesting because the name of this, Transforming Drainage, and you gave a nice explanation of how that came about, but in reality, you’ve done these projects, you’ve done this research, and you’re getting all these results, and you may not see some of the actual transforming in the field, in the day-to-day practices for a while. But because of the results you’re getting, of really significant, good results around control drainage and saturated buffers, those are the two I’m most familiar with, people are going to start to do them even if they aren’t required or if there isn’t a cost sharing involved. I think because of the positive results, those things will come too around cost share over time. That’s when the transforming actually happens, right? So, you have something [inaudible 00:12:19]-

Dr. Jane Frankenberger (12:21):
One of the things that we said in our vision was that people would at least start to consider a practice. Like if you say that you’re going to tile a field, we hope that at least people will ask the question, the contractor, the producer, saying, “Okay, would you like to install control structures and have the possibility of controlled drainage?” So, even if you decide, “No,” at least it’s considered, whereas before, that question probably wasn’t even asked.

Jamie Duininck (12:47):
Do you ever think about what things will look like in 20 years, 40 years, 60 years, in regards to some of these significant projects that you’ve been involved with and worked on? What will that look like on a large scale? You may not be around in 60 years, but what would it look like for some of your relatives that are driving down the road and seeing the landscape in Indiana and the Midwest in regards to things that you worked on? Because I think that’s pretty neat. Do you ever think about that?

Dr. Jane Frankenberger (13:23):
Wow, that’s a big question. In fact, I’m less optimistic that I can predict anything because what I thought 20 years ago would be in place now is not. So, it’s very hard. But I will say in the agricultural world, around places like here at Purdue, looking at digital solutions, the data science that’s just exploding, people do seem to be very confident that we’ll be able to manage much more remotely and through various digital means than we have now. As the automated systems become more feasible, become more affordable, then that starts to open up whole new ways of collecting data and of getting systems on the field that were obviously very heavily manual before. So, certainly, people will be doing things more automatically. What they’ll be doing, it’s hard to say.

Jamie Duininck (14:18):
I got kicked out of my hosting chair by my wife in one of the most popular episodes ever. Kristine invited Kitty Rodelius, wife of longtime Prinsco employee, Kent Rodelius, to come to the studio and talk about what it’s been like to be married to drainage for several decades.

Kitty Rodelius (14:37):
It’s been a blast. It’s been wonderful to be involved in people’s lives, to watch our husbands flourish, to watch them do something they love doing. I don’t think work was hard for Kent because he loved it. That’s a good way for a wife to send a husband out the door, knowing that he’s doing something he really cares about and loves. I think there’s some husbands or wives who have to say, “You need to get to work.” Man, I just never had to say that. He was just always gangbusters to go. That only amplified when Jamie came on board. He loved working with Jamie. They just had a lot of fun, didn’t they? They had a lot of fun.

Kristine Fladeboe Duininck (15:23):
So much fun together. I will tell you, I sincerely mean this, I have heard more kind words over the years about their friendship, how much fun they’ve had together, and how much Kent has sharpened Jamie. So, Kent and you, Kitty, have been a blessing personally and professionally to ourselves, to the Prinsco family, and it has been a blast. When you talk about being grateful, I just hear your sincerity and your grateful heart. I get a little bit choked up because we have a lot to be thankful for-

Kitty Rodelius (16:08):
Oh, don’t worry.

Kristine Fladeboe Duininck (16:09):
And much to celebrate. I always say, if I’m so lucky to be 80 someday, I’m going die a learner. We’re all going to continue to learn and sharpen. It is so fun to see these husbands be so passionate about water management and get behind them, but I think it’s been a gift to us wives as well. We’ve been able to serve people, laugh with people, to try to make a difference.

Jamie Duininck (16:39):
The Water Table hit the road again for the Iowa LICA Field Days in July. We talked about safety, training on equipment simulators, and met with contractors and talked about the batch and build efforts across the state of Iowa with Matt McDonald and Ruth McCabe who focus on building public-private partnerships.

Ruth McCabe (16:59):
Heartland created its conservation team in 2020. I was hired at that time to help them flesh out how an ag retailer could play a role in conservation. We knew this is the way of the future. This is what’s coming. We’ve got to step into that space and play a role in it. So, my goal was to form partnerships with anybody who was willing to actually focus on a common goal and get shit… Sorry, get stuff done.

Matt McDonald (17:21):
That was the bleep. There you go. Number one.

Ruth McCabe (17:25):
Oh man, I was so proud of myself. I was doing so good. You can just erase that and I’ll say it over again. Our goal behind these partnerships is to find partners who had come to the table, focus on a common goal, and focus on getting-

Jamie Duininck (17:25):
Get shit done.

Ruth McCabe (17:37):
There you go. Getting shit done. That’s what we care about. I’m serious about this, right? It can be very divisive in agriculture in general. You get the environmentalist side, you get urban folks, you get rural folks, and it becomes this divisive issue. It doesn’t need to be. This is so silly. Doesn’t need to be divisive, but everybody, agencies, public, private, non-profit, can come together and say, “What’s our common goal? We want to clean up this watershed. We want to reduce nitrates in this watershed. We want to reduce soil or sediment loading. Let’s focus on that. We can set aside political agenda. We can set aside other agendas. Those get left at the door. When we come together, we focus on what the solutions are to solve this problem. Then we work together. We come up with a solution, and then we go after it. We attack it. We throw everything that we have at it.” That’s what a batch and build is, and that’s what these public-private partnerships are in conservation.

Jamie Duininck (18:31):
I had a couple of special guests in the studio to kick off a summer video series, my son, Harris, and his cousin, Griffin Duininck, who previewed their Road Trip to Resiliency, What’s Buried Beneath. They headed out on a road trip this past summer and put more than 9,000 miles on Harris’s truck and got to meet water management experts, contractors, visit job sites across the country and see how water is managed in different climates and how plastic pipe is resilient.

Griffin Duininck (19:03):
I’d say for me, it was just learning a lot about the storm chambers because I didn’t know a whole lot about it going into it. I’d seen them before, but then seeing them being put together in the ground and just the whole process behind that and hearing the pros and cons of whether it’s the irrigation pond, saving land, and just being able to put the water somewhere. I mean, it’s raining out today, but just knowing that it’s all underneath the parking lot was pretty cool to see. I didn’t know a whole lot about that before then.

Jamie Duininck (19:36):
That’s interesting. We’ll talk about that and the applications in a minute, but it just spurred another question. Because of the road trip, does it feel like different things you do now in your life, you look at it from a different perspective? Like when you drive into a Walmart or Target and you think, “Huh, I wonder what’s underneath this parking lot?” Does that happen or…

Griffin Duininck (19:58):
Yeah, definitely. Just even talking with friends or anything, you got people in our generation, they’re like… If we’re driving, we see some pipe, they just talk about it, “Whatever, it’s getting put in somewhere.” I’ll just be able to actually teach them a little bit compared to what I knew before and show them why it’s important.

Jamie Duininck (20:16):
Yeah, good.

Harris Duininck (20:17):
Yeah, I think the importance of the systems really is exciting because it’s all underground. It’s something that it’s not seen to the public. Growing up as your son, I knew that plastic water management was important, but you don’t see it. Unless if you’re on the job, you don’t see where it’s at. It’s got a really big impact on the residential building or on the farm site or on the home site and the septic area. So, that’s pretty cool to see when you’re on site physically.

Jamie Duininck (20:46):
Yeah. I think when you say that you don’t see it, one of the things in the tagline of our Water Table podcast here is just this industry is so misunderstood, and it’s misunderstood because you don’t see it. Because they don’t see it, they can’t ask questions and they can’t try to put it together of how that works, why it works with conveying, storing, treating water. I am glad you mentioned that because that is really interesting.

(21:17):
When you look at it on the agricultural side, and we’ll talk about that too, all those people see, when they know, “Oh, there’s a job going in,” is they see big rolls of pipe out in a field as they’re driving by. But then they don’t see it again and it’s in the ground and what it’s doing to positively impact that agricultural field to grow a better crop, but also actually store some water in the soil profile. There’s so many things going on there.

(21:44):
As we wrap up 2023, I hope you enjoyed a few of these snippets of the episodes that we did for The Water Table in 2023. We accomplished a lot in educating our industry and individuals about water management and what’s happening in agricultural with water management. We want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from The Water Table. We look forward to providing more episodes that are educational and that you can learn from in 2024.

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