Podcast Episode 100

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On the Road at ISU! Talking Past, Present & Future of Ag Water Management

On the Road at ISU! Talking Past, Present & Future of Ag Water Management

Episode 100 | 56 min

With Guests:

Dr. Matt Helmers, Director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center at Iowa State University
Kellie Blair, Farmer & Owner of Blair Farm, LLC
Jacob Handsaker, Drainage Contractor & Owner of Hands-On Tiling & Excavating

It’s a milestone episode for the Water Table Podcast! Episode 100!! We’re on the road at Iowa State University with a panel of expert guests to talk past, present and future of agricultural water management. Jamie is joined by a professor, a farmer and a drainage contractor to talk shop. Learn why they believe the future of ag water management is so exciting and what new technologies are on the horizon. It’s a special episode you won’t want to miss!

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It’s exciting to think that we’re creating a long-term system with tiling that could potentially improve yields, soil, water quality, habitat… Resiliency is key.

— Kellie Blair

Guest Bios

Dr. Matt Helmers

Dr. Matt Helmers is the Director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, the Dean’s Professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and a Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University, where he has been on the faculty since 2003. Dr. Helmers’ research areas include studies on the impact of nutrient management, cropping practices, drainage design and management, and strategic placement of buffer systems on nutrient export from agricultural landscapes.

Kellie Blair

Kellie Blair farms with her husband, AJ, near Dayton, Iowa. Blair Farm, LLC is a fourth-generation farm focusing on improvements and conservation. Kellie is a graduate of Iowa State University in Forestry and Agronomy. She and AJ are part of a pilot program for drainage recycling funded by the EPA, the Iowa Department of Land and Ag Stewardship and the Iowa Soybean Association.

Jacob Handsaker

Jacob Handsaker is a drainage contractor, farmer, pork producer and owner/operator of Hands-On Tiling & Excavating with his brothers in Story and Hardin Counties in Iowa. He is a 5th generation farmer and graduated from Iowa State with a degree in Agricultural Studies. His company has installed more saturated buffers and bioreactors than anyone else in the world.

Jamie Duininck (00:01):

Welcome to the Water Table podcast. We’re excited today. It’s our 100th episode. We’re actually on site at Iowa State University. So thank you for being here and to just be part of this. I don’t really want to call it a historic event because we have this little podcast. But for us at the Water Table, it’s an exciting time. So thanks for being here to all three of you.

Matt Helmers (00:25):

Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah.

Jamie Duininck (00:31):

Matt Helmers is joining us. Dr. Helmers was our first guest on the podcast and has had maybe two or three other times that you’ve joined us and we talk a lot about a lot of different things that you’re involved with. But basically water quality. Kellie Blair has joined us. Kellie joined us before and talked about her farm. She’s fourth generation farmer and is involved in the water recycling project and which is funded here by Iowa EPA and Soybean, and I’m not sure who else is-

Kellie Blair (01:05):

IDALS as well.

Jamie Duininck (01:07):

Okay. So it’ll be fun to continue to learn about that. Talk a little bit more about that. And Jacob Handsaker from Hands On Excavating is joining us. Another frequent guest of the podcast, and I shouldn’t just say thank you to Helmers, but also to you for how just available you’ve been to us and really appreciate it. Your business has grown a lot and when it comes to installing bioreactors and installing a lot of the water quality things, probably if not one of the leader in world drainage in regards to what you’ve done with water quality devices. So I think we all are somewhat indebted to you and your business for what you’ve been willing to do and be involved with.

(01:58):

So let’s get started and just talk about the future of water quality and agriculture and all of you have been involved for so many years now, but in seeing where we’re currently at and where are we headed? Maybe we’ll start with you Dr. Helmers, in the broad scope and in general, where are we headed with water quality and agriculture? And then we’ll get a little deeper into that.

Matt Helmers (02:23):

I mean, I think that the concern about water quality, nitrogen and phosphorus in our water is not going away. As we think about the whole upper Midwest, the drainage is so beneficial for our crop production, but it is a mechanism for delivery of that nitrate that moves below the plant root zone to get to downstream water body. So I think there’s just going to be more emphasis on how we manage water from our drainage systems on the landscape with things like controlled drainage or drainage water recycling, and then how we can implement edge of field practices, saturated buffers, bioreactors, wetlands.

(02:59):

I think the willingness of Kellie and AJ to put in a drainage water recycling system, for us to understand that practice. And then for Jacob, for the work that he’s done with the batch and build efforts, I think that his company has done more for installation of bioreactors and saturated buffers in any other drainage company. And I can say the world because I think that the world leader, I don’t know how many he’s put in. And I think we worked together on maybe your second bioreactor, if I’m not mistaken. May of 2018, we put a bioreactor in northeast of Ames and I think we just did that one ourselves, but he’s advanced a lot since then.

Jamie Duininck (03:47):

For sure. And as you share that, and first question that comes to mind really is for you Kellie, around when you’re doing something unique with your recycling, maybe it’s not completely unique, but it is to a lot of people that you would come in contact with and especially the non-farm community. When you have the opportunity, how do those conversations go and what kind of questions do you get and do you feel that that’s met with a positive response?

Kellie Blair (04:19):

I think there’s a lot of curiosity. Like you said, in Central Iowa, if they see an irrigation pivot going up, it’s like what in the world are they doing? But there’s been a lot of curiosity around it. It’s been really neat to see other farmers come out and say, “We want to put one in and we want to look at yours and see what you guys did. And we have some advice on things that worked for us and things that maybe took a while and learning experiences, which is all about basically everything that we do on the farm.

(04:53):

But I think the best part of doing it was I went to a farm conference, Iowa Soybean, and somebody from IDALS came up and asked me, “Do you want to be a part of this project?” And I said, “Sign us up.” And then it was like, “Okay. Where do we go?” All the real details. When I got home AJ’s like, “Well, okay. So what all do we need?” And I was like, this is just, our name is on the list. I was like, that’s all we got. But here we are. I think, was it five years?

Matt Helmers (05:23):

Yeah, quite a few years later.

Kellie Blair (05:24):

Five years and we finally got to use it last year for the first time. It’s filling right now for the 2024 corn crop that’s going to go in seems like pretty soon here. And I think we’re still learning about it and we’re really excited to see the results and hopefully tell a little bit more about what it’s going to do for yields, what it’s going to do for water quality from here.

Jamie Duininck (05:48):

I think one thing that we see, at least I, and would be interested to get some feedback on this, but is that the non-farming community, our city cousins never realize the technology changes that are happening in agriculture, and probably are happening quicker in agriculture than other sectors. I think when you’re involved in something, you always don’t see the other side. So maybe that’s an unfair comment, but for sure where we’ve come in agriculture over the last 40 or 50 years, but even the last five or six. And do you guys see that and do you have those conversations in your daily lives with just people that are surprised? And you answered that, but probably over to you Jacob in regards to this is what we’re doing. We’re putting these biochip.

Jacob Handsaker (06:36):

Absolutely. And we farm some as well. And it’s across the board, whether it’s the management and the application of the seed and the nitrogen, and it all goes hand-in-hand because the farmer on the application side is doing this precision and they’re putting the amount of nitrogen and the amount of phosphorus and fertilizer and shoot even now, even chemicals with optical sensing that we’re going to spray this weed here and only that weed and all of that ties together with water quality. The less we put out there, the less we have to manage on the backside as it runs through the soil and through our tile. And we get to manage it lots of different ways, but expressing that to individuals, our city cousins that have one example.

(07:32):

We were working on a bioreactor just north of Des Moines, and things got a little mixed up. We went through an area that we were told the farmer had permission to go through. The farmer didn’t necessarily have permission to go through, the landowner came out, what are you doing? And then we explained, “Well, this is what we’re doing.” And said, “Okay. Well, if we’re doing a bioreactor here and we’re creating a water quality process, and that was just after Senate file 512 had passed and that had been in the news and we’re talking about how we’re benefiting water quality. Like, okay, that sounds great. If this would’ve been a tile line, I would’ve been fighting you. But with what you’re doing, doing beneficial process, go ahead.

(08:22):

So that sticks in my mind that once we educate them that we’re, and educate everybody, it’s not just our city cousins that don’t know what we’re doing. It’s a lot of farmers out there also that aren’t quite familiar with these processes yet and getting these batch and builds. The biggest hurdle with these batch and builds is people knowing about them and people signing up and understanding that we have a lot of support from all forms of government and private industry that we can get these done and we can get them done effectively, and they’re not going to be a detriment to the process. But getting the farmer to understand that is the biggest hurdle in everything. And it’s definitely changed as from the first one we put in years ago.

Matt Helmers (09:11):

How long did it did it take to get that first one approved?

Jacob Handsaker (09:18):

The farmer and landowner, it took them about three and a half years from the first time they thought, hey, they found a little bit of… This is right at the very infancy of these, but 3 1/2 years from FSA visits and NRCS visits and site visits and designs and redesigns and redesigns. And then we finally got it put in. And most farmers won’t do that. Most farmers will not spend 3 1/2 years trying to bird dog something and get this done. This particular farmer, they were very passionate about it and this is what they wanted to do, which was very fortunate and that’s what got us started on all this as well. But now with the batch and build process and the support we have from universities and from private companies and from the government entities, we can burn these things through pretty fast and it takes a little work off. The farmer has to sign a pile of papers at the FSA office or oftentimes the batch and build coordinator will come out to their kitchen table, sign away, and then we get to work.

Jamie Duininck (10:27):

As you see these new practices, how that went within how hard it was, and now you’re thinking and you’re ahead of that, thinking of new things you can do. Question for you Dr. Helmers, do you ever get frustrated with the process? Do you get frustrated with people and why can’t we move faster?

Jacob Handsaker (10:45):

Yeah. I definitely get frustrated, for sure. There are some issues with getting saturated buffers, bioreactors wetlands in place that I think there are barriers. Like Jacob talked about, certainly there’s a barrier of getting landowner interest, but then we really have to figure out a way to all get on the same page that we need these practices. Sometimes I get accused of, you only think we need edge-of-field practices. No, we need it all. We need infield nitrogen management. We need things like cover crops and land use, but we need these edge-of-field practices and certainly, eye dolls in Iowa, Iowa Department of Ag and land Stewardship as a leader in that and understanding that. I get frustrated for sure.

(11:34):

I do think though, about the technology development that we’ve seen. Over the last 50 years, I think it’s important this week in the last week or so, we lost Dr. Jim Fowles, that was a real leader in the drainage industry on corrugated pipe and plows. We think to the GPS technology that has come about with getting installation. And then we think about these edge-of-field practices. 10 years ago there were a couple of saturated buffers, bioreactor, or actually, a couple bioreactors saturated buffers were really just in their infancy and certainly wetlands similarly. So the advances there over the last 10 to 20 years are pretty amazing. We need to do a lot more and I think many of us get frustrated, but it’s also a time to look and be excited about what might be happening in the future with things like the drainage water recycling and how we manage water on our landscape, both for environmental benefit, but the production of our agricultural crops as well.

Jamie Duininck (12:38):

Yeah. I am glad you mentioned real quick a lot there that I want to talk about, but Dr. Jim Fowles, he designed corrugated pipe. And when you think of that and you think of a industry which is the industry that Prinsco is in, obviously, there wouldn’t be an industry without that design. Maybe somebody else would’ve done it, but he did do it. So it really shows when we talk about or frustrated with things moving at the pace they do, our industry is still pretty young. Drainage itself obviously has been around for a long, long time, but in regards to the plastic pipe and where we’ve taken it and how much faster you can do things because of plastic pipe and pattern drainage, things like that, it’s a young industry. So I think we have to remember that in how we move things forward.

(13:31):

But the other question that I had that really I spurred just in this conversation, I hadn’t really thought about this because when you come from Minnesota, like we do, we always get frustrated with our city cousins. I think I look at people that are from the city in Minnesota as different than the people from the city in Iowa. They frustrate me more. And what I mean by that is I think the past in Iowa, and correct me if I’m wrong, has been

Jamie Duininck (14:00):

… that there’s always been a right to farm and a right to manage your water. That is not true in Minnesota. The second statement for sure. You don’t necessarily have… It’s not something that has just… It’s a legacy. It’s a legacy in Iowa because it’s been going on for so long. It isn’t in Minnesota. Do you see that changing just with how demographics change with how more people are separated from the farm? They don’t have family, they don’t have grandparents that live on the farm anymore like they used to. Do you see that changing in Iowa also?

Matt Helmers (14:39):

Yes and no, I guess. People are a little bit further removed from the farm, but I think as we look at it, still so many have some tie to some of our small communities or to the rural area. And I think that there is… Within Iowa, certainly there are some divides, but there’s a lot of support for the types of practices that we talked about. I think within the urban sector, those people are supportive of many of these practices because they understand that it can help with water.

(15:13):

Some of the things like wetlands help with other things beyond just water quality with habitat. So I’m not as pessimistic on that side of it than maybe some of the others might be. But because I think there is a lot of interest, if we think to some of the ballot initiatives that have been on in Iowa with water, land, and legacy, that ballot initiative passed, I think 60/40 to if there was ever a sales tax increase that a portion of those dollars go toward conservation related efforts.

(15:45):

So that was urban people as well as rural people voting for that. So I think there’s still opportunities for education across both sides, but I do think that there’s a lot of support for the practices. Some of the urban residents want it to go faster, but I think all of us would agree. We’d like to see some things go faster too.

Jamie Duininck (16:14):

Good. Probably a question for all of you. What practices do you see coming down the line that have the most promise, either added practices to what we’re already doing or some new things when it comes to water quality and sustainability?

Jacob Handsaker (16:30):

I think what I’ve seen in practicing drainage and I get a lot of questions about what can I do here and how can I manage this runoff. We have conversations about bioreactor saturated buffers quite often. But I think Dr. Helmers and I have had this conversation a few times, but micro wetlands that are kind of coming on that we’re not going to have to create or we don’t need to create a wetland for an entire watershed. But it might be my farm site is draining to this area.

(17:09):

How can I manage that? Whether I have run off from my, whether livestock lot or from my compost pile or from my silage pile, how can I manage that? I think some creating holding areas and opportunities for those micro chasms of runoff areas and managing those as we run them down. And it might not be a situation for a saturated buffer or it might not be for a bioreactor because there’s really not any tile drainage in that, but there’s still overland flow. How do we manage that on a smaller scale and look at that to on a case-by-case basis instead of an entire watershed basis?

(17:57):

We don’t need a 80-acre wetland and 160 acres of CRP that we take out of production and that we put into this, but can we do this in a little bit of a more… And that can go for an urban setting as well. And we do a lot of it in an urban settings that we do these wetlands. How can we transition that onto farm properties as well? I’ve had a lot of conversations about that.

Jamie Duininck (18:23):

That answer reminds me, I got to digress a little bit and I asked you if you were frustrated, so I’m going to tell you about one of my frustrations. So my wife and I own a small farm, 80 acres next to where she grew up, and we rent that farm and cash rent. I got a call from one of the local agencies and said, “Have you ever thought about putting that farm in CRP?” I like to hunt too and so I hadn’t really thought of it, but I said, “I don’t know. Tell me why you want me to.” And it wasn’t the federal level calling me, but they knew the figures and this is what you could get for CRP payments, but we have a one-time payment from the local watershed on top of that that we would pay up front to $500 an acre.

(19:21):

So now if you start talking about that plus what I’m going to get, it’s like, “Well, maybe I should think about that.” But what the frustration part for me being in the industry I’m in is that’s a temporary fix. That’s going to create better water quality in CRP for the 10 years it’s in CRP. But why aren’t we looking at other ways of doing things that have a legacy improvement?

Kellie Blair (19:47):

I think along with that, I mean, there’s going to be frustrations with everything, but what excites me about, especially where we are at, because we need tile drainage in order to farm-

Jamie Duininck (19:48):

Absolutely.

Kellie Blair (19:58):

… but we need resiliency as well. And so when you’re thinking about that soil and usually in the spring is pretty wet, so we need it tiled, but if we’re holding it and going to be able to put it back on in the dry months or whatever, it’s exciting to think about, “Okay, we’re creating a long-term system that could potentially help both yields soil, water quality habitat.” We’ve seen a lot of birds on the pond already, things like that. I mean, I think that resiliency is key of using the systems we have in place to make them better.

(20:34):

In our area, we see a lot of tile mains that are going to need upgrades. We just talked about this before we started recording, but I think there’s a lot of opportunities as those upgrades go in. Costs are going to be also a big thing with landowners though. As those upgrades go in place, you got to get everybody on board to do that as well.

Matt Helmers (20:54):

And there’s been some really interesting work that some of the engineering companies have done is if we design some water storage within those drainage districts, we need to upgrade the main, but if we can design some water storage within those drainage districts, maybe we can reduce some of the cost of the pipe as well. So I think there are real opportunities as we move forward with… We have a hundred-year-old drainage district mains in Iowa. They functioned really well, but over some of our lifetime, many of them are likely to be replaced.

(21:27):

Do we replace them in a way that creates that more resilient agricultural system or do we just go in… This is like a once-in-a-lifetime or once in multi-generation opportunity to redesign those systems with thinking about that resilient agricultural system and thinking about both the economics for the farmer, but the environment as well.

Jamie Duininck (21:50):

Yeah. And I think one thing that’s neat about what you’re doing, Kelly, and the story you have to tell is you can see it. So much of what we do, whether it’s the bioreactors or whether it’s saturated buffers or just traditional drainage, we know what’s happening, but when you can’t see it, it’s hard to explain or to sell to somebody.

Kellie Blair (22:13):

Yeah.

Jamie Duininck (22:14):

Talk more about that. Have you had some conversations with neighbors or other people that… Because my guess is, it’s pretty easy for them to say… I mean, I’m sure they have some questions that are around the negative side, but, “Hey, that’s pretty cool,” at the same time.

Kellie Blair (22:31):

Yeah, there’s a lot of different… It’s funny to hear the differences. I mean, from some people that you expect positive things, they’re like, “It’s not going to work.” Which is like, “Oh, I didn’t know you felt that way. That’s interesting.” But then we had a neighbor and we have a hog barn on that site as well. And so when we started flagging things out, we had to make sure to tell them, “This is not another hog barn.” They aren’t happy with livestock. So we’re like, “This isn’t that.” And then this summer it was really great because it was a dry summer.

(23:00):

As we were irrigating, they’re right across the road and he called us and he’s like, “Hey, you think you can get that to maybe get in my yard?” And so we tried. It didn’t make it to his yard, but just being able to have connections with neighbors, help them out, realize that if you want to go take a look at it and go see it, you’re welcome to go out there. That type of thing.

(23:23):

I think there’s a lot of connections being made and the thought process and the understanding of why we’re doing it. I think that’s a lot of questions because when we went to the supervisors of our county to ask about this, the main thing for our county supervisors is get water out of the county. The tile, that’s the goal we wanted out. And so when we’re asking, can we pump water out of the tile to put in the pond, they’re like, “I guess.” I mean, that’s a completely different world for them.

(23:53):

But then our story to tell is that we were able to go down to New Orleans and see the lower ninth ward of where Katrina had hit. I was on a panel with a shrimp farmer who had issues with Gulf Hypoxia. We’re seeing the issues that our tile is having downstream. And then to be able to now say, “Look at what we’re doing. We’re slowing it down. It reduces the flooding, we’re slowing it down. It helps the nutrients to stay,” is that full circle. So maybe it can open up minds of, “Oh, I guess I want the water off, but then I don’t want it to go too fast.”

(24:34):

I think that was an epiphany for us. It was probably around that same time when we did this project is slowing down the water. Our goal is to tile and get it so we can plant. And all of a sudden it’s like, “Wait, we don’t want it to go too fast because look at the issues that are going on.” It’s hard to accept the fact that you’re part of the problem.

Jamie Duininck (24:56):

Well, and most people will say, “Yeah, so you did that. It is one very small.”

Kellie Blair (25:06):

Yeah, very.

Jamie Duininck (25:06):

And your job isn’t to solve the world’s problem, but you solve one problem.

Kellie Blair (25:09):

And then that’s all… I say that a lot is… And I tell my kids that too is, “I can only control what I do. I can’t control what others do, but I can tell my story and if it inspires somebody or if somebody has questions, then that’s great.”

Jamie Duininck (25:23):

Cool. Appreciate that. Jacob, on the same note, but the gap between going from what you’re doing and when you started and put in your first bioreactor to getting farmers to adopt that on kind of a full scale. And that hasn’t totally happened yet, but talk about the progression from where it was a very interesting concept that you had to find somebody to do and you had to get it approved and took three and a half years to now it’s come a long ways. Talk about the progression and how you think we continue to bridge that gap into the mainstream?

Jacob Handsaker (26:08):

The first one we did, we actually made contact with the farmer through Iowa State, through their drainage school that I was a part of. And so he contacted us and they’d been looking and trying to find someone to work with this. And that’s how we got hooked up there. But it was very much a… Well, I read about this in a farm magazine and back then it wasn’t really prevalent to now it’s being brought to their doorstep. And I think that’s with the modeling techniques that… There again, we talked about technology to open the segment. The technology that… And Dr. Helmers, you’ll have to help me out with the program, but…

Matt Helmers (26:50):

Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework, ACPF for identifying kind of where in a watershed some of these practices might work.

Jacob Handsaker (26:58):

And so a farmer can go use that. I mean, it’s an open source. It’s online, correct? And so a farmer can go out and look at, “Okay. Here’s my farm. What practices and run the program? What practices might fit here?” And that’s what they do on a whole watershed. And so it’s being brought to their doorstep. And the more and more we have events like this and we go out and we talk about it, and I presented at a thing for the Hardin County Watershed just last week and I got a note that because we talked about it. We had people sign up and they didn’t know anything about it before.

(27:37):

So we try to promote them every opportunity we can, but it’s just a promotion and it’s getting to be much more mainstream than it was. And the biggest thing I push whenever I talk to a group, and I would say the biggest hang up for a farmer and especially an off-site landowner is how is this going to detrimentally affect me? And

Jacob Handsaker (28:00):

And how is this going to… Like Kelly was saying, we have an opportunity to keep that water back, but a lot of guys are, “Well, if I put this bioreactor and I put the saturated buffer in, I’m literally stopping the water.” Yes, that’s the whole point of what we’re doing here.

Matt Helmers (28:19):

But we’re not plugging our tile. I got the first time too. We’re going to plug our tile. No, we’re not plugging the tile.

Jacob Handsaker (28:25):

So that’s a big hurdle to get over. And it’s still a hurdle. And I hear it every time I talk about this, Dr. Helmers, I’m sure you guys do too, that, “I’m not going to do that because I’m going to back this water up.” Well, that’s why we have this engineering and we have enough framework now to show that it works. And it doesn’t always work. I mean, this is a lot of an assumption game. We’re not going out there and digging up every tile to begin with to design these. The engineers are going out there, they’re estimating where the tile goes and estimating how it runs and the slope that it runs to the best of their ability. But we’re not going to follow this thing for a mile.

(29:05):

We had a project down in Polk County that we did, and that’s actually what happened, is that the grade flattened out so much that we were backing water up a long ways. So we had to go back and rework it. But I think the benefit to tell the landowners and anybody that’s thinking about it is that the support that they have on the back… All around, not even the backside, but all around on a project like this from the very beginning, they can be interested in it or they’ll get approached by it if they have a project in their watershed, but it’ll be supported. We went back to Polk County and we redug that bioreactor. We lowered that bioreactor by three feet, I think, so we can make everything work.

(29:55):

But you have support. You’re not doing this just by yourself. And even if you’re interested in a one-off bioreactor that’s not part of a batch and build program, you’re still not doing it by yourself. You’re still out there, you have the support, you have the engineering, and there’s a lot of people that have the experience now, or that they’ll… I get a lot of calls from guys about what to do in situations to install bioreactors, saturated buffers, and I love helping out with that sort of stuff. So it’s just the network and the framework of people and the knowledge that we have has really been the biggest leap in attainability of these processes.

Jamie Duininck (30:39):

And what you started with there too is just the fact that we have to continue to tell the story all the time, and I think so many of us forget that. We get into the mode and we do it in production, farming, whatever it might be, but to really move it forward, you didn’t know that you’re really a missionary in life, but that’s really what you’re doing is just continuing to tell a story. We all know people in our lives that have been really good at that, and for me, I always admire those people that can stay on something year after year, because it matters.

Matt Helmers (31:19):

Yeah, sometimes it gets… You keep talking about the same thing and sometimes it’s like, “I need to move on to something different.” But there’s so many things we need to do. I mean, we still need to educate so many. Some people ask me, “What’s new? What are you working on that’s new?” I’m like, “A lot of the same things,” and just trying to educate more people about it and helping where we can on many of the similar things.

Kellie Blair (31:47):

I think what’s really neat too is thinking about bioreactors and just how far things can come in a short amount of time with information and data and learning, and the more people that learn about it, the better people think about it too, especially farmers. When they hear, “Oh, they put it in and they didn’t have the water back up.” But they may still be focusing on that one project that didn’t go well. But it’s really neat to see the progression of things and to think about maybe drainage water recycling will have a batch and build project next, just boom, boom, boom, putting them out. But it goes so fast, and even though you’re still talking about the same thing, you have so much more to talk about each time you do.

Matt Helmers (32:35):

And I think one of the things that also has changed in the last number of years is the interest from the industry and contractors in being involved with this. I mean, I think Jacob’s a real leader, but I think the more we can get other contractors in different areas… I know that he wants a lot of business, but you don’t want to travel all around the whole upper Midwest, so I think they’re real… Hopefully we can find those kind of contractor champions in different areas, and I think that the work that you’re all doing from Prinsco can really help that as well with The Water Table Podcast, but other efforts also to educate your customers about the importance of some of these practices.

Jamie Duininck (33:19):

Thank you. How often do you see… What’s kind of the… I don’t know if I want to use percentage, because I think I know it’s drastically different, but what’s the opportunity to continue to use some of these, whether it’s bioreactors or saturated buffers in existing systems?

Jacob Handsaker (33:39):

I would say 90… Going to a percentage, I would say 98, 99% of these bioreactors are put on existing… Of all of these processes. All of the batch and builds that we have done have been onto existing tile lines. We haven’t done a single new install. Now there’s multiple projects out there that we’re working on that if it was integrated into a new system, that’d be great. But the problem with that is, like we talked about earlier, is the timing. The timing has come a long, long ways from three and a half years for a system, but it’s still not, when I can go out and design a system, and you’re going to get me on a soapbox here, Jamie, you might not want me on.

Jamie Duininck (34:25):

Go ahead. Go ahead.

Jacob Handsaker (34:28):

But in Iowa specifically, and just the way some of the relatively archaic rules are written of the way that these have to be designed and have to be checked out, it not only adds significant cost to each system, but it creates a timeframe that’s unattainable, that Dr. Helmers calls me up or Kellie calls up and says, “Hey, we want to do a system and I want to tile this farm and I want to put a bioreactor in.” Well, those two things, unless you’re… If you’re saying, “I want to tile this farm this spring,” there’s very little chance we’re putting a bioreactor in this spring that’s going to be designed and checked out and okayed, and because it has to be designed, checked out and okayed to qualify for funding, that’s not going to happen.

(35:20):

Now getting the benefit of having the experience of it, we can design a system that can implement a bioreactor later down the road and we can design the mains and design the tile, but not everybody has that experience. So understanding that they’re two separate things. If we can get them to be one thing together, that’s some government work that’s above our heads at the moment. But it’s certainly something that we as an industry can hopefully move towards, and that’s the same… A different soapbox, but the same thing with wetlands and mitigation practices and creating availability that… The biggest part of a wetland is finding somebody to do it because you’re not talking a 16th of an acre like you are for a bioreactor, or no land out of production like a saturated buffer. You’re talking about a large undertaking, and there’s only a few places where those can go. So having benefits for those practices, that has to come from a government EPA and our CS level, that there’s lots of ideas that I think we can move to, but there’s a lot of changes that need to happen first.

Jamie Duininck (36:39):

Thank you for that. I have a couple more questions, but before I do that, they may aren’t as interesting as some of the questions we maybe would get from the audience, so we have some guests here today and wondering if, as our conversation has gone, if there’s that you came in with that you wanted to ask or that was prompted by some of our discussion today?

Speaker 1 (37:03):

So this was just prompted, Jacob, by your comment earlier on micro wetlands, and it’s interesting because as I think about your pond, if you look back in Minnesota where I’m from, and probably in parts of Iowa, there were farm ponds all over the place years ago, so we’re kind of bringing that back again. I think the reason why a lot of them got taken out is they weren’t in the right spot for the new producer. So these producers I feel like want to do the right things, and I think the micro wetland has some legs as long as we can give them the choice to put it where they want it. I think producers a lot of times think that we’d like to do that, but now we have to have an engineer involved, we have to try and get this thing designed. So in your mind, what does that shortcut look like? How can we take some of the cost maybe so the farmers, the producer feels like it’s still attainable.

(37:55):

And then secondly, from a government or from a funding standpoint, a lot of things that we fund, a lot of programs that are out there in agriculture, they’ll pay you up front and then just make sure that they’ll check you down the road to make sure it’s happened. So maybe from Dr. Helmers, what could be done to change the process so it doesn’t take so long to get the funding, you just give it to the producer up front, tell them, “Get your project done, this is what it has to look like,” and then just check on the backside to speed up the process. So two questions I guess.

Jacob Handsaker (38:27):

I think you hit it with what’s this have to look like, in my mind is what’s a best practice? Because none of these bioreactor, saturated buffers, wetlands, anything look… It’s not a cookie cutter process. This is what it needs to look like, this is the blueprint for it, but this is how it has to… But there’s changes. We have this watershed or this tile size or this tile slope that comes in. And I’ll tell you, we change these things all the time because there’s one thing that matters in any of these, and it’s where that tile outlet… What is the elevation of that tile outlet? And when we get a design, we get a best guess at that, but we don’t have it exact. So everything is relative from that point.

(39:20):

So going back to the micro wetland possibility, what’s our watershed? What is the best practice? What is the overall… And then we as contractors can build that. Do we have to have a flow, we have to have a certain type of grass? I think it’s a framework that’s going to be approved by the funding agency of what are we going to accept? And if we have that framework, we can build these things. We can work with… And maybe it’s a… Getting back to my soapbox of a TSP, technical service provider through the NRCS that Iowa doesn’t have, but if we had that, we had people that could come out and work with us. I mean, we’ve got a lot of great engineers and a lot of great watershed coordinators throughout the state that they really are devoted to doing the right thing and helping these projects along.

(40:15):

And instead of needing the full plan, we don’t have a full plan for tile systems or an engineered plan, but the plans we put in work, there’s probably very few of your customers out there that are, “Well, we’re going to go to an engineer and get this whole thing designed.” I just did a project like that and it was horrible. But there’s different goals for different things. So when our goal is to create a better water quality going downstream, let’s use the common sense approach and the fiscal approach to do the right thing, to get it to work. But we can get a lot of this stuff done upfront and with a blueprint instead of a full… This is a full study of the project.

Matt Helmers (41:08):

So I’ll just maybe add a couple things relative to your question. One is I think that this is where the batch and build comes in that’s being done in Iowa is so effective, and I think that there’s a approach, kind of a turnkey approach in Minnesota as well, where there’s maybe some entity that is responsible for… They are in touch with the farmer, but then they handle everything from there. That they’re the ones that work with a contractor, work with any design. So I think that can make things a lot easier. Some of these things, even though I’m an engineer, I’m with Jacob, some of these things, there’s not necessarily a loss of life potential with the engineering design of some of these practices. I wouldn’t say there’s loss of life potential with some of the wetlands, but maybe we do need

Matt Helmers (42:00):

… need more engineering design there on the larger scale wetlands than we do on a bioreactor. So I think the more that we can make it easy for the design, lump them together, kind of batching them so that not each design takes a full engineering approach, but we can kind of do this, be more efficient with that, I think the better. And so I think that’s where there’s been advancements.

(42:26):

Thinking back to what advancements have we had, I think people have realized that if we want to scale this up, it’s not going to be one bioreactor at a time. If we’re putting in 50, that we have 50 different contractors, 50 different engineers doing that work, that we’re going to, how do we make this more efficient and lumping that.

(42:49):

I think that the micro wetland, thinking about that, just a quick response, there’s kind of a new effort in Iowa to look at pumped wetlands. So we’d pump out of the drainage main into a wetland. And that’s then getting that wetland maybe cited where it works best for the farmer. They have a wet area that consistently underperforms. Can we pump water into that, make it something that’s a benefit to the environment and is maybe some land that they’re happy not to have to fight with as often? So I think that’s another kind of emerging practice in Iowa and may open up a lot more opportunities for implementation of wetlands. I’ve historically been like, “Well, what about the maintenance of the pumps?” But we maintain pumps in a lot of areas. So I think that’s something we can do and could be pretty cost effective.

Kellie Blair (43:48):

For us, I think another… You talk a lot about efficiencies and in Iowa we grow a lot of corn and soybeans. So you have a short time in the spring and you have a short time in the fall to get a lot of these practices in. You don’t typically have a winter where there’s no frost in the ground. But for us on our farm, we do a lot of our own tile. We actually put in small grains, some oats, and that opens up a completely different time to put in tile that we have time to do that. It’s drier, it’s open. Not as much is going on as far as planting or harvest. And we’re able to think about some of the things and it’s a little more efficient as long as you have somewhere to go with the small grains’ infrastructure.

Matt Helmers (44:33):

It can feed the cover crop market. So we can grow rye or oats to feed the cover crop market and then put drainage in those fields.

Kellie Blair (44:43):

Yeah. And by doing that, small grains is a different time of year to grow something. So water quality is being affected, habitat is being grown for those animals too. So it all kind of flows together. But I think infrastructure for everything is important to make efficiencies go smoothly, right?

Jamie Duininck (45:06):

Yeah, I love the idea of how this all can work together. We won’t get into cover crops today, but it’s something I get pretty excited about because you need to have drainage if you’re doing, so that’s… Selfishly I get excited about-

Matt Helmers (45:21):

I’ll just put that in, and certainly in the last three days, I’ve been visiting with a number of farmers and we were talking a lot about cover crops and no-till. They definitely recognize that they can make no-till and cover crops work better when they have good drainage. And I would say in the area that Kelly’s at, it’s definitely the case. If we didn’t have good drainage, we wouldn’t be able to do some of the reduced tillage systems.

Kellie Blair (45:45):

That’s a huge frustration, is when I see people try things for the first time and they do it in the wettest area. It’s a big frustration that may not be the best idea. We typically do most of our conservation, whether it be no-till or cover crops on our driest ground. It’s the easiest.

Jamie Duininck (46:02):

Good. Any other questions from the audience or I’m going to ask another one if not, but what do you guys see as the most significant changes that is going to happen in our industry and water quality in the next decade? Go ahead.

Matt Helmers (46:24):

I think kind of thinking of it, comprehensive water management. And so, thinking about how do we have some water storage on the landscape that can reduce some of the downstream flows, improve water quality, and then can some of that water be used for crop production? I think that’s where I think if we look at the potential projections of wetter springs and drier summers, I think water management is going to become even more important. And there may be more interest, maybe not everywhere, but more interest in how do we keep some of that water and reuse it.

(47:02):

I also think of it as it’s a pretty easy concept for anybody to understand. On the ag side, they understand it. But even on the urban side, I say it’s kind of like a rain barrel on steroids, and that’s what we’re doing with some of our drainage water recycling systems. So I think that’s what I’m excited about. And I think kind of thinking of it from a comprehensive water management standpoint maybe come more important.

Jamie Duininck (47:27):

I think that’s really interesting. Not knowing you were going to answer that that way. And I was actually going to share this and forgot until you answered that, but this morning I was listening to… I had the TV on in the background and they talked about in California there was, in January 10, they had 20% snowpack in the Sierras. Today they got 95. And so you think of that’s six weeks and how things change. One of the things I always heard old timer in our industry is it takes a long time to get dry, but it only takes one day to get wet. And that’s what we need to do, is when that happens, are we prepared to store water? Are we prepared to not just let it all go?

(48:16):

One of the things that Southern California has been working on for a long time is they have the viaducts that when it rains, they can get enough rain, but it all goes to the ocean and how do we keep some of that? And so that’s really what we’re dealing with. That isn’t a new phenomenon, but our climate is changing to longer periods of dry and longer periods of wet. So we have opportunities there.

Jacob Handsaker (48:39):

I think going along with Dr. Helmers will be the adoption and the value of what we’re doing, going back to irrigation, to storing that water, but understanding that as the data comes more available, it comes a little more mainstream if you will say that some of the holdouts will start understanding.

(49:06):

And we kind of saw the same thing, I feel, in the 2008 timeframe with tile drainage. When we were just getting started in 2008, we would take on any job we could find to keep that plow moving whether it was 300-feet or whatever. But at that ethanol boom, they saw that value of it and they had the money to spend on it. But now I would say you’re seeing people that, “Am I going to tile this farm or buy a new tractor or a new pickup or what am I going to do for this tax problem?” And they see the benefit of drainage and I think that’s come along, and I think the benefit of water quality and managing that drainage and managing that water is going to continue to come along with the value of that drainage.

Kellie Blair (50:02):

I think there’s a ton of opportunities like we’ve always been talking about. And I think time will tell as well on what government looks like from here on out as well. But I think market opportunities for farmers are really important. Kind of like you said, Jacob, is if our margins are a little bit bigger and we have more money to deal with, we’re willing to take a little more risk by doing different projects. When it’s tighter, we’re going to be like, “Nope, I’m not going to do the extra pond this year because I can’t. Just don’t want to try to risk that.”

(50:36):

So I think what’s going to be important, putting everything together, we have allowed our opportunities with funding through climate smart projects that are coming down the pipeline. And they all work together with water, air, and soil. I think just making sure we capture all those as farmers and have a place at the table when talking about things like that and making sure that we’re opening up everything we can for ourselves and it’s not just one part of it, but it’s the whole system working together.

Jamie Duininck (51:09):

So Dr. Helmers, I heard a while back and I thought of you, a friend of ours, a friend of the industries, Roger Ellingson, has the statement of, “If you love yourself, you’ll buy a condo in Florida. If you love your kids, you’ll buy land. And if you love your grandkids, you’ll tile it.” And I think we should coin a phrase from you that basically goes the same way, but at the grandkids point, “If you love your grandkids, you’ll add water quality practices to that.”

(51:41):

And that’s really what we’re talking about today and where we can go from here. I would like to give each of you, if you have the desire to have the last word here on the podcast, but I really appreciate the time that you spent and the great conversation that we’ve had about our industry, what we’re all passionate about and opportunities that we have. To continue, as you said, Jacob, is what we have to do, is just continue to educate even when we don’t think we have to. And that’s what we’re doing today. And so I’m just proud to be part of it. Thanks for having me.

Jacob Handsaker (52:17):

Thank you.

Matt Helmers (52:17):

Yeah, thank you for the work that you do, Jamie, with Prinsco and the Water Table podcast. Many of us drive a lot throughout our various areas and it’s nice to listen to the Water Table Podcast. And I think that maybe one last comment I’d have, and it kind of echoes with something Kelly started with, I think the drainage systems that we put in, the water quality practices we put in make a more resilient agriculture. And we sometimes hear about sustainable agriculture, regenerative agriculture. We had that discussion a couple weeks ago, but I think a resilient agriculture. Our water quality practices can help us be resilient to some of the concerns about water quality. Some of our water management practices can help us be more resilient for wetter periods and drier periods. And so I think that the drainage industry is really part of developing a more resilient agricultural system on the landscape.

Jamie Duininck (53:16):

Good. Great answer.

Jacob Handsaker (53:20):

Again, thanks, Jamie, for all you guys do, giving us the opportunity to come tell our story like we’ve talked about multiple times today. And I think my, I guess, final word would just be that we as contractors, coming from the contractor perspective, from the contractor perspective, keep learning, keep doing, keep being open to new things.

(53:42):

And then as the landowner perspective and the folks putting it in, they’re, again, be open to new things. But then also work to plan ahead. And the farmers out there, they know, they see their yield, they know what farms they’re going to peg for tile. It’s not just a split second decision. It’s not just a, “Well, let’s tile this 80 today. We know that well this 80 has problems. And so this is priority number one when the budget becomes available, priority number two, priority number three.” Well, that can be started. And I’m sure I’m not telling a secret to any contractor out there, but it’s a lot nicer when we know earlier than, “Hey, this is on the horizon.” But it doesn’t just have to be tile on the horizon. It can be an opportunity to work with the NRCS and say, “While we’re planning this out, what benefits can I have from a water quality standpoint?” We’re planning that out sooner than later. It will be helpful for everybody.

Kellie Blair (54:50):

Thanks for having me on as well. And I just enjoy listening to everybody else because I think the technologies that are out there and growing. It’s exciting. It keeps me going every day to hear about new things and have other people that are excited about the future too.

Jamie Duininck (55:05):

And how you can be a part of it for sure.

Kellie Blair (55:08):

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Jamie Duininck (55:09):

Thanks everyone for being part of the Water Table Podcast today. Appreciate it.

Jacob Handsaker (55:13):

Thank you.

Matt Helmers (55:14):

Thank you.

Kellie Blair (55:14):

Thank you.

Podcast Episode 100

On the Road at ISU! Talking Past, Present & Future of Ag Water Management

Episode 100 | 56 min

With Guests:

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Guest Bios

Dr. Matt Helmers

Kellie Blair

Jacob Handsaker

Transcript