Podcast Episode 117

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That’s a Wrap: Our Top Episodes from 2024!

That’s a Wrap: Our Top Episodes from 2024!

Episode 117 | 30 min

With Guest:

Best of 2024– Jacob Handsaker, Owner, Hands On Excavating; Bob Lepper, Retired Excavating Contractor; Dr. Matt Helmers, Professor & Director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, Iowa State University; Kellie Blair, Owner, Blair Farms, LLC; Ruth McCabe, Conservation Team Lead, Heartland Co-Op; Chuck Brandel, PE, Vice President, ISG & National Drainage Expert; Alex Buseman, Graduate Assistant, Iowa State University; James Conlan, Owner, CTM Holdings, LLC and Conlan Land Development, LLC; Loren Seehase, Senior Counsel, Liberty Justice Center; Dr. Ehsan Ghane, Assistant Professor of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering; Harris Duininck, College Sophomore, Texas A&M, College Station, TX; Griffin Duininck, College Senior, Grand Canyon University, Phoenix, AZ; Dr. John McMaine, Assistant Professor, SDSU; Extension Water Specialist; Ross Wetherell, Owner, Wetherell Sand and Gravel; Dr. Amy Kaleita, Department Chair, Agriculture and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University

We’re looking back on our top episodes of 2024! From the life lessons of seasoned drainage contractors to how the next generation is shaking up the ag industry, our conversations on The Water Table podcast explored a wide range of topics. What ties them all together? They highlight the unsung heroes of our industry and the crucial role water management plays in agriculture and our world.

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You’ve got to have passion. I always looked at it as a long game... I’m going to be in dirt the rest of my life.

— Bob Lepper, Retired Excavating Contractor

Guest Bio

Professors, contractors, students, attorneys, landowners, farmers, consultants… You name it, we talked to them!

Jamie Duininck (00:00):

Well, welcome back to the Water Table Podcast. Today, we are reviewing the year of 2024. It’s something that we’ve come to know on the Water Table as we like to, at the end of each year, just see what we’ve done and go back and review some of the highlights and some of the great things that have come from the Water Table on different episodes. Please join us today. We got some great clips to listen to. This clip is from Episode 97. I interviewed Jacob Handsaker and Bob Lepper, a retired excavator from Iowa. What we talked about in this episode was a lot about how they would talk to the next generation if they were asking how they should prepare for their careers, what these two gentlemen would share with them. The conversation really highlights the passion that you need to have and your willingness to improve to excel in our industry.

Bob, what kind of advice do you have for not necessarily Jacob, you’ve probably given him all your advice already, but for younger people that are wanting to be entrepreneurs and wanting to do things on their own?

Bob Lepper (01:13):

You got to have the passion, and I always looked at it as a long game, not get rich quick. I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that and climb a ladder or whatever. This is what I want to do. I’m going to be in dirt the rest of my life. That’s what I did a lot of hours. There was nights in the ’80s there and ’90s, work all day, get done with a job. Of course, the sun don’t go down until 9:00 o’clock, so between 9:00 and 10:00 o’clock I’m back to the shop to get the load boy and go load the dozer, backhoe, move it to the next site so I can be out there at 6:00 o’clock the next morning and start digging when the sun comes up.

Your season is relatively short, not this year though, but normally. I didn’t take summer vacations for 15 years. Do something in the winter when the grounds froze. It takes that passion, any business, but both of my kids, as I said, are in business and they do the same things. The hours are endless, but their businesses are growing.

Jamie Duininck (02:25):

It’s not work when you’re enjoying it and having fun. Yeah.

Bob Lepper (02:28):

Yeah. Yeah.

Jamie Duininck (02:29):

Jacob, same question. You’re on a little different spectrum and right in the middle of your career, but how do you think about that? What would you tell?

Jacob Handsaker (02:37):

The biggest thing would that I would say has benefited us is be looking for the ways to improve. It’s not always going to be done the way it’s always been done. Especially, you look at from where we started, just the technology that has come about with drainage and excavators and dozers and 3-D guidance and design, and just everything. There’s not an industry out there that’s sitting stagnant. They’re all changing, but the amount of brain power that’s being put into agriculture and drainage and know what your customers want. In drainage, especially, designing those full-scale maps and showing the client, “This is what I want to do and this is how we should do it, and not just because it’s always been done, but this is what the science says.” To learn that and be very, very capable of disseminating that information to your client and your customer and be willing to help other people out.

Jamie Duininck (03:54):

In Episode 100, I interviewed Matt Helmers of Iowa State University, Kellie Blair of Blair Farms, and Jacob Handsaker of Hands on Excavating. It was a fun episode. I got to do that live from Iowa State University as Dr. Helmers has been so supportive of our industry and of the Water Table. In this episode, Episode 100, I want to share a clip with you about legacy improvements in creating resiliency. We talked about how making legacy improvements on your land and your farm instead of finding short-term solutions will benefit the next generation and generations to come on your farm.

That answer reminds me, I got to digress a little bit. I asked you if you were frustrated, so I’m going to tell you about one of my frustrations. My wife and I own a small farm, 80 acres next to where she grew up, and we rent that farm, 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, so I hadn’t really thought of it but I said, “I don’t know. Tell me why you want me to.”

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 of $500 an acre. Now, if you start talking about that plus what I’m going to get, it’s like, “Well, maybe I should think about that.” 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 (05:58):

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

Jamie Duininck (05:58):

Absolutely.

Kellie Blair (06:09):

… but we need resiliency as well. 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 yield soil, water quality, habitat.” We’ve seen a lot of birds on the pond already, things like that. I think that resiliency is key of using the systems we have in place to make them better. 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.

Jamie Duininck (07:05):

In Episode 104, I interview Ruth McCabe with the Heartland Co-op in Iowa. The clip I want to share with you is where we break down the popular and effective agricultural water management best practice and discuss why it’s been so effective in Iowa for water quality. We are explaining the batch and build process.

Batch and build. Let’s go back to that as that’s a pretty big process and something that the Water Table, Prinsco, our industry’s pretty excited about from a water quality standpoint. Like you said, it’s a practice that is number one and it’s booming, but what do you see the future of that in your area, Iowa, and then beyond Iowa, I guess?

Ruth McCabe (07:54):

Yeah, I’m incredibly excited about saturated buffers and bioreactors. There’s tons of research to support their efficacy. Just for your listeners, saturated buffers and bioreactors are basically septic systems for a farm field, just taking advantage of advanced drainage to treat tile water before it gets to a stream or a ditch. It’s nothing fancy, actually. They’re elegant, simple solutions to tile nitrates, and there’s gobs of research from Iowa State University and other universities that support a number of anywhere from 40 to 60% treatment throughout the course of a year. That number would be 100% or close to it but there are times of high flow that both a bioreactor and a saturated buffer will allow water to go around because in snow melt or heavy rainstorms, you don’t want to flood a farm field. Some of the water can move through those structures. Throughout the course of a year, they can treat an average of 50% of the water moving through them, which is amazing.

I’m so excited about them, and as I’ve already explained, farmers and landowners are a fan of them because it doesn’t require infield management changes, and they’re inexpensive to put in and there’s robust cost share to support them. Over the last five years, probably three or 400 of these structures have gone in and are going to be going in, and more of them are going to be going in in the next couple of years. To put that into context, prior to 2020, over a 10-year period from 2010 to 2020 or something like that, in Polk County six were put in. The batch and build model takes it away, takes the onus of doing the project away from the landowner, turns it into a large batch of landowners. A central coordinator manages it and utilizes state funding. That state funding moves through a public agency, like a county or a non-profit, so that the tax burden is also not on the landowner and landowners are given a small incentive per outlet to participate in the program. Suddenly we’re putting 50, 60, 70 of these structures in in a single batch.

Jamie Duininck (09:58):

In Episode 107, Trey Ellis with Prinsco steals the Water Table show and interviews Chuck Brandel, the President of ISG. In this episode, they discussed why collaboration and getting everyone around a table is so important to both policy decisions and getting work done.

Trey Ellis (10:17):

When you are working on these projects, like you mentioned, there’s a lot of stakeholders there whether there’s multiple landowners out at their, agencies, what have you found successful with working with all these different groups to get some of these larger projects up off the ground, implemented and installed right as well? We can dive into that whole installation thing I’m sure for a while, but maybe that’ll be time for another podcast. As far as coordinating some of these projects and working with all these other entities, what have you found successful over the years for approaching that?

Chuck Brandel (10:52):

Well, starting with the farmers, speaking their language is one. They need to understand things. I’m a big proponent of having non-official landowner meetings prior to having a public hearing. Get everybody in a room, everybody’s wearing jeans, you’re talking about different things, and come to them with more than one solution and then listen. Listen to what works, get their buy-in and their input. When you do that, it just makes things easier. Then, the next step after that is to start some earlier coordination with the county folks, if there’s any highways you need to cross, any permitting requirements with any of the agencies. Then, start looking for if there’s funding that can be done also. The earlier you can start all that, the better. Don’t go down the wrong rabbit hole. Start designing it with everybody’s input and do it once, do it right, but really have a couple extra landowner meetings. It goes a long way. Invite everybody, share information, don’t hide any information, and that’s the best way to make these projects happen.

Jamie Duininck (12:11):

Now we’re going to listen to a clip from Episode 95 with Alex Buseman, graduate assistant at Iowa State University. In this clip, we talk about the importance of getting landowners on board with making changes to improve water quality on their land. How? Through education.

I think just listening to that, I think that anyone involved in agriculture in the state of Iowa should be excited about what’s coming and the future of conservation in Iowa just because there’s a lot going on at Iowa State around the research side, not just what you’re doing but what others are doing. I think to expect change but expect positive change will be something in the future. Just wanted to end with that a little bit is, how do you encourage landowners or how do you think we should? Maybe not you personally, but how do you think as an industry we should encourage landowners to join the cause and to be thinking about and implementing practices for conservation on their farm?

Alex Buseman (13:23):

Yeah, that’s a great question and a great challenge to face in the coming future. That’s also what I’ll be doing going forward after I graduate, helping landowners implement conservation practices on their land. First of all, I will say we always have to respect the landowner’s decision. It’s their land, their decision. If they don’t want to do anything, that’s okay. It’s hard to care about something that you can’t see. You can’t see the nitrate in the water, so it’s hard to care about that and I understand that. We sort of have to educate these farmers about what’s going on and tie in other ideas. If you put a saturated buffer on your land, and for the listeners that don’t know, a saturated buffer is a vegetative strip that is meant to create a barrier between an agricultural field and a nearby creek, stream, ditch, that sort of stuff.

Jamie Duininck (14:49):

Now let’s listen to a clip from Episode 106 with James Conlon, a Iowa Landowner and his attorney Lauren C. Hayes, Senior Counsel of the Liberty Justice Center. In this clip, we hear about why Swamp Buster statute is unconstitutional. The argument is whether a farmer should be compensated for taking land out of production.

Lauren Hayes (15:15):

Well, I think the crux of it that affects most farmers is going to be our unconstitutional condition. If this was a situation like, let’s say for example, Social Security, if the federal government said, “Social Security recipients cannot get benefits unless they promise to not own or bear any firearms,” that would be an obvious constitutional infringement. The same thing is going here. The government is saying, “Well, we’ll give you these federal benefits if you promise to not use your private property in any way, shape or form, thereby relinquishing your right to just compensation.”

The government has the authority or the power of eminent domain to take private property when it’s for a public use, but when they do it, they must pay just compensation. That’s the other part of this issue is that if the government decides, “Well, yes, part of your property is wetland,” but they’re making you hold it in essentially a conservation easement in perpetuity, because as long as you use it for agricultural purposes, it has to be in conservation, it has to be in preservation.

You can’t have an ag building on there. You can’t farm it. You can’t build a home on it. You can’t do anything with it, so, not using your property. It’s for a public purpose. The government has stated repeatedly that the whole point of Swamp Buster was to protect wetlands for basically the ecology of the nation, that wetlands preserve different ecosystems and different plants and wildlife, and they’re important. Those may be very important and noble things to conserve, but if the government takes that land and says, “Well, you’re going to conserve it for everyone else,” then they have to pay just compensation.

Jamie Duininck (17:04):

Now we have a clip for you from Episode 105 with Dr. Esan Ghani of Michigan State University. In this clip, we explore whether data trends are accurate and what excites his students about a career in research and agriculture.

Dr. Esan Ghani (17:21):

I would say these days our students, my students, they’re really excited about seeing how variability in the rainfall throughout the season affects drainage. That’s a really big question we’re looking at because we’re getting drier summers and climate scientists are predicting the summers are going to get drier. Then, the rain is changing distribution. Instead of coming out evenly throughout the year, now it’s coming through the non-going season. We’re looking at some of those. They’re very excited.

One of them left, found a job working at MIT because he had some climate stuff, so it’s fitting because there’s so much need on that. It’s not just water. All parts of society are affected by these climate disruptions we call them. It’s important to see what’s going to happen so we can actually have some idea and plan a little bit. For example, in drainage that we work on, if there’s something that we need to know, let’s say there is going to be more need for sub-irrigation in the future, then we need to start planning and looking at those yield benefits. If we are going to provide water for the crop in June, July, August, then we need to know how much percentages can we get, increase in yield, and also do some economic analysis beforehand. Then, use that data to inform policymaking and do field experiments, actually, after that.

Jamie Duininck (18:56):

In Episode 96, I interviewed my son Harris Duininck and his cousin Griffin. They are both college students and worked as interns for Prinsco in the summer of 2023. In this clip, we talked about the building relationships and the value of hands-on experience and the lessons they learned that summer.

You won’t remember five, 600 mile driving days, but what you will remember is the relationships that you built and the people that you met along the way. Griff, what would you say is just maybe the biggest, or one, aha moment that you had from the trip? Maybe it’s about plastic pipe, maybe it’s about water quality, or maybe it’s just about what you want to do with your career or something like that. Something that you learned that might’ve been something you totally didn’t see coming.

Griffin (19:51):

Well, adding on the last question, a lot of kids in our generation that I talk to, after watching some of the videos, a lot of them were very intrigued by the chamber systems. They more thought we were in the fields and everything, and they didn’t even know a chamber system was even a thing at all. Watching those videos down in, whether it was Arizona or I think we were in Kansas City with a car wash, a lot of kids thought that was cool learning about that. When I explain it to people, they’re like, “Wow, that makes total sense and seems like something that’s going to be very useful for the future to come.” Touching on the aha moment, probably would be I felt like I got along with a lot of the sales guys pretty well and feel like that might be somewhere that I might end up someday. Just feel like I have some of those qualities to be able to do that. Don’t know exactly where I’ll be for sure, but Prinsco might be a spot that I might land.

Jamie Duininck (20:58):

Yeah, and that’s part of all this. When we talk about how we connect to your generation is exactly what you’re just saying. You got an opportunity to do this, which made you then say, “Hey, I see that this is a career from the people that are in this career for 10, 20, 30 years, and that could be something I could be passionate about and enjoy.” I think that’s what we’re saying earlier, too, is others are seeing the videos that you guys are doing and saying, “Wait a minute. Maybe that’s something that I could find rewarding for a career, too,” is just to engage in that industry. If it’s on the construction side or if it’s on the sales side or engineering side, all of that applies. Good answer. I appreciate that. Harris, anything to add for you on an aha moment?

Harris Duininck (21:54):

I think, like I said earlier, just the times looking back now that I remember that I was like, “Man, that was such a fun summer. That was so cool,” was the time spent off the camera, hands-on learning with the sales guys, having a dinner with them or being in the car with them. Not necessarily sitting there looking at the chambers, but just talking about them, about the relationships they’ve built, the career that they’ve built and what that looks like for us. I’ve heard from countless people about how this has impacted their view of water management, their view of storms, their view of the future. Going to A&M, there’s 20,000 engineers on campus and it’s really important to a lot of them to see stuff hands-on.

Jamie Duininck (22:42):

In Episode 103, I interviewed Dr. John McMaine, an extension water specialist with South Dakota State University. The clip you’re going to listen to takes a creative approach to water management and education with this rap, the first time on the water table.

A fun fact that I heard about you the other day was that you like to end certain meetings, in-person meetings with Transforming Drainage, and some of your colleagues with a rap of what you learned during that time. If you’re open to it, I think the Water Table would like to hear our first live rap here.

John McMaine (23:23):

Yeah, right on. Yeah, so a little bit more background on this. That Conservation Drainage Network group, the Transforming Drainage group, a testament to how welcoming they are. Let’s see, maybe three years ago I had a presentation at that meeting. There’s a hundred people in the room. One of my hobbies, I like to put words together that rhyme, and it’s kind of fun. I said, “Let’s start this off, let’s do the introduction as a rap. See what happens.” I didn’t really know what to expect.

No one in the room knew what to expect, but it was great. It was fun. Since then, I’ve carried on that tradition and done it some at SDSU, and definitely have kept doing it at the Conservation Drainage Network annual meeting. The one I’ll do right now is the first one I did at that Conservation Drainage Network meeting a couple years ago. <<The situation that we’re facing is eutrophication, high nitrate concentration in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya River Basin. Eutrophication is a combination of concentration and flow to the Gulf of Mexico. Our contribution is low. You see SD, top of the watershed. Our contribution is not that rare. We want to keep it that way, keep our contribution at base so we can say we came to play in this ballet to mitigate the Gulf’s decay>>

Jamie Duininck (24:59):

In Episode 109, I had the privilege of interviewing Ross Weatherall, a drainage contractor from Iowa. We had a great discussion about the positive impacts of water management in rural communities. In this clip, you’re going to hear about why investing in drainage in rural America is so important.

What do you like the most about the drainage business and working in that now?

Ross Weatherall (25:22):

Yeah, the drainage is just so cool because you get to go to a field that nobody can even work in some cases, or it’s poor yield. You get to go out there, and with all the technology and the tools that we’re able to use now, you can confidently go out there and place a main in or place a pattern in or whatever size they need to fix the problem. You can just make it a whole bunch better within 24 hours, or they can go from not being able to get a crop in to, “It’s the best yields I’ve ever had.” I just love hearing the success stories, and nobody ever talks bad about it, ever.

Jamie Duininck (26:13):

Yeah, it’s like they say with what you’re talking about is, “It’ll be a field they can’t get into. Can’t plant, might be prevent plant, or it’s always the nuisance field.” You end up tiling it, pattern tiling it, and the next year it’s the first field. Even in a very wet year, it’s the first field that they’re in that spring because it improves it that much, and to see the yields. I always like just talking about what we do, what you do, and what we do in our industry, how it makes things so much better for all of rural America where we’re improving land, which improves the yields, which puts more money in the farmer’s pocket. When a farmer has money, he’s spending it on new equipment, he’s spending it in the local rural grocery stores and car dealerships. That money just continues to turn, which ends up building tax base and ends up just creating an economy that we didn’t have in rural America. That’s really exciting for people like me because I like living in rural America and I want to continue to build that opportunity for others coming behind us.

In Episode 99, I interviewed Dr. Amy Kaleita from Iowa State University. In the clip you’re going to hear, she shares about her passion for egg education, the evolving landscape of egg careers, and how the opportunities for students to influence change are endless.

This is why I like doing podcasts because I don’t know where they’re going, and you ask a question and it spurs other thoughts. One of the questions I was going to ask is just careers for young kids and where they should go. I was going to ask that independent of the fact of how you answered the first part of the questions around, you seem quite passionate about this because probably of your own story, right?

Dr. Amy Kaleita (28:09):

Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a lot of young folks who want, well, and everybody really, wants to be able to use their talents and the things that they’re excited about to make change and make the world better.

In agriculture, there’s a million different ways of doing that. I think sometimes, especially young folks who didn’t grow up in an ag environment like me, maybe not thinking of that as a career path, they might not know about all the stuff that’s in there and all the different ways that you could apply your skills to really change the world. It’s been very great for me to be able to talk to students who are like, “I think I’m interested in food systems, but I don’t know anything about how to get into doing that,” or, “I think I’m really interested in environmental health and quality and I don’t know how to access that. Do I need to be an environmental engineer?” There’s so many ways to get into that space, and I appreciate being in a position where I can have those conversations with young folks.

Jamie Duininck (29:26):

Well, thanks for listening to this episode. I have so much fun recording these. I hope you have as much fun listening as I do recording. These episodes are available on all major podcast platforms as well as YouTube, so find them and download them when you can. Thanks for joining us.

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