WYNNE - Cross County farmer Mike Wood began looking for alternative ways to irrigate his rice and soybean fields after becoming convinced the water table west of Crowley’s Ridge wasn’t going to keep up with demand.
Wood, of Cherry Valley, took advantage of federal funds last year to build a reservoir covering about 25 acres to store water for irrigation rather than rely on wells.
“If we can’t get water on the land, we can’t farm,” Wood told Jason Weller, chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, during a farm tour Wednesday. “If you can’t farm [the land], then it’s not worth anything.”
Weller traveled Arkansas this week for a first-hand look at projects funded through the Mississippi River Basin Initiative. The program provides matching funds to farmers and other landowners in 13 states, including Arkansas, to pay for projects that improve water quality while reducing the amount of soil and fertilizers that flow down the basin into the Gulf of Mexico.
On Wednesday morning, Weller saw two large east Arkansas irrigation projects before meeting with farmers as well as state and federal conservation officials in Wynne to learn more about the smaller-scale practices the service wants implemented to encourage efficient water use, prevent nutrient run-off and improve wildlife habitat.
“Farming is a high-risk operation,” Weller said in an interview when asked why his agency is providing incentives to farmers for the practices. “When it’s all on the line, farmers are cautious about making big changes” that can be expensive and potentially take a portion of their fields out of production.
Weller said the various programs overseen by his agency provide financial incentives and the expertise to accomplish goals such as reducing fertilizer run-off, improving the ability of wetlands to capture nutrients and improved irrigation techniques.
“We help them get over the technical hurdle,” Weller said.
Arkansas has received $78.2 million through the initiative since 2010. There are 24 active projects with approved funding that will total $123 million when the projects are completed. In 2012 alone, Arkansas farmers received approval for multiyear projects with a combined value of $76.8 million through the Cooperative Conservation Partnership Initiative and the Wetlands Reserve Enhancement Program.
Weller said Arkansas’ farmers and conservation districts have aggressively applied for initiative funding, compared to other states. Funding is done through a competitive application process each year.
“They get it,” Weller said about the initiative’s ability to make farm operations more efficient in the long term.
Wood, who participates in several similar programs, said the Conservation Service paid about 75 percent of the cost to build the reservoir, which can be used to irrigate nearly 390 acres of surrounding cropland. He paid the balance.
A combination of a history of tough markets, persistent use of farming strategies that have worked in the past anda lack of familiarity with how conservation programs have changed mean that farmers need incentives to change how they operate, Wood said.
“Without the [Conservation Service] I wouldn’t have been able to do a lot,” said Wood, who farms about 3,600 acres of rice and soybeans with his son. But he has adopted practices such as tail-water recovery and buffer strips in addition to building the reservoir.
Charles Glover, president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts, said the Conservation Service program helps with two issues confronting farmers: water quality and quantity.
“A lot of farmers don’t realize these practices will help them,” Glover said. “We can show them these conservation practices that will put money in their pockets.”
As Weller toured Wood’s farm, one conservation official pointed out that they estimated it would cost Wood $291 per acre foot of water per year using traditional water wells. But, if the reservoir is kept full, it can reduce the irrigation cost to about $36 per acre foot per year. An acre of rice normally requires 2½ feet to 3 feet of water for irrigation over the course of a season.
Wood’s farm is one of three “Discovery Farms” in Arkansas participating in the basin initiative.
“Farmers like data. Farmers like to see if their irrigation efforts are effective,” said Mike Daniels of the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture’s Cooperative Extension Service, who works with the Arkansas Edge of Field Monitoring Network.
But Daniels said such research is dependent on cooperation between farmers, state and federal conservation officials at many different levels.
Weller, in the interview, said the Discovery Farm “network has laid the groundwork” for his agency’s programs by doing things such as establishing water quality monitoring guidelines and how to assess issues dealing with runoff. He said it enables programs such as the basin initiative to focus its investments on ways that help farms much more quickly.
“We need the best available science to make a difference,” he said. “We know it works but we need the data to demonstrate [to farmers] the veracity of the approach.”
Business, Pages 25 on 08/29/2013