By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent OXFORD, Ohio — Training, coordination and information sharing is the heart of the Ohio Federation of Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCD) Summer Supervisors’ School, said David Hanselmann, chief of the Division of SWCD.
Butler County SWCD hosted the 2007 summer meeting, and Hanselmann, Brad Ross, CEO of the Ohio federation, Clark Sheets, federation president, and Kevin Fall, District Administrator of the Butler SWCD, talked about how districts have adapted to the changing urban/rural interface and other conservation issues.
“Wherever there’s land and water, no matter what the land use is, there’s natural resource issues and concerns that need to be addressed,” Fall said.
Conservation districts go back to the 1940s, the era of the dustbowl and when Ohio had substantial gully erosion, Hanselmann said. In the 1960s and 1970s, urbanization grew quickly in Ohio and urban development in the rural landscape continues to be a factor.
“Now nearly half of the soil and water districts have urban technicians or specialists that work with the urban community,” Hanselmann said, adding many provide outreach and education about how to protect streams and water quality when land is being developed.
Concerning the urban/rural interface, as more land is put under blacktop, concrete and roofs, the faster water is going to run off, Ross said.
“We need to think about new technology and new ways to create parking lots and urban areas that still allow for water to soak into the land instead of constantly running off and causing downstream flooding,” he said.
Hanselmann said agriculture is being given the opportunity to fill society’s needs for fuel supplies and still produce food and fiber. It is important to maintain the cropland base and keep urban development in the more urban areas. Increased income from farmland could be a wonderful driver for Ohio’s economy.
“There’s going to be a substantial increase in pressure on agricultural lands to produce more crops for that wider variety of purposes,” Hanselmann said. “There is potential for increased runoff from more intensive crop production.
“The conservation districts can be of help in ensuring that the important conservation practices that are tried and true are implemented as that land use changes.”
Sheets added, “We have to work as a group not only with the crop production but also with the livestock industry to keep our livestock base that we have here in Ohio, because with the renewable fuels that are coming on we’ll have by-products that can be used for livestock feed.“
Another topic that came up was the farm bill. Hanselmann said he was confident there would be an even stronger emphasis on conservation in the next farm bill. “That seems broadly supported in Congress and the administration, and it meshes well with the needs here in Ohio for Ohio producers to step up and take advantage of the farm bill conservation practices,” he said.
Legislators needed to be certain there is enough appropriation to cover the USDA’s technical aid of costs and the conservation districts, he said. “Currently there is a major backlog of farmers, producers who have signed up for farm bill practices, but there’s not enough staff available to interact with the producer to plan those conservation practices,” he said.
Ross said on a recent trip to the Capitol to talk to legislators, federation members encouraged Congress to make the farm bill programs more accessible for all farmers, to streamline the signup programs and to possibly consolidate some of them.
At the end of the discussion, Fall said soil and water conservation districts are a well-kept secret. “It’s a matter of making people aware of the soils and water and that conservation team, and figuring out how they can utilize it,” he said.
“Those tools are there for the public to utilize. All it takes is a call and the interest of wanting to use them.”
This farm news was published in the Aug. 8, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
