KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — California and its drought severity may seem really distant to Midwest farmers who benefit from comparatively regular rainfall and snow melt – but there are researchers who know producers in this and other regions can benefit from improved water use and planning for climate shifts.
Last month the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded 21 grants totaling more than $10 million this year to universities to investigate and educate farmers on critical water problems in rural watersheds across the country.
The University of Tennessee-Knoxville received two grants totaling nearly $1.6 million, divided between two groups of researchers. One is a three-year project to document actual water needs for agriculture in the state, including nurseries and dairies. The point is to develop recommendations to improve use efficiency for water-intense operations.
The other $900,000 is for the first of a five-year, $4.9 million study to model how changes in temperature, droughts and flooding will affect land use in the Tennessee and Cumberland River basins, and how industrial and consumer demand for water will impact its quality and availability for ag. "Water is becoming more and more one of their priority issues," Forbes Walker said of the USDA. He is an environmental scientist with the UT Institute of Agriculture, leading a team of researchers from across the state and various institutions in this study.
"Climate is changing, as it always has done," he said, adding while people can debate the causes, "the question is, what are we going to do to address it?"
The outlook for Tennessee in coming decades is simultaneously for more drought and more flooding. Researchers who are used to studying historic patterns of hydrology will now have to turn that knowledge around and try to apply it to the future of farm water availability. Knowing what’s coming can help farmers determine if and how they may need to change their operations. Already, Walker said they are seeing more irrigation infrastructure going into West Tennessee for crops; it’s definitely increased since he started working for UT in 1998.
Tennessee ag is also heavily dependent on pasture-based beef cattle. Droughts in recent years have sometimes sent producers as far north as Canada to buy hay, and at a higher price, or driven them to sell off their herds. At the same time, he said dairy operations continue a multiyear decrease in Tennessee and it’s common for some of those farmers to switch to pasture beef.
Walker, a soil scientist, explained he and extension colleagues are already doing adaptive research on forages for cattle.
About two-thirds of the USDA funding will go for research, he said, while the remainder is for education – through extension for farmers, but also for youth such as through 4-H and college undergraduate education. Acknowledging there is skepticism about climate change among farmers, he said he prefers to focus on the practicality of helping them anticipate how to adapt their operations to more drought and less predictable rainfall.
This round of NIFA grants cover most of the country, with the exception of the Pacific Northwest. Another grant of nearly $1 million went to Indiana’s Purdue University to study the benefits and costs of storing excess precipitation on-farm for crops, and reducing fertilizer runoff into waterways from tile drains.
Heading the eight-state effort in a region bounded by the Dakotas to North Carolina and Missouri to Ohio is Jane Frankenberger, professor of ag and biological engineering at Purdue. She explained the $5 million, five-year project is pulling together universities’ on-farm research already conducted on three chief water retention methods.
All three focus on ways to hold excess water on the farm until it is needed later in the summer – which would also conveniently prevent much nutrient runoff into public waterways. One method is to increase retention of moisture in the soil by installing a water control structure to raise the depth of the drainage outlet and hold water in the fields for later use.
Another is saturated soil buffers that divert excess water into laterals that raise a field’s water table and slow drainage; according to Purdue, research has showed this can remove nitrate from tile water before it reaches streams and rivers. Reservoirs are the third method – this is a more visible capture system, as the water is stored in an open reservoir or pond until needed later in the summer.
"None of these practices are new, but we have data at sites all through the Midwest that we are going to try to synthesize," Frankenberger said.
As with the Tennessee grant, a portion of the NIFA money will go toward educating farmers about the tools they can use on these practices – she estimated by about 2018 these should be available. "This research will help farmers make better decisions as they deal with future climate change and heightened water quality issues," she added.
While researchers have most of their data, Frankenberger did say they would like to hear from farmers who have not been part of such research efforts, who use the third method of an on-farm pond or reservoir to capture precipitation for later crop use. Anyone using such a system and willing to share information may call her at 765-494-1194 or email frankenb@purdue.edu
NIFA Director Sonny Ramaswamy pointed to the critical necessity of water in announcing these 21 Water for Agriculture and National Integrated Water Quality Program (NIWQP) grants. "By funding research, extension and education for citizens and the agriculture community, we are able to proactively create solutions to water-related issues like drought and its impact on food security," he said.
Other Water for Agriculture grant recipients in this region include $900,000 to Michigan State University and $49,968 to The Ohio State University; NIWQP recipients include $659,839 to Indiana University in Bloomington and $660,000 to Iowa State University.
