Renew America Success Stories

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Description

The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, established by the Iowa Legislature in 1987 as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act, develops sustainable agricultural systems through sound research and shares the results of this research with Iowa farmers.

While conventional U.S. farming practices produce an abundant, healthy and affordable food supply, they also contribute to serious soil erosion and water contamination, neither of which is sustainable over the long term. Through its competitive grants and interdisciplinary research teams, the Center is working to lessen the negative environmental consequences of farming while maintaining high productivity. Since its creation, the Center has been successful in helping develop profitable farming systems, in strengthening rural communities and in conserving soil and groundwater. The Center achieves its goals through its support of cutting-edge independent research on the environmental impacts of agricultural chemicals, the use of alternative crops, biological pest control, and socioeconomic evaluation of farming systems.

The Center conducts research in two ways. Its competitive grantmaking program awards grants to academic institutions engaged in agricultural research, and the Center's own Issues Teams facilitate research by linking institutions, colleges, universities and departments within academic institutions in the pursuit of a solution to a particular problem. This multidisciplinary approach includes economic analysis, ensuring solutions that are both profitable and adaptable by farmers.

The Center has effectively demonstrated that it is possible to maintain crop yields and to control plant diseases, predators and weeds without damaging the land, water and wildlife. For instance, production methods that break pest cycles, such as crop rotations, can reduce the need for pesticides. Using natural sources for crop nutrients and targeting the application of herbicides are safe and affordable options to current chemical-intensive practices. The use of hilly terrain as a rotationally-grazed pasture provides an alternative to conventional, erosion-prone monoculture. Center research has even demonstrated that smaller, more diverse farming operations can actually be more profitable than a larger, mono-cropped farm.

The Center believes that voluntary compliance with resource-conserving practices is preferable to government regulation, and sound science is the best way to support development of those practices.

Program Highlights

Competitive Grants

• Through competitive grants, the Center supports research and demonstration in sustainable agriculture systems.
• In its first three years, the Center provided $2.3 million in 55 competitive grants at 11 institutions and nonprofit organizations throughout Iowa.
• Through June 1994, the Center has invested in 114 competitive grant projects. An average of 40 grant projects are active in any given year.
• The Center has funded research in areas such as:
• Developing tree buffer strips along waterways.
• Rotating spring oats and soybean crops to reduce erosion.
• Using predictive models to reduce fungicide sprays on tomatoes.
• Native plant use.
• Measuring the effects of pesticides on stream organisms.
• An evaluation of prairie grass's effect on soil quality.
• An evaluation of tillage and crop rotation on groundwater quality.
• Using animal manure to control soil-borne plant pathogens.
• Using entomopathogenic fungus to suppress larval populations of the European Corn Borer. It is estimated that corn borers cause more than $100 million worth of damage to Iowa corn crops every year.

• Seven teams conduct systems-based research in sustainable farming practices.
• Long-term studies focus on cropping systems, grazing systems for beef cattle, alfalfa pest controls, socioeconomic impacts, animal waste management, agroecosystems, and weed control alternatives.

• The Center supports two educational delivery teams that promote the public's awareness of environmental stewardship issues. The program's findings reach farmers, Extension Service personnel, conservationists, nonprofit organizations, agricultural chemical dealers and applicators, community colleges, agricultural lenders, and other groups.
• The Center holds an annual conference that attracts more than 300 people.
• The Center supports field days, farm tours, and smaller conferences in outlying areas to make its services and information available to people across the state.
• The Center's studies and findings have been incorporated into new sustainable agriculture curricula in secondary and post-secondary schools throughout the state.
• The Center publishes a quarterly newsletter, research program reports, annual reports, news releases, facts sheets, conference proceedings and other special publications.

Vital Statistics

Program Management/Partnerships: The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture was created by the Iowa Legislature in 1987 and is funded by the state. The Center has developed a primary partnership with the Iowa State University Extension, and the Center works with numerous nonprofit farm groups and information providers including the agricultural industry, farm commodity groups, and academic researchers.

Budget: $1.7 million annually. Of this, approximately $1.1 million in funding comes from a trust fund established from taxes levied on nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides, and approximately $600,000 is provided by a direct appropriation to the Leopold Center from the state general fund.

Community Served: Iowa's farmers who work 105,000 farms across the state and who benefit from strong partnerships with the groups that provide them information. The ultimate community served are Iowans who consume agricultural products and who rely on Iowa's natural resources.

Measures of Success:

The Center estimates that approximately 25,000 individuals have benefited from the 90 research and education projects the Center has funded.

Over the past two years, more than 400 programs and presentations have been conducted and three statewide conferences have been held.

In 1994 alone, the Center conducted research, demonstration and education programs in more than 60 of Iowa's 99 counties. In its first five years, the Center has supported work in a total of 80 Iowa counties.

Over the past five years, farmers have reduced their use of nitrogen-containing fertilizer by 20% without any loss in yield, and reduced the potential for nitrate to enter the groundwater supply.

Initiatives currently underway in Washington, Minnesota and Wisconsin are modeled closely after the Leopold Center.

Success stories designed by Mark Nowak

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