Within the southeastern nook of Minnesota, fields of corn and soy stretch seemingly endlessly—a far cry from the world’s native grasslands. Previous surveys estimated simply 1% of the state’s native prairie stays. Andrea Eger, a regenerative agriculture mission supervisor for The Nature Conservancy in Minnesota, is making an attempt to alter that.
In three counties within the southeastern nook of the state, Eger—a former veggie farmer herself—is selling using “prairie strips” on farms in an effort to revive a portion of the state’s remnant prairie and to absorb polluted water. The water that runs off farms right here finally makes it to the Mississippi River and all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico the place agricultural nutrient runoff has created hypoxia—or useless zones—within the water.
Under, Eger explains how strategically planted native prairies may assist farmers cut back this drawback on their lands.
Q: What precisely is a prairie strip?
It’s a approach to combine sections of native grasses and flowering crops into row crop fields. It provides biodiversity and resilience to the sphere, and it’s a approach to enhance water high quality. With 10% conversion of a row crop area to prairie strips, we’re seeing a 95% discount in sediment loss, and like an 80% discount in nitrogen and phosphorus which can be leaving the sphere.
Q: With out prairie strips, what does this space appear to be?
There’s lots of stunning rolling hills, and lots of that’s used for corn and soy—as is way of the Midwest. Getting prairie strips built-in into a few of these fields is like [building] an island in a foodless desert for a few of these pollinators and wildlife. Iowa State College has been researching prairie strips for about 10 years, they usually’ve partnered with entomologists to analysis this. There are a whole bunch of species [that benefit]—butterflies, monarchs, honeybees, bumblebees, solitary bees.
Q: And so they enhance water high quality?
Sure, with this mission we’re actually all for decreasing the hypoxia zone within the Gulf of Mexico. So we’re making an attempt to scale back sediment loss [on upstream farmland], after which additionally cut back phosphorus and nitrogen, which can be hitting the Mississippi River after which finally going to the Gulf of Mexico.
Q: How does a prairie strip in Minnesota assist clear up that water downstream?
Corn and soybeans often are on the fields for simply a few months and have comparatively shallow root methods. However these perennial native grasses keep on the fields all 12 months and their root methods may be as much as 30 toes lengthy. That’s superb for stabilizing the soil.
And while you get rain on an uphill area these strips act as a barrier that may catch [soil, fertilizer and pesticides] and hold them on the farm fields. With out these strips, all of that’s going downstream and down the water system.
Q: What kinds of analysis are underway to enhance prairie strips?
A lot. I went to a stakeholder assembly final August [2022] and it was actually unbelievable what number of grad college students and analysis alternatives there have been. There was one group that was grouse habitat and the way prairie strips enhance that habitat infield. There was one other group trying on the implications of prairie strips on high of [agricultural drain] tiles as a result of lots of farmers are involved that these extremely deep-rooted crops are going to get into the drain tiles and clog them. There have been entomologists predators of soybean aphids and thrips and whether or not prairie strips may entice these pure predators and assist management these [pest] populations.
After which there’s lots of water high quality work. For instance, this pure blockade stopping the nitrogen and phosphorus from entering into the water system: How is that being dispersed on the upwind aspect of the prairie strips and what’s occurring to it over time? It’s superb all of the totally different ways in which these prairie strips are impacting fields.
Q: How do you assist farmers make the change?
By way of the [federal] Conservation Reserve Program, farmers can get some monetary
incentives to put in them within the fields. We’re partnering with soil and water conservation districts in three counties in Minnesota, serving to them with a web-based advertising marketing campaign that’s focused towards farmers and giving added incentives for the prairie strips.
Q: There are different environmental practices to diversify fields like putting in hedgerows. How do you identify what apply to make use of on a specific farm?
Each farm is so extremely totally different, and the wants of farmers are so totally different. And so we need to be sure that we’ve got a wide range of totally different strategies that farmers can use to verify their farms are worthwhile and resilient. We’ve practices that assist water high quality, assist soil well being, assist all these different issues. I believe prairie strips are one other instrument in that toolbox that we are able to we are able to use for farmers which can be perhaps on extremely erodible land, or in a few of the locations the place prairie has fully disappeared. There are such a lot of farmers who actually respect the wonder and the wildlife that the prairie strips usher in. So it’s useful to have the ability to say, “Have a look at this: You are able to do this with 10% conversion of your area. It does all these nice issues for conservation. And, my gosh, it’s a ravishing factor to have a look at.”
Q: Are you able to describe what it appears like while you’re on a farm with row crops that has put in prairie strips?
It’s only a completely totally different vitality. There’s all the time one thing to love in farm fields—however to see this magnet of so many birds, so many bees. And the noises are totally different in prairie strips than in a monoculture cornfield! And the colours and the textures…
Wherever that you just go, prairies are simply so magical, however in a farm area the place you’ll be able to see this industrialized system after which additionally the native range coming again and each of them being actually built-in in the identical place… It’s simply very inspirational and exquisite to me.
A model of this interview ran in Nature Conservancy journal’s Fall 2023 difficulty. Try different tales from that difficulty, together with articles on Tennessee’s bat caves, a Kenyan wind farm co-existing with a vulture flyway, and a motion to alter the frequent names of some species, at nature.org/journal.
