1 day Ago By JOHN O'CONNELL University of Idaho Extension
KIMBERLY — University of Idaho Extension researchers in Aberdeen and Kimberly are wrapping up the first year of trials intended to help quantify the environmental benefits of implementing various sustainable farming and ranching practices in Idaho’s conditions. The trials are part of the university’s large-scale Innovative Agriculture and Marketing Partnership (IAMP), which will pay Idaho farmers annual incentives ranging from $38 to $74 per acre, or $1 per head per day for Idaho ranchers, to try designated climate-smart practices. IAMP recently hosted its first enrollment period for producers, and a second enrollment period is planned for later this fall.
IAMP is funded with a five-year, $55 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, of which $31 million will go directly to participating Idaho agricultural producers who use designated climate-smart farming practices.
Trial data will help the IAMP team calibrate a model food producers will use, in addition to data from their own operations, to estimate environmental benefits of the climate-smart practices they’re contracted to try. The project aims to prevent the emission of up to 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year from entering the atmosphere. In the first year of trials in Aberdeen, Xi Liang, UI Extension cropping systems agronomist, planted potatoes, and she’ll follow in subsequent years with sugar beets, wheat and barley.
Linda Schott, an assistant professor and Extension specialist of nutrient waste management, is conducting companion trials in Kimberly and started her rotation this season with barley. Additional trials are beginning in Moscow to evaluate chickpeas, wheat and barley raised in northern Idaho rotations without irrigation. Trials being conducted at the U of I’s Nancy M.
Cummings Research, Extension and Education Center in Salmon will generate data to calibrate the model pertaining to IAMP participants who graze cattle on cover crops. Thanks to an alternative form of landscaping, some people are spending much less time mowing, fertilizing and weeding. Liang and Schott both planted 24 plots — six treatments each replicated four times, counting a controlled check using only routine farming practices for baseline data.
Plots were 24 feet wide and 80 feet long. Chambers were placed within crop rows to capture greenhouse gases. They collected leaf stalk samples to measure nitrogen levels in foliage, and they took soil samples to evaluate soil carbon and fertility.
Experimental treatments in the research plots included cover cropping, inter-seeding legumes, compost application, reduced nitrogen and reduced tillage. “All of these practices are related to increased soil carbon and decreased greenhouse gas emissions,” Liang said. Cover crops are planted primarily to boost soil health and reduce erosion rather than for commercial sale.
Last October, Liang planted a cover crop blend with peas, clover and brassica species, measuring biomass of the plants beginning in April and terminating the cover crops at planting. Schott recently planted her first cover crop for the trials. Peas were planted between rows in the inter-seeding plots.
They also had a practice that used compost to replace 15% of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer applications and another practice in which they reduced total nitrogen fertilizer from all sources by 15%. “Some of that applied nitrogen leaches into the deep soil and groundwater,” Liang said. “We want to decrease leaching into the groundwater, so if we cut a little and it doesn’t hurt yield and quality, maybe we can convince growers they can cut a little bit.
” In her reduced-tillage treatment, Liang opted not to disturb the soil, other than to harvest the potatoes. Schott eliminated fall tillage following barley. “They can have very high yields and good quality with compost just like they would with commercial fertilizer, but there’s also sometimes a belief that you’re going to be supplying nitrogen at the wrong time in the season” Schott said.
“It will be nice to have more local data, and I’m hoping producers will sign up for compost application so we can get field-scale data to complement what we’re doing in the plots.” Schott is optimistic that IAMP will result in lasting relationships between researchers and Idaho producers. She believes the time is right to promote sustainable farming practices, and beyond the data IAMP will generate in different growing areas and conditions, the primary benefit will be producers opting to continue using proven climate-smart practices.
“I think producers are pretty hungry for more local information at scale,” Schott said. “If you have five producers who are adopting the same practice, there might be five different ways that they’re doing it, and they’re all valid ways. We are excited to hear about their implementation strategies.
” The IAMP project was funded with a five-year, $55 million grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, award No.
NR233A750005G038. The total project funding is $55,096,327, of which 99.83% is the federal share.
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