ADEL, Iowa — Students in the DMACC Soil and Agronomy were joined by local high school students in ag programs Tuesday morning at the DMACC farm north of Adel for a soil conservation demonstration led by Liz Ripley, conservation and cover crop outreach specialist with the Iowa Learning Farms in Ames.
Rolling in with the traveling Conservation Station, Ripley introduced several classes of the student-farmers to the use of saturated buffers and bioreactors, two edge-of-field conservation practices that reduce the amount of nutrients entering waterways via field tiles.
Tim Doud, longtime chair of DMACC’s Agriculture/Natural Resources Department and co-chair of the agribusiness program, was on hand to assist Ripley in the Conservation Station demonstration and answer questions.
Nutrient runoff from Iowa agriculture is a leading contributor to the water pollution that causes the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
