Corn Belt Sustainability Insights from the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, with Matt Helmers

In the heart of the Corn Belt, Iowa has long been a leader in agricultural production.

But with a mandate from state lawmakers and the public, the Iowa Nutrient Research Center was launched at Iowa State University in 2013 with a mission to study nutrient management practices, providing recommendations on implementing such practices and developing new practices as well.

And over the last 10 years, researchers like center director Matt Helmers have measured and quantified the impact of nutrient management, cover cropping and other techniques aimed at improving water quality and maintaining ag productivity.

So in this episode, Matt shares insights that you can incorporate into your operation to improve your sustainability footprint and pad your bottom line.

Plus, Tom and Sally provide an update on the current state of planting across North America, and discuss some of the new sustainability programs that are available for growers to enroll.

Visit agrible.com to sign up for Nutrien Ag Solutions' free digital toolkit, and info.nutrienagsolutions.com/SNO to learn more about Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes.

Episode Transcript

Matt Helmers:

Farmers have many options. Every field is a little bit different. And I would encourage farmers and growers to think about what they can do on their land to reduce the nitrate that’s lost downstream, and think about the variety of practices that are available for them to do that.

Dusty Weis:

Welcome to The Future. Faster. A sustainable agriculture podcast by Nutrien Ag Solutions with our very own Tom Daniel, Director of North America Retail and Grower Sustainable Ag, and Dr. Sally Flis, Director, Sustainability Program Design and Outcome Management.

This is your opportunity to learn about the next horizon in sustainable agriculture for growers, for partners, for the planet. To us, it's not about changing what's always worked, it's about continuing to do the little things that make a big impact.

On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Matt Helmers, Director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center at Iowa State University to learn about some of the cutting edge sustainability research they have going on there in the corn belt. From nutrient management to water quality to cover cropping techniques, he has insights that you can incorporate into your operation to improve your sustainability footprint and pad your bottom line.

But if you haven't yet, make sure you're following this podcast in your favorite app. Also, make sure you follow @NutrienAgSolutions on Facebook and Instagram.

I’m Dusty Weis. And it's time once again to introduce Tom Daniel and Sally Flis.

And Tom and Sally, we're waiting, still waiting, twiddling our thumbs a little bit here in the upper Midwest waiting for the weather to turn before we can start planting. But across the south we're seeing crops starting to go into the ground, especially down by you Tom. And it's probably top of mind for growers just what sorts of programs and incentives are available to them. So you two always have your finger on the pulse of those sorts of things. So Tom, what do we need to know?

Tom Daniel:

Well, Dusty, you're right. The southern part of the country, a lot of the area has started to plant or is planting right now. And my area in Kentucky and the central portion of the Midwest, I guess, is pretty well engaged in getting the crop in the ground. And as we always know, it doesn't take long to get the crop planted. We've got enough equipment now that we can get a lot of crop planted in very few days. But... One of the things we want to bring back to the discussion with our growers today is around our Nitrogen management program and we call it the SNO program: Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes program. But we want to make sure that our growers are fully aware that as they're looking at getting the corn planted or especially in the south or cotton planted that we start and especially where they're looking at opportunities to manage their nitrogen rates, whether it be through variable rate technology or using slow release nitrogen fertilizers, whatever the strategy may be, that they should be claiming those strategies now and have an opportunity to receive some payments for those acres on a carbon offset or inset that can be generated in those particular projects. So Sally, I know you're pretty well engaged in the project development of all of these different programs. Kind of give us a background a little bit on the SNO program. What would it take to qualify and what does a grower need to engage in right now to get into that program?

Sally Flis:

Tom, this is our second year of Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes. In this program, we're following the carbon protocol from the Climate Action Reserve, which asks for, as a minimum new practice, a 5% rate reduction on the field versus a baseline that's either established from USDA county-level numbers or a baseline that's established by the farm from their own records. A key piece of that farm level baseline or field level baseline will be as we move to getting verification completed so we can market these credits either up and down the supply chain or to scope on buyers is that we'll need to have some evidence around the type of fertilizer used in that baseline. So a big part of the verification that we've learned in the last year both for scope one or scope three is demonstrating what we did is real, so we need to have some sort of fertilizer sales receipt as applied maps, something like that for all of the fertilizer practices that we're gonna go and try and generate a verified outcome on so that we can stand behind those as valuable, sellable, or tradable assets of some sort.

So thinking about the data collection and that minimum 5% rate reduction are kind of the two things to keep in mind as you look at participating in specifically our carbon program. But as you think about participating in anything related to carbon or generating some sort of verified asset, you're going to need as a grower or a crop consultant working with that grower, evidence showing the things that were done in the field so that we can create the most valuable outcomes that we're able to generate for a grower. Growers can also increase their return on participating in a program like Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes by using a Nitrification inhibitor or by using a slow control release fertilizer product. And Tom, where are some of the places in the country where we really have that best opportunity to use products like a nitrification inhibitor or a slow control release fertilizer?

Tom Daniel:

Well, obviously the places where climate and soil types match up to make those type products more effective. So you're looking for the Corn Belt area, which is the Midwest area of the country, the East region in Nutrien today, are probably the two best places that we see the use of nitrification products being used on a given acre and having the most success. And in most cases, we see growers that are using those type products and cutting the rates on their nitrogen. So they're more than likely meeting their 5% threshold of nitrogen reduction when they're using those efficiency fertilizers or stabilizers in the marketplace. But I do know our guys, Sally, down south are using other products like humic acid and different things that we believe are good optimization products when you use them with a nitrogen fertilizer and they're actually seeing rate reductions that they can get to with a grower saving him some money on the commodity nitrogen product but still increasing productivity on the acre and reducing the exposure of nitrogen to the environment. Now, Sally, I'm going to ask you a question. Like I said, the main Corn Belt area of the Midwest and the East region are the two best areas for, we think, the use of stabilizers. But there is a change in this year's program from last year's program. So last year we started the program pretty well limited to just the areas of the country that the Climate Action Reserve had designated or had said were eligible for the program. But I think you've made a change this year and we actually have access to just about the whole country. Is that correct?

Sally Flis:

That is correct, Tom. So any traditional nitrogen using crop that is in the US can enroll in the program this year, we'll be working with the Climate Action Reserve through the rest of 2023, and into 2024 and with Sustain Cert who is our other verification protocol body to define how we're going to achieve that, right? So the limitation on using the county by crop combination limitation in the climate action reserves protocol right now is they use USDA based data. Well the protocol hasn't been updated in quite a few years and so the most recent data they looked at that they were confident in was the data from I want to say like the 2009 survey and for some of the crops in the program even older than that. So we have an opportunity to work on helping build up that data from publicly available sources or from some other partners that we're working with so that we can really make everybody eligible to participate in the program.

Tom Daniel:

So. That pretty well covers our Sustainable Nitrogen Program. And you know, some areas of the country have put on a significant amount of nitrogen early or maybe even fall applied prior to planting of this year's crop. But I think we recognize that we have a lot of areas of the country that we talked about use variable rate technologies that would allow them to qualify for a 5% reduction on the acre or they have side dress opportunities that are getting ready to come up in, you know, late May and June, July in some cases and allows them to alter their nitrogen rates at that time based upon what the need of the crop is and what's going on and what they believe the yield capacity of the crop is. So there's another opportunity coming up here very shortly to manage nitrogen rate on the acre. And one of the key things that we want to talk about and promote too is the use of plant tissue testing so that we’re actually determining what is the right rate of nitrogen that we need to apply, what's available, and what is the corn plant going to need to finish out its yield cycle. So we want to make sure that we're always using all the tools that are in the field to make that happen and make it work. And speaking of tools in the field. We have a digital platform today, our Agrible platform that we work with, which allows us to do measurements in the field. And when I use the term baselining, or measurement in the field, Sally, can you kind of give me a little bit of a broad definition of what that means?

Sally Flis:

Sure, it's really just recording what is that grower doing in that field today. And then we use our connection to the Fieldprint Calculator with the Field to Market Organization to look at what are those sustainability metrics for that field compared to other growers in the region. And we can use that as a tool to report to downstream food partners that are interested in those numbers for the marketing or to meet their sustainability goals. And we can use it to help the grower figure out what is the next best practice in that continuous improvement journey for them to add. It's that old adage, Tom, of if you don't measure it, you can't manage it, right? So if we don't know what's happening in that field and where the best opportunity is, and like we've talked about many times on the podcast, what is that limiting resource for that grower? We might not be picking the right practice or program or product or financing or whatever it is to fit what that grower needs to be on that continuous improvement pathway.

Tom Daniel:

So Sally, we're seeing a lot of what we call downstream partners, people that are in the supply chain that are purchasing product from growers today that are either going into food, fiber, fuel, or feed. And so they're starting to ask, what are the basic measurements off the farm today and how do they compare to USDA standards? Now, today we've got some organizations that are actually paying for that data because they need to know what their products that they're purchasing, how they're being produced and what the measurements are on the acre. But in truth, we've got other organizations that are just requiring that information be supplied today. So if a grower wants to get into an Agrible platform, and Agrible guys is designed just to be a data collection place. It brings all the data into a central holding area, puts it into a digital format that can then be APId or basically sent over to a modeling group that can model, you know, whether it be field to market, Cool Farm Alliance, CISC out on the west coast. All of those modeling groups are available to actually do sustainable metrics that can be then supplied to a downstream buyer of whoever's buying the grain. So, Sally, how does a grower today, I mean, is there a charge for the use of Agrible? How does a grower today engage in something like a data system like Agrible?

Sally Flis:

Agrible is free. It is one of our digital tools and one way to sign up is to go to agrible.com and then it will guide you through that process. Another way to sign up is if you're working with a branch location of ours and a crop consultant of ours, then it's to go through our digital hub and find out if you have a digital hub account. Because if you already have a digital hub account and your crop consultant is working with your fields and your practices in our other digital tools, often shape bound field and shape boundaries can already show up in Agrible if we just follow the right sequence of signing up for the Agrible account. So if you're a customer and you're interested, then you would want to talk to your crop consultant about the best way to go about that. And if you're a crop consultant and you're unsure about signing up, then reaching out to our customer success team and Melissa Lawrence are the best place to start on figuring out how to get new growers and new fields enrolled in Agrible.

Dusty Weis

And Tom and Sally, we also talked briefly about the Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes Program, something that folks might be interested in learning more about as well. And they can do that at nutrienagsolutions.com/SNO. These are certainly great programs to keep in mind that can help steer a little bit of extra revenue to our growers. But again, here in the upper Midwest, we're still kind of waiting for the right moment to get started out in those fields right now. Up in the Corn Belt, the cold certainly isn't helping, and neither is some of the worst Mississippi River flooding that we've seen in decades around these parts. And so coming up after the break, we're headed to Iowa to talk to Matt Helmers, Director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center at Iowa State University. Water management is certainly on his mind right now, and he's got some expertise there. But he's also got some exciting nutrient management insights to share with us as well. That's coming up in a moment here on The Future Faster.

Dusty Weis

This is The Future Faster, a sustainable agriculture podcast by Nutrien Ag Solutions. I'm Dusty Weis along with Tom Daniel and Sally Flis, and we're joined now by Matt Helmers, Director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center at Iowa State University. Matt, thanks for joining us today.

Matt Helmers

Oh, thanks for having me. Look forward to our conversation.

Dusty Weis

So Matt, to get us rolling here, can you tell us a little bit about what the Iowa Nutrient Research Center at Iowa State University is and what you're focused on there in Ames?

Matt Helmers

Yeah, so the Iowa Nutrient Research Center was established in 2013 at the time that the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy was released. And so our goal is to pursue research on nutrient management practices, both infield, edge of field, thinking about our land use, and then multi-objective research. So we fund a great deal of research around nutrient issues, primarily on the agricultural land and looking at how we manage our nutrients, looking at cover crops, looking at edge of field practices as well. I also do research in a lot of these areas, but within INRC, we fund a fair bit of research at Iowa State University and other regents' institutions in Iowa.

Tom Daniel

So Matt, I think everybody's concern right now or everybody's question right now is when are we gonna get all this corn planted? And, you know, I'm from Kentucky. So we've actually had some fair weather conditions here in the last two to three weeks. And we've got a lot of corn that's in the ground today. But in Iowa, I don't think that's the case. And I was just curious, what is the situation in Iowa today on corn planting?

And what does the weather forecast look like in the next week or two that that might change that or might not change that?

Matt Helmers

Yeah, that's a really good question. And so, you know, sometimes I don't keep the closest track of that, but we've had a couple conversations. So yesterday, our lab group, we have a site in North Central Iowa, where we do the cropping at and the soil temperature was 44 degrees yesterday morning. So we're, you know, pretty cool. And we were talking that, you know, there's been some corn that's planted and I drove down to Des Moines yesterday and saw a number of corn planters out in the field.  

But that soil temperature is still pretty cool. And, you know, it's only probably in the low 50s right now with a 25 mile an hour wind again. But the next week looks a little bit better. That we have, you know, more 70 degree weather coming in. But fortunately also maybe some chance of rain because we're still pretty dry, especially with this wind that we've gotten. It's just really dry throughout parts of Iowa. So I think it's looking a little bit better, but certainly, you know, probably not where we normally are on May 2nd.

Tom Daniel

So soil moisture is an issue for you today. It's funny that in other areas of the country, soil moisture is an issue, but it's too much. And in your situation, it's too dry.

Dusty Weis

Now, other parts of Iowa even right now.

Matt Helmers

It's really variable, at breakfast with a couple colleagues from Purdue the other day and they were talking about, you know, they've had all kinds of, all kinds of precipitation and drainage events. So I do a lot of work with subsurface drainage and drainage water quality. And, you know, we are, we are really wanting rain, not only for, you know, for our crop production, but we need some water samples to sample and we have not had many for like three years.

So, like you said, you know, some areas of Iowa that have plenty of rain, but then there are some that we need some rain and warmer weather to get that crop started.

Tom Daniel

So Matt, with some cold soils out there, maybe not wet everywhere, but cold, what are some recommendations that y'all have come up with from the research farm that growers might want to implement practices right now that would help in corn germination or at least getting the corn healthy?

Matt Helmers

I will preface that by I'm an ag engineer and not an agronomist. But looking at it is really keeping an eye on that soil temperature so that we don't have that seed sitting in the ground in cold, wet conditions. One of the things that can also happen in Iowa is that we have soils that retain a lot of water as well. If we do get the cold weather, and moisture, it might be of concern. Maybe that's one of the things that's a little bit advantageous with the weather conditions we've had. It's not been cold and wet soils necessarily. It's kind of been cold and drier soil. So hopefully now with that, with what looks like 70s coming up, we can get that soil temperature up and get that crop germinated.

One of the other things we've seen too is, a lot of people are using cover crops or there are more cover crop use. And unfortunately this year, we've not gotten the best cover crop growth because it's been too cold for that too. And certainly then with these windy cold conditions, I think that's impacted in some cases, probably the termination of the cover crop, at least if I think about our own sites, our own research sites where we have cover crop, this cold and wind has delayed our cover crop termination before corn.

Sally Flis

Matt, you mentioned your work on water quality and water management at a field level in some of your previous answers. So what are some of the practices that you all have researched in the field and outcomes that growers can use and practices they can think about to manage water and water quality at a field level?

Matt Helmers

All right, thanks, Sally. Now we're getting into something that I can, I could talk a little bit more closely about. So we have a number of drainage water quality sites throughout the state of Iowa. And, you know, really been fortunate that we've had a lot of support from those over the years. And a lot of them started well before I got to Iowa State University. So we look at, we look at the four R's. So the right source, rate, time and place of nitrogen application. We've looked at manure versus commercial fertilizer. We do a lot of work with cover crops and our work has specifically been with winter cereal rye cover crops before both corn and beans. And then we've looked at different land uses. So what might be the nitrate leaching under a perennial, a prairie, or maybe a forage mix.

And so some of the things that I think growers can use, we've seen a project funded by the Fertilizer Institute and the Foundation for Food and Ag Research. We're part of a regional project, but our project up in Northwest Iowa, we looked at timing of nitrogen application. And so we looked at fall nitrogen with an inhibitor, anhydrous with an inhibitor spring, pre-plant anhydrous, and then a split application. And I think maybe the biggest takeaway that we saw from there that might apply to growers, kind of across the Corn Belt is we did see about a 15 to 20% reduction in nitrate concentration in our tile drainage water with that split application. We were applying 45 pounds at planting and then 90 pounds in season from a timing rise. It was around the 4th of July. So pretty large corn at that time.

And so we did see the potential for nitrate reduction with that practice. And that's, I think, encouraging as we think about that for growers, thinking about how we manage that nitrogen in season where there are opportunities to do that, I think have the potential to help us with nitrate leaching. And then we're also kind of evolving that work to look at, can we base the in-season nitrogen management in-season application rate based on some work Soterios Archontoulis does with the modeling, with the ABSIM model to predict based on the weather conditions. If we've had a dry year where we haven't had much leaching, we may not need to apply as much in the summer, which we would expect to help us with the nitrate leaching perspective, but also help us from a profitability standpoint if we don't have to put as much nitrogen on in that year. That's some of our nitrogen management work. I could go on more about that if you want to with cover crops or anything else.

Sally Flis

Sure, so well first a follow up on the nitrogen management stuff, Matt. How did yields look across those three different options for nitrogen management? Because that's the question when we bring some of our programs to the field and we're asking growers to make a practice change like that or a rate reduction. Well, what's it going to cost me in yield? And they hesitate sometimes.

Matt Helmers

Yeah, so the one that we published on, we had six years of data with the fall, spring, and then the split application. And in five of the six years, we saw no statistically significant difference in yield between fall, spring, and the split application. Now I want to preface that on the fall application. This is in Northwest Iowa in an area that is pretty cold in the winter and we don't get much winter drainage. I don't think that this would necessarily apply as we move further east in the corn belt. So, five of the six years, no difference. 2017, we did see a yield hit and it was statistically significant with that split application because we only had an inch of rain in the month post application. So that, again, kind of the area we were in, a little bit drier part of Iowa.

I might caution folks to think about that as they're making their management decisions. As I look at the rate, we applied again, 45 pounds pre-plant and then 90 in season, we might've been able to go the other way and just use that in season for a little bit of kind of topping it off rather than the primary source. And maybe then we would mitigate some of that risk of it being dry and not getting the utilization that we want in season from that late season side dress application.

Sally Flis

Matt, you mentioned that some of these sites have been in place for quite a long time, but I know in the last probably 10 years especially, there's been lots of rumblings and challenges around water quality in Iowa. So where does that all stand? I'm not as involved in that side of things with my carbon aspect of work now, but where does that potential regulatory or pushback from the public sit when it comes to things like nitrates in tile drainage or groundwaters?

Matt Helmers

Yeah, there's still a lot of concern about nitrogen and phosphorus in our water bodies and the export of nitrogen and phosphorus from our agricultural lands. And so, as we think about nitrogen, I think we're at the point where we've, over the last 10 years with nutrient reduction strategies across the Midwest, we're raising awareness around the need to do something in this area.

We're starting to implement more practices, but we're kind of at the stage where we really need to see an acceleration of those practices being adopted. I think that the general public is asking for cleaner water and reduced nutrients in there. And I think that we within agricultural community, we have an opportunity to do that in a voluntary way, with practices that are best suited for individual farmers' fields or growers' fields. But I think we need to be very proactive about that because we need to show that we can make some progress as we move toward the future.

Tom Daniel

So Matt, it may sound unusual that a big fertilizer company like Nutrien would actually look at opportunities to help our growers reduce nitrogen rates on the farm. But we believe that in the coming years especially, it's going to be a major ask of growers on how can they continue to produce more bushels on a given acre, but reduce the amount of nitrogen it takes to do that. And as you know, most farmers, and I'm a farmer too, we all associate nitrogen rate to yield, right? So the more nitrogen we put, the better we can make yield. So we're actually promoting a Sustainable Nitrogen Outcome program, and we're pushing growers to generate carbon offsets or insets by reducing the overall amount of nitrogen that's applied to the acre. And we're paying the growers for that. So that's, once again, that sounds odd for a fertilizer company to pay somebody to use less fertilizer, but we believe it's going to be an environmental necessity for the future. What practices do you see a grower might consider that would help him to better manage his nitrogen applications? And you've already mentioned some of it around split applications, but what's your view on variable rate technologies, understanding the productivity of different areas of a field and managing nitrogen to those. What's your thoughts on all that?

Matt Helmers

I think that's the wave of the future. I think that, again, I'll go back, I'm an ag engineer and not agronomist, but it does seem like we have different soils in the field, we have different production capacities. We think about a corn suitability rating. We have different soils with different corn suitability ratings. It kind of makes sense that those different soils might have different needs for nitrogen to kind of optimize their production. And that's an area that while I probably won't do a lot of research, I'm super excited about because, can we utilize new technology that's developing remote sensing, maybe soil testing, plant testing, to understand what some of the needs are in different parts of the field, just like you talked about the variable rate technology, and then maybe we can use some of that side dress for variable rate technology, based on what the crop is looking like out in the field, with some of the remote sensing or imagery products. So I think it's exciting to think about, because I think we are, the tools are being developed. I'll go back to that Soterios Archontoulis is I think a leading researcher in modeling of our cropping systems.

And thinking about nitrogen needs of those? Can we also augment some of the imagery and remote sensing with modeling that we can say, okay, this is what the weather has been to date for this field. Here's some projections based on historical weather, what we think it may be into the future. And we might be able to increase our confidence that this is what we should apply for nitrogen. And so I think that all of this could help farmers be more profitable and help us with our environmental bottom line as well.

Sally Flis

Matt, cover crops are a practice that people talk about a lot as sort of that covers a lot of things, covers water quality, covers carbon, and with the dust storms that we've seen recently in Illinois, will probably continue to be and get even harder pushed on as a practice that needs to be implemented in the field. You've done some work looking at, because a question and a pushback we often get in the field, Tom, is there's yield drag if I do cover crops the following season. So what have you seen in the work that you've done around yield drag and that water quality interface when cover crops are used as a conservation or sustainable practice?

Matt Helmers

Yeah, that's a great question, Sally. When we looked at the literature for the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy about 10 years ago, the non-point source science assessment, when we reviewed those studies that had been done that had documented yield, and we didn't see a yield impact on soybeans, but we saw about a 6% reduction in corn yield, which was certainly of concern. As we've put new studies in there, at least for Iowa and surrounding areas, that's really been reduced. That we see less impact or about relatively yield neutral. That's not to say there's not some risk. I mean, early users of cover crops, the first year or two until you get used to it, you may see some impact or the increased risk. That's one reason why sometimes if you're maybe not super comfortable with taking a winter cereal rye before corn, it might be that you could use oats that would winter kill and you don't have to worry about that spring kill of that. So, I think it's using good management, making sure you get that rye killed in advance of corn, a week to two weeks, you can mitigate some of that risk. But I guess this is one thing I would say with cover crops, start small.

If you have a thousand acres, don't put cover crops on a thousand acres the first year. Let's try it small to learn how it works in your operation with your equipment. And then you can kind of build from there because we really want to see people have success with it. Like you said, I think it is one of the infield practices that provides us multiple benefits from protecting that soil surface from water erosion and wind erosion. It can help us with some soil health, carbon, as well as then the nitrate leaching in the water as well.

Tom Daniel

Matt, as we're finishing up our conversation today, and I know as a researcher, there's always that key piece of research that really gets you going, right? That's exciting and you're really excited about it. So before we finish our call, can you give us some ideas what you believe is exciting in research today?

Matt Helmers

Yeah, well, I'm glad you asked that Tom, because there is one, practice project that we're working on and others across the Corn Belt are starting to work on that I think brings a lot of things together and helps us think about the future. As we think about the future of agriculture and trying to create a resilient landscape, you know, there's some projections out there of wetter springs and drier summers.

And so, you know, in a state like Iowa, there's very little irrigation. And we probably don't have, we don't have access to a high yielding aquifer like you do in Nebraska. But what we're looking at is can we capture some of that drainage water that would have otherwise gone downstream taking the nutrients with it? Can we store it and then reuse it on the crop field as supplemental irrigation? Sometimes I like to say, it's like a rain barrel on steroids, that we're trying to capture that and then utilize that in the field.

And I think it also ties into some of the things that we've talked about here, because if we have that water to apply on the field, we might be able to do even more with nitrogen management because we could we could fertigate with that. We talked about that in season application, it being dry. Well, now we have water to make sure that nitrogen gets to where it can be used in the crop root zone. One of the other things is, some of the last couple of falls in parts of Iowa, our cover crop, we got cover crop planted, but then it was so dry, we got such little germination. If you had an irrigation system there, you could run that one time and probably, get that cover crop started. So that's one of the things I'm excited about. We've seen from some early research that there is a yield benefit of it, but does it make money for the farmer? That's some of the things that we wanna look at is trying to document that on more fields in Iowa and the region. And what are the yield benefits? How much does it cost? And can we document what environmental benefits we might be getting from that practice?

Dusty Weis

You know, Matt, this has been a great conversation. It's just, if I had a bingo card of all of our favorite hot topics in the world of agriculture right now, I'm pretty sure we just blacked it out entirely. It's certainly the kind of thing that growers talk about when they get together and everybody's got a story from their field, but when we can incorporate the data from all over the country, that's when we start to get a clearer understanding of the big picture and the long-term costs and benefits.

You've helped us build out that perspective here today, Matt, so we're grateful for your time and your expertise. Matt Helmers from Iowa State University, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of The Future Faster.

Matt Helmers

Thank you very much.

Dusty Weis

That is going to conclude this edition of The Future, Faster: The Pursuit of Sustainable Success with Nutrien Ag Solutions. New episodes arrive every month, so make sure you subscribe in your favorite app and join us again soon. Visit futurefaster.com to learn more.

The Future, Faster podcast is brought to you by the Nutrien Ag Solutions, with executive producer Connor Erwin and editing by Matt Covarrubias.

And it’s produced by Podcamp Media, branded podcast production for businesses. PodcampMedia.com.

For Nutrien Ag Solutions, thanks for listening. I'm Dusty Weis.