Sustainable Ag Insights from the Corn Belt, the American South, and the West Coast

Sustainable agriculture in the Corn Belt means something different from sustainable agriculture in the American South.

And sustainable agriculture in California is its own kind of animal.

But one of the best things about making the FARMSMART Podcast is that we go to all those places and more, sharing field-level insights that make it possible to improve your sustainability footprint and your margins.

So in this episode, we’re checking in with experts from Iowa, North Carolina and California to see what we can learn from one another about nutrient management, cover crops and water management.

Our guests are:

• Dr. Matt Helmers, Director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center at Iowa State University

• Clara Millsaps, Nutrien Ag Solutions divisional agronomist in the South Region

• Chris White, Executive Director of the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Water Authority in California

Plus, we'll get reintroduced to our new podcast co-host, Nutrien Ag Solutions Director of Digital Sustainability Ryan Adams.

Episode Transcript

Matt Helmers

Up in Northwest Iowa, we did see a 15-20 percent reduction of nitrate concentration in our tile drainage water with that split application.

Clara Millsaps

The troublesome weed that we see in the South is Italian ryegrass.

Chris White

How do we plan for the competing demand for water supply in California, and how do we manage around that?

Dusty Weis

Welcome to the FARMSMART Podcast, presented by Nutrien Ag Solutions, where every month, we’re talking to sustainable agriculture experts from throughout the industry.

As the leading source of insight for growers on evolving their sustainability practices while staying grounded in agronomic proof, FARMSMART is where sustainability meets opportunity.

Sally Flis

We don’t just talk change – we're out in the field, helping you identify the products, practices and technologies that bring the future to your fields, faster.

I’m Dr. Sally Flis, Director of Sustainable Ag Programs.

Dusty Weis

And I’m Dusty Weis… and, Sally, we also have some news as we head a little bit further into 2025… a new co-host from the Nutrien Ag Solutions Team… Director of Digital Sustainability Ryan Adams. Ryan, welcome back to the show!

Ryan Adams

Thanks, Dusty. Yeah, I'm Ryan Adams. I'm our Director of Digital Sustainability. So my role with Nutrien Ag Solutions is I look after all of our digital technology platforms we got to pull together in order to make these sustainability programs and practices work across North America.

Sally Flis

Ryan, super excited to have you join us as the co-host going forward. We went for a while without a co-host and I'm super excited to have a Nutrien Ag Solutions, another agronomist, involved in our discussions. I think a lot of times Dusty listened to conversations with our previous co-host and didn't know where to get us to stop in our conversations on agronomics and sustainability and technology and data.

Dusty Weis

You do know a lot about those things.

Sally Flis

So looking forward to having that challenge for Dusty again in 2025, where maybe we just get a little long-winded talking agronomy and data and crop consulting.

Ryan Adams

Yeah, that's right. And it's gonna be great being able to talk about agronomy in a variety of geographies across North America and possibly even into some of our other geographies outside of North America as our sustainable ag team works in Australia.

This week I’m most excited to start talking about the agronomic practices across three distinct geographies in our Midwest, the South and West Coast, specifically around our nutrient management practices and how they’re impacting the sustainability of our growers.

Sally Flis

We're gonna start off in Iowa where we talked with Dr. Matt Helmers, the Director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center at Iowa State University. I've known Matt for quite a while and so it was great to reconnect with him on this episode and see where things are at with their work.

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 in-field, 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.

Sally Flis

Matt, you mentioned your work on water quality and water management at a field level. 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

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 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, a 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.

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, 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 wanna 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.

Sally Flis

We heard there how big a role nutrient application can play in managing our sustainability footprints… but right at the end, he touched on another agronomic topic, which is cover crops.

Which is one of those practices that works great in some geographies, and not always in others.

Ryan Adams

And certainly there’s no better example of this than in the American South, where their usefulness can vary on a field-to-field basis.

To get a better sense of when and why cover crops work, we spoke with Clara Millsaps, one of Nutrien Ag Solutions Divisional Agronomists in the South Region.

Clara Millsaps

Finetuning what that cover crop program looks like ... Whether it's a kitchen sink mix of several different species or if it's just a plain cereal rye. Finetuning your program and how it fits in your production practices is probably what I would recommend. So if you can put in a cover crop and make it fit, I would definitely choose to do so.

Sally Flis:

What are some of the things, Clara, that growers and crop consultants should be considering as they pick that right cover crop fit for their field?

Clara Millsaps:

First, I would say go ahead and ask yourself, "What are you trying to address? What's the functionality that you're wanting that cover crop to serve?" Or the mode of action, rather. Are you dealing with compaction? Are you dealing with troublesome weeds? Or rather, are you just trying to build your overall soil productivity through soil health?

Once you identify what function you need to address, it's straight tied to what species you need, or what species in a mix that you would like to try to address.

And then, sourcing your seed. It's quite easy if you're purchasing from a wholesaler or retailer. But for those folks out there that are sourcing their cereal grains from bins, bin-run wheat or barley or cereal rye ... Please throw caution to the wind of what type of weeds, if there were any present, when that cover crop seed was harvested.

If that's bin-run wheat from your own farm ... The troublesome weed that we faced throughout the South that has resistance to almost all the post-emergent herbicides that we have is Italian ryegrass. If you have Italian ryegrass pressure, please ask those questions. Or ask yourself those questions if you have any type of weed pressure from bin-run wheat or anything like that.

And then, thinking through your planting windows. I think this is a little intuitive, but this is worthy of mentioning as well. Those fields that you're wanting to plant first in the Spring need to be planted first this Fall. To maximize the biomass of that cover crop before we terminate it.

Sometimes when we get in those kitchen sink mixes, it can be a little bit troublesome to manage. My constant steady would probably be a cereal rye. Just for the biomass produced. But what I will say is, you do have to figure out what works best for your operation.

Some folks don't like cereal rye, because it's a mess to plant through. Depending on if it's terminated or rolled or you're planting green. But what I would recommend is talk to your neighbors and do some finetuning yourself. Make sure that the cover crop you choose is most beneficial for you. From a management standpoint, as well as what it's benefiting for you and your soil.

Early-planted corn, I'd rather go ahead and have it burnt down before we plant. Later seeded into beans or later corn, you can plant green, and then burn down after you've already planted. It depends on the scenario, for me, thinking through when you want to terminate. Whether it's early or later in the season. I really don't have any preference either way, but the capability of the grower is their preference.

Sally Flis

Clara, you're hitting on a lot of the themes that we hit on probably on every podcast, of selecting the right thing that meets the resource concern of that grower and tying together this whole system. I was just sent some questions to help respond to the other day for another sustainability team member. We keep getting these questions of, "Why won't growers just do cover crops?"

I think you've done an excellent job today hitting on all of the things that go into making that decision. It's not just a, "Go out, see a grower, and ask them to do a cover crop and they do a cover crop." What are some of the ways that you have found working with crop consultants and growers to spread that message? To educate, to get these practices implemented in the field?

Clara Millsaps

I think it takes a lot of listening first. I feel like listening and troubleshooting is what I do most in my job. And then, running down the answers. There isn't a cookie cutter answer for folks that like cover crops or don't like cover crops. Or someone who's an early adapter or a new adapter. You have to listen first quite a bit before you provide that recommendation. What's the obstacle that's preventing them from adapting this? That's what I would say first.

We do a lot of listening before recommending it. To some growers, it's just a timing issue. Simply getting in that cover crop and having the capability to burn it down. Or the season. If it's too wet to burn down that cover crop to get our cash crop in effectively. What I would say is a lot of listening and troubleshooting to try to find how it fits. Because it is beneficial, wherever you go in the United States. If it fits in your cropping situation, it is beneficial.

But finding those niche opportunities where a cover crop can fit takes a lot of listening. Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it takes a little bit more persuading. But the second thing I would add to that besides listening is, "How can we run a trial?" Or a proof of concept to a grower that, "Hey. This is beneficial." Whether that's helping him try a cover crop and taking yield and other parameters off of that to provide a proof of concept in his field, in his area, that this is beneficial.

Everything that we know about soil is that it takes time to impact our soil. That short-term return on investment from a cover crop is difficult. Especially, if we're just looking at trying to build our soil from a productivity standpoint.

Short-term return on investment ... There are certain situations where I think you could probably see a positive return just in one year of adapting cover crop. That's if you're addressing a weed suppression issue. Or if you've got a droughty year and that cover crop residue is able to retain a little bit of moisture. You may see your return on investment in those types of situations.

But where cover crops benefit and where we see the largest return on investment is from that five to ten year period.

We know that it takes a lot of time to impact our soil's productivity from a soil health perspective. The main benefits that you're going to see from an ROI standpoint is in that five to ten year range. After we've been able to build that soil back. I would go a little bit further to say, growers and agronomists alike, sharpen your pencils. See how fast we can see your return on investment, and what we can tweak in our management systems to tighten down that five to ten year period. For sure.

Sally Flis

Clara, we've talked a lot about some of the positive outcomes of implementing cover crops. Those short-term and long-term benefits. What are some of the challenges that growers are going to see in the field as they try to implement these things? You mentioned weed pressure. Depending on your seed selections. What are some of the other challenges you see out there as growers start these new cover crop practices?

Clara Millsaps

First, I'll say, is timing. Timing. Getting the cover crop species in. And then, terminating in a timely manner. If we have a wet winter or a wet spring, sometimes that can be the first and last time a grower will try a cover crop. But I would encourage everyone to give it at least two to three years of time to learn how to manage effectively a cover crop.

The second thing. Probably, the biggest challenge that I would see is the control and management. Controlling it from a herbicide standpoint, and then also from a fertility standpoint. The call I get every spring from a cereal cover crop is, "Why is my corn yellow? Why is it firing down the mid rib?" That cover crop does take up nutrients.

When we terminate it and allow it to go back to the soil, there is some nutrient tie-up. For a short period, that does happen. But eventually, those nutrients will become back available for that crop. Understanding the fertility changes due to a cover crop is one of the challenges I see that's not always addressed properly or had enough forethought before putting that cover crop in.

Sally Flis

Are there any technology tools you're using in the field as you get in these new practice cover crops? You're mentioning the changes in that nitrogen status of the plant. Are you guys using any in-season tools to evaluate that nitrogen status and see how you can make the correction? Or reflectance imagery? Or drones? That kind of stuff to help manage these challenges in the field.

Clara Millsaps

Yep. Sure thing. First, out of the gate, it's not a new technology, but tissue testing is going to be able to provide us a heads up on what's actively going on in that plan. Hopefully, we're able to tissue test and catch that nitrogen deficiency or fertility issue before the symptomology is present.

Aerial imagery is utilized. There are some folks that are running NDVI. Looking at the green reflectance and that can give you a heads up of what spots of the fields you need to go ahead and check. Lead you down the path to make sure that you're ahead of these fertility issues before they show up on the plant. Those would be the main two that we're using in the South to be ahead of some of these nutrient deficiencies.

Dusty Weis

You know Sally, we talk about this all the time that cover crops are also an important tool for water management. One of the most challenging places in North America to manage your water is the American West.

And so, coming up after the break, we’ll visit the San Joaquin River Valley in California to learn about how they’re managing there amidst unpredictable drought conditions…

That’s coming up in a minute, here on the FARMSMART Podcast.

Dusty Weis

This is the FARMSMART Podcast, and I’m Dusty Weis, along with Sally Flis and Ryan Adams…

We were reminded again recently by the terrible fires in Los Angeles about just how challenging the water situation is in California.

There are so many communities, organizations and growers all trying to access the same water and it's created a real balancing act.

Sally Flis

We wanted to learn more about it, so we spoke to Chris White, Executive Director of the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Water Authority to learn about how one of the longest-running, most ambitious water management initiatives in North America meters out water allotments to growers in central California… and what we can learn from it.

Chris White

During this discussion, at times I'll say west side. What I'm talking about is the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, basically south of the Delta which is where most of my expertise is.

We were formed in 1992 by our member agencies, Central California Irrigation District, San Luis Canal Company, Fireball Canal Water District and Columbia Canal Company. We represent roughly 240,000 acres of agricultural land on the west side, and my agency is responsible for administering water conservation plans, water transfer programs, water resources planning as well as advocating for dependable water supplies for our agencies.

So the water rights that we hold in the exchange contractor service area date back to the early 1870s when the very first canals in this south of Delta area were being built to divert water from the San Joaquin River to the Western part of the Central Valley or the west side. Then as the need for more irrigation and farmable land in the Central Valley increased, the United States Department of Interior in about 1933 started the Central Valley project.

Our project allowed for water to be developed in the Central Valley, and is largely responsible for this region, basically becoming the agricultural powerhouse that it is today. That is that water from the Central Valley project came in from basically Northern California through a pumping plant in the Delta, down the Delta–Mendota Canal was delivered to the west side. That's what developed agriculture in this area, all the way up through today.

Sally Flis

So Chris, I've always lived in the Northeast quadrant of the United States where having enough water is never generally a challenge except for very short periods of time. And things like having a water allocation or how does a grower go about determining what their water allocation needs to be? What's the timeline for that? How does a grower even approach planning for their next cropping season when water is really the most important thing they need to grow a crop, and they've got to deal with some of these laws and regulations and supply issues?

Chris White

That's an important question for those that have received contracts from the Federal government or from the State of California for water supply.

After the CVP was developed, the state water project built the California aqueduct and some other water distribution facilities here in the 1960s, but over the past few decades, we've seen multiple different regulatory decisions that impact water distribution in California. And so when contracts were given in the 1950s and 1960s, they were based upon a certain yield calculation of how much these systems would produce and be able to deliver, and so when I say a hundred percent allocation, what I'm saying is that, that grower or that district in that year would receive a hundred percent of their contract allocation, and that was based on the original calculation.

And so many families in California came in here and bet their family legacy on being able to farm with these allocations. Over the past couple of decades, the regulatory decisions that have come in, these are very complex, have different goals and they've had mixed results, but the impact on water reliability is very clear.

The average annual water allocation since about 1990, the average annual has been cut in about half, so that's about a 50% on average type of an allocation for a grower in the surrounding Ag service water contractors, and so that's really challenging.

It's not like you're going to get a 50% allocation every year. It's based upon the hydrology in that year, and what's occurring in Northern California and what's occurring locally, but this is how an average of a 50% allocation would occur or even less than that.

Looking back over the last 10 years, 2014 west side Ag service contractors got a 0% allocation. In 2015, they got a 0% allocation, 2016, they got a 5% allocation. 2016 was a fairly wet year, but they were in the process of refilling reservoirs after a dry year when they were pretty much depleted, and then 2017 was a near record wet year and they received a hundred percent allocation. So if you took the average of all those, it's about a 30% allocation which is what we thought before 2019 was the long term average for water supply for west side Ag service contractors, so that's the challenge that these folks face, is a very unreliable supply which makes it very difficult to plan around.

Dusty Weis

Yeah. Chris, I'm certainly not a grower, but I spend a lot of time around them, but at the risk of asking you to state the obvious, what's the impact on a grower of receiving a zero or a 5% water allocation, how do they even get by?

Chris White

Well, what they've been doing is to the extent that they have wells that are available to them, they lean really heavily on their well field. Now, that's going to change.

Or they go into the transfer market and they buy water from others.

We have seen ground taken out of production at least annually as an example this year with the operations plan that was implemented. There were acres in Northern California that were set aside over earlier years because of the operations plan that was prescribed this year and water shortages, so yes, we have seen that.

Moving forward and within our service area, we have a fairly secure water supply based on our water rights situation. The real challenge here is to put together projects and formulate programs to secure sustainability going into the future, and we've been working not only with our growers on water conservation and technologies, but we've also been working with our small communities on groundwater banking projects, recharge and recovery projects to benefit their groundwater going into the future. So we've been investing pretty heavily over the last several years in those types of projects in order to try to secure some sustainability into the future for our area as well.

Sally Flis

So Chris, obviously, quantity of water is critical for driving crop production in these areas, but quality and what else comes with that water can also be a question as growers go to use it. How do you guys manage quality for things like salinity or nitrate levels or other things that might get into the water as it's being moved the distances that you're talking about to make it available to the crops and the communities in your district?

Chris White

Yeah. And generally, the better water quality is the surface water in my area, and it's different depending on what part of the state you're in. If you were on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, your well field would have a little better water quality than we do on the west side.

It's just due to the soil properties. The Diablo Range had a different soil property. The groundwater on the west side is saltier than the groundwater on the east side.

To the extent you have a better surface water supply even if it's reduced, if you have a better surface water supply, you can pump saltier groundwater and blend it and use the blended supply, so typically that's what happens.

Now, for agriculture generally, the nitrates are not a real big issue. The nitrate in groundwater is a drinking water issue, and to that extent then it needs to be managed in order to support, not just the agriculture, but the small communities that are within the area, so there's some management that goes into that.

But from a crop supply, nitrogen's not that big of a deal, but salt is overall. And so those are the things that you face, especially when you convert to high efficiency systems.

These high efficiency systems, they're basically feeding water to meet the plant's demands over the summer. And you're trying not to over apply water where water is going into the groundwater, it's going past the root zone. What that does is, you're not flushing the salts out of the soil, and so these high efficiency systems are much more sensitive to these high salt situations, so you need to consider that when you're thinking about putting in a high efficiency system, what is the source of your water? How much over percolation do you need in order to make that work for your crop?

Sally Flis

Chris, do growers tend to have a water manager person that just handles all this for them? Because what I think about on managing a farm in the parts of the US where we have plenty of water and this isn't as big of a management issue, I can't see where a lot of growers that I've worked with in the past would have just enough people and enough time to manage all the different elements that you've brought up in this episode around making sure they have one of the most critical parts of growing a crop.

Chris White

That's amazing to me, these growers are really becoming experts, and do they have separate staff that they hired? Maybe, maybe not. Some of the larger growers have staff assigned specifically, especially if you have a lot of acres, but within our service area, our growers average in size of about 200 acres, and we've got some bigger ones. But with grants and loans from the district, we've been installing for many years, high efficiency systems, and they've been able to manage those themselves, but it's been an education process. We have spent on-farm about a hundred million dollars in helping our growers convert from as an example, furrow irrigation which is the older way of irrigating a crop and converting them over to drip irrigation or micro sprinklers.

Sally Flis

We've talked to a couple of previous podcast guests about how is this changing over time? Where, as I mentioned earlier, in areas like the Northeast droughts are really short-term things, we get a couple of weeks or a couple of months where we're below that drought monitor number, and then we get some more rain and we come out of it. California and the areas you guys are in really are in more of these long term droughts. How do these long term droughts and all of the items that a grower or a municipality is facing to manage water impact? What do you feel it looks like five or 10 years from now in how growers and communities have to approach planning for having enough water?

Chris White

Yeah. That's a good question. Obviously, we've seen droughts before in California. If you look back, we had a similar drought cycle in the 1930s. Some folks think that we're in new ground with the drought that we're within. In California, they're looking at this very topic as to how we're going to operate into the future. How do we plan for the competing demands for water supply in California? And how do we manage around that? And there are various programs or studies that are occurring at the state level and at the Federal level in order to look at that moving into the future. And so from a statewide perspective, we're all dependent on getting through these studies and seeing on the backside of that what the water supply operations really are going to look like.

Dusty Weis:

Well, Chris, it's certainly a sobering discussion to have, we’ve certainly seen examples of it recently but as weather extremes become more of an unfortunately commonplace occurrence across North America, there's a lot that we can learn from the State of California's experience in dealing with these drought conditions over time. But this has been a great discussion from where we're sitting, and we appreciate you're making the time to have it. Chris White from the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Water Authority, thank you so much for joining us here on the FARMSMART Podcast.

Dusty Weis

That’s going to conclude this episode of The FARMSMART Podcast. New episodes arrive every month, so make sure you subscribe to The FARMSMART Podcast in your favorite app and visit nutrienagsolutions.com/FARMSMART to learn more.

The FARMSMART Podcast is brought to you by Nutrien Ag Solutions.

And the FARMSMART Podcast is produced by Podcamp Media, branded podcast production for businesses. podcampmedia.com. I’m Dusty Weis. For Nutrien Ag Solutions, thanks for listening.