Why advocates of an Olmsted County nitrate program want it broadened to other parts of the state

The architects of a water and soil program in Olmsted County say it has made a huge impact in reducing nitrate levels in watersheds and will continue to do so as more farmers join the initiative. 

Just last year, 119 farmers — about a fourth of all farmers in Olmsted County — were enrolled in the program, said Shona Langseth, a soil conservation technician for the county. That’s a steep increase from the 66 farmers enrolled in 2023, which Langseth attributes to county outreach efforts through mailings and flyers, in addition to word of mouth from participants. 

Nitrates had been on the county’s radar since the 2000s, but when American Rescue Plan Act funds became available during the COVID pandemic, two county board members asked some people in the Olmsted Soil & Water Conservation District to help do something about it. 

Martin Larsen, a feedlot technician for the county who helped design the program, expects that at its current pace, the county would be able to fund the program until 2027. He thinks it could have great impacts if implemented statewide in areas where it’s needed. 

During the last legislative session, various groups and lawmakers brought bills forward in the hopes of addressing nitrate contamination — including one that would have increased a fertilizer tax and another that sought to give a $5 per-acre tax credit to farms in the water quality certification program. Neither measure passed.

The Land Stewardship Project, meanwhile, advocated for a statewide expansion of the Olmsted County program, arguing that there is still more to be done around nitrates. 

The team at Olmsted County’s Soil & Water Conservation District agreed. “So the discussion is,” Larsen said, ‘How can this be funded at a more regional level, more permanently, to some degree?’”

Built around the science

The program’s requirements came directly from recommendations based on what science has shown are the best ways to reduce nitrate contamination, Larsen said. Those findings have been years in the making, with severe flooding in the spring of 2013 and 2015, for example, showing farmers the benefits of cover crops, making them more popular. 

“That was a lot of farmers’ first experiences with cover cropping, because they put cover crops on this land that wasn’t planted to production agriculture,” he said. 

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture did township testing to identify areas where wells had high nitrate levels. They conducted free tests for almost 22,000 residents in eight southeastern Minnesota counties and of the 8,714 that submitted a sample, 12.1% (1,058 wells) had nitrate levels greater than 10 mg/L nitrate — the federal and state health standard. 

Larsen, himself, worked with the Olmsted County Soil Health farm, where he tried various farming methods on 60 acres of land to see how different land use affected nitrates. Cover crops were one of those methods — and the thicker and taller they were, the higher the nitrate reduction. 

“It started to become apparent that cover crops were reducing nitrates below the rooting zone between 30 (percent) and 60 percent,” he said. 

The two most effective ways to reduce nitrates are haying and grazing the acres, and also planting alternative crops like small grains that have thicker fibrous roots than corn and soybeans, Larsen said. 

In 2020, two county commissioners reached out to the Olmsted Soil & Water Conservation District and asked it to make a plan. 

“We (had) been working on soil health for a long time. So we knew, what were the roadblocks?” Larsen said. “We knew the most effective ways to reduce nitrates … we had specific ways we already knew because we were already doing all this work.” 

So they put together a program to incentivize farmers to do just that. 

They got the funding in April of 2020, and the pilot rolled out with the first group of farmers contacts in the fall of 2022. That pilot just had one program component — for farmers to grow cover crops. The county had planned for it to reach 25 farmers, but it ended up with 56 applicants, all of whom were let into the program. 

A farmer-centric program

Angela White, a ​​soil conservation technician with the county who helped to create the program, said she knew it needed to be outcome-based, with the payout depending on crop performance. But she also wanted it to be flexible and easy for farmers to apply. 

The application allows farmers to add different enhancements to a base requirement that their cover crop reach 12 inches of height (for which the producer receives $55 per acre). Enhancements include letting cover crops grow to 24 inches and haying and grazing the cover crop, among other things.

“That’s our kind of sweet spot that we determine can sequester the most amount of free nitrogen in the soil profile, but still be at a height that’s manageable to work into their cropping operation,” White said.  

While the total amount a producer can make through the program is $15,750, a more common payout is around $10,000 to $12,000, Langseth said. 

The nitrogen reduction through the program so far in 2024 is equivalent to 8.6 trailer loads of Urea fertilizer, accounting for 9,584 acres enrolled. In 2023, 7,409 acres were in the program, reducing 7.5 trailer loads of Urea fertilizer, according to Larsen. 

Larsen joined the Land Stewardship Project at the Capitol to share the successes of his county’s program and push for its statewide expansion. 

Nitrate contamination was a top priority for the environmental advocacy group — and continues to be. Sean Carroll, a policy director with the Land Stewardship Project, said that while they’re figuring out what their exact pushes will be at the Legislature this year, the Olmsted County program was impressive. 

“(It) was really remarkable because at its heart it was a farmer-centric program, which means it gave farmers flexibility, and then it also drove results and impacts,” Carroll said. 

Larsen thinks this cost-share model is the way to kickstart change. 

“We’re funding it. We’re cost sharing this change. With farmers, in particular, (change) is community based,” he said. “Once that ball starts to roll, and you look across the landscape and you see more farms with cover crops on them than not, then there is a multiplier effect.”

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