US Dairy Sustainability Awards: Upcoming Nominations Deadline

The Innovation Center for US Dairy is currently accepting nominations for this year’s US Dairy Sustainability Awards. The awards will recognize operations that have made commitments to environmental, economic, and social sustainability in the dairy industry. Nominations will be accepted through November 15, 2012, for the following awards:

• Outstanding Dairy Farm Sustainability
• Outstanding Dairy Processing and Manufacturing Sustainability
• Outstanding Achievement in Renewable Energy
• Outstanding Achievement in Energy Efficiency 

Visit the awards page and view the video below to learn more about the award selection criteria, the expert panel of judges, and past winners.

Nabbing Nitrates Video Series

The Soil and Water Conservation Society (SWCS) and the Iowa Chapter of SWCS are among 14 cosponsors of a new video series that shows how conservation practices remove nitrates from water. Missouri & Mississippi Divide Resource Conservation & Development Inc. (M&M Divide), based in west central Iowa, produced the four new water conservation videos in a series titled Nabbing Nitrates—Before Water Leaves the Farm.

In both English and Spanish, the series includes animation that shows what happens in wetlands and below the ground in four conservation practices that remove nitrates from surface and groundwater: “Water Conservation Drainage,” “Riparian Forest Buffers,” “Working Wetlands,” and “Bioreactors.” The series was produced with a Conservation Innovation Grant awarded by the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Services (NRSC).

The objective of the series is to educate landowners and producers of practices that can assist in solving the nutrient water quality issues in the Iowa Mississippi River Basin Initiative (MRBI) target watersheds.

Copies of the videos have been distributed to USDA NRCS, Farm Service Agency, and Iowa State University Extension offices in 25 counties that are part of the Iowa MRBI target watersheds. Those watersheds (and counties) are

• North Raccoon River Watershed: Buena Vista, Pocahontas, Sac, Calhoun, Carroll, Greene, Dallas, and Polk counties;
• Boone River Watershed: Kossuth, Hancock, Humboldt, Wright, and Hamilton counties;
• Upper Cedar River Watershed: Worth, Mitchell, Floyd, Chickasaw, and Bremer counties; and
• Maquoketa River Watershed: Fayette, Buchanan, Delaware, Dubuque, Jones, Jackson, and Clinton counties.

Soil and Water Conservation Districts and USDA NRCS offices in the six Iowa counties served by M&M Divide also received copies of the videos, which can be checked out for viewing. They are Audubon, Carroll, Crawford, Green, Guthrie, and Sac counties.

The videos are also available for viewing online on the M&M Divide’s projects page at www.mmdividercd.org.

Along with SWCS and the Iowa Chapter of SWCS, other partner sponsors who helped fund the series with cash and in-kind donations include Des Moines Water Works, Iowa Soybean Association, Iowa Environmental Council, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa Department of Agriculture-Soil Conservation Division, Agri Drain Corporation, Raccoon River Watershed Association, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, Carroll County Extension Council, Carroll County Soil and Water Conservation District, and Iowa Conservation Education Coalition.

Contact SWCS if you are interested in checking out our copy of the video series: 515-289-1227.

Considering Ecology, Economics, and Ethics: 2012 Conference Videos

Videos and photos from the 2012 SWCS International Annual Conference are now available for viewing on the Web site. Both the Monday and Tuesday plenary sessions are provided for online viewing.

In Monday's keynote lecture, conservation biologist, historian, and writer Curt Meine spoke about the ways that learning from the past can help us make ecological, economical, and ethical conservation choices for the future. Both the video and text of his lecture are available online.

The follow-up Tuesday morning panel discussed the projected economic ramifications of the pending Farm Bill on conservation programs; the effects on farms, communities, and farmers; and potential to reach the goal of balancing food, fiber, feed, and fuel with limited supplies of funds and growing supplies of people. The panel was moderated by Dan Zinkand. The Tuesday panel video is here.

Tuesday morning panelists included

• Laurie Drinkwater, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Horticulture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
• Ray Layton, Research Fellow for Environmental Safety within the Global Regulatory Scientific Affairs group at DuPont-Pioneer. 
• Curt Meine, Ph.D., Senior Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation and with the Center for Humans and Nature.
• Wanhong Yang, PhD., Economics Professor in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

At the author or presenter's discretion, many of the 250+ presentations, slides, and posters from the conference are available online at http://www.swcs.org/12ac.

Webcast- NIFA-CEAP Watershed Syntheses: Lessons Learned

  Free Watershed Academy Webcast entitled "USDA’s NIFA-CEAP Watershed Synthesis: Lessons Learned” on May 15, 2012 from 1:00pm to 3:00pm Eastern.
  Hear about some important lessons learned from USDA’s Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). 
USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) in partnership with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) established university-led watershed-scale research and extension projects in support of the USDA Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). CEAP addresses USDA's need to quantify the effects and benefits of agricultural conservation practices.
  This webcast will highlight a study led by North Carolina State University to analyze and synthesize key lessons learned from 13 of these watershed-scale projects on cropland and pastureland. The goal of CEAP Watersheds is to better understand how the suite, timing, and spatial distribution of conservation practices influence their effect on local water quality outcomes. The NIFA study also evaluated social and economic factors that influence implementation and maintenance of practices, as well as education critical to transferring knowledge to farmers, ranchers, community leaders, and other stakeholders to improve practice effectiveness. 

  This webcast will also highlight linkages between USDA’s CEAP project and US EPA’s Section 319 Nonpoint Source Program. Most of the 13 watersheds studied in the analysis also have 319 projects.

  To register for this webcast, please visit www.epa.gov/watershedwebcasts. 

National Soil and Water Stewardship Week

This week, soil and water stewardship efforts will be celebrated by conservation districts across the United States.

Governors in Iowa and Oklahoma have declared April 29 through May 6, 2012, as stewardship week in their respective states. These state-specific efforts will be held in conjunction with the National Association of Conservation Districts' 2012 "Soil to Spoon" stewardship awareness week.  

Click here to to find out more about Iowa Soil and Water Conservation Week. Read about other Soil and Water Stewardship events at the National Association of Conservation Districts Web site, and check out your local conservation district Web site to find out what's going on in your watershed!

2012 Annual Conference Student Opportunity

Team up with SWCS and attend the 2012 Annual Conference this summer!

This year SWCS will introduce a new Annual Conference Student Moderator Program. Up to 18 awardees will spend one day working at the SWCS International Annual Conference as Student Moderators and will assist the conference presenters and symposium organizers during the educational program. For their service, their conference registration fees and hotel room costs will be waived or covered.

Students will work one of the two education days of the meeting (Monday or Tuesday, July 23 or 24) and may attend any sessions they choose on the other. To apply, students should indicate the topic area in which they would like to moderate from the list of issues areas for the conference. These include: 

1. Adaptive Management of Conservation Efforts
2. Agricultural and Conservation Economics
3. Biodiversity Conservation and Management
4. Conservation in Urban Settings
5. Conservation Models, Tools and Technologies
6. Conservation Policy and Program Design
7. Outreach, Education and Community Engagement
8. Soil Resource Assessment and Management
9. Water Resource Assessment and Management

Full-time undergraduate or graduate students are eligible for the program. Click here to read more and to apply. 

2012 Annual Conference News

Registration is open, hotel reservations can be made and the Preliminary Program is available for the 2012 SWCS International Annual Conference. 

We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible this summer in Fort Worth. 

Please help us spread the word and invite your colleagues to join you.

www.swcs.org/12ac