Producers wanting to reduce soil and nutrients from leaving their fields can look to techniques developed by Iowa State researchers. These practices span the scale from in-field to watershed.
There is a lot of interest in using bioreactors, trenches filled with wood chips, to intercept tile flow at the edge of fields, says Matt Helmers, associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering. This emerging technology is being used at about a dozen sites in Iowa treating approximately 60 acres each. He says the bioreactors are getting attention because they are at a scale individual farmers can implement.
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