Natural ecosystems offer some powerful solutions to our climate crisis. And nature holds answers to other environmental challenges as well—like figuring out how to feed a growing human population without contributing to climate change, pollution, and toxic algal blooms.  

The invention of synthetic fertilizer allowed farmers to double their yields per acre in the past century, supporting some four billion additional humans. But its use and production can have serious ecological impacts. Along with methane from livestock and the carbon released by soil disturbance, fertilizer is a primary reason why agriculture accounts for about 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the US. But new funding models in the Midwest are providing an incentive to farmers to swap status quo techniques for more sustainable practices.    

The high-temperature production of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is by itself responsible for 1.4 percent of global carbon emissions. After that fertilizer is applied to crops, it can release nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 245 times more potent than carbon dioxide. And excess nitrogen also finds its way into waterways, polluting drinking supplies and wildlife habitat and, in the American Midwest and Plains, flowing down the Mississippi River to create a vast, headline-making “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, where it feeds toxic algal blooms that suck the oxygen out of the water. 

“That is the principal cause of these dead zones and toxic algal blooms in the Gulf of Mexico,” says Jim Levitt, director of the International Land Conservation Network at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. “The Mississippi River collects fertilizer runoff from Montana all the way to Pittsburgh, and sends it down in one big spout that flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and it becomes this concentrated soup of nitrogen and phosphorus.”  

However, some fairly simple practices can reduce how much fertilizer farmers need, and how much ends up polluting watersheds. First and foremost, says Matthew Helmers, director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center at Iowa State University, is resisting the tendency to over-fertilize. About a third of farmers apply more nitrogen than necessary, sometimes in an effort to maximize yields or hedge against risk.  

“If we can reduce the rate, and not reduce yields for the crop,” he says, that cuts nitrogen loss as well as costs for the farmer. Iowa State and other universities developed a calculator to help Midwestern farmers determine the best amount of nitrogen to use depending on their goals. And simply fertilizing in the spring instead of in the fall can also reduce nitrogen runoff by an average of 6 percent.  

Beyond better fertilizer management, regenerative farming—a more holistic and sustainable approach to agriculture that can help restore degraded soil, enhance biodiversity, and protect water and other resources—can also help reduce nitrogen runoff. 

One of the most basic regenerative farming practices is planting cover crops in between growing seasons. “That’s where we try to have something green out there during the period when we’re not growing our cash crop,” Helmers says, “covering the soil surface and taking up nutrients that might otherwise be susceptible to loss.”  

A perennial cover crop such as rye or oat stabilizes the soil, but also converts excess water-soluble nitrate into plant matter, “so there’s less nitrate that could be leached away in the next rainfall event,” Helmers explains. Rarely employed just 30 years ago, the use of cover crops nearly doubled in Iowa between 2017 to 2021, to an estimated 2.8 million acres.  

Other in-field practices include a diverse crop rotation—alternating corn or soybean seasons with forage crops, for example—or growing an energy crop such as switchgrass, which can be used to produce renewable natural gas. (That may sound like gas-powered greenwashing, but it’s a real technology.) Low- or no-till farming, meanwhile, which reduces soil disturbance and leaves most of the plant residue on the surface after harvest, can cut nitrous oxide emissions and help soil retain more carbon and nutrients. No-till farming is now employed on 41 percent of Iowa farmland, or 9.5 million acres.

The edge of a farm offers one more chance to halt nitrogen loss as water drains off the cropland and into nearby waterways. “We have a whole suite of practices to treat that water before we deliver it to a stream, and they’re kind of utilizing Mother Nature to promote denitrification,” Helmers says, referring to the natural process that converts nitrate into dinitrogen, the inert, stable gas that makes up most of Earth’s atmosphere.  

In one configuration, underground drainage systems can be diverted so they release water perpendicular to a stream instead of directly into it, forcing it to flow slowly across a 30-foot vegetated buffer. If the soil in that buffer zone doesn’t contain enough organic matter to promote denitrification, then installing a bioreactor—which sounds high-tech, but is simply a trench full of wood chips—can help do the job. These simple methods can reduce nitrate loss by 42 percent or more. 

“We could also route that drainage water to a wetland—that might be a riverine wetland next to the stream, or an oxbow wetland, or one that we restore,” Helmers says. In addition to providing ecological benefits to the landscape, “those can be very effective for promoting denitrification.”   

Despite the impact of nitrates on both local drinking water and the Gulf’s marine environment, these practices remain voluntary in Iowa and in most other states. But there are federal and local cost-share programs designed to encourage their adoption, some more robust than others.  

Iowa’s Polk County, for example, offers both financial and logistical assistance for installing edge-of-field buffers, making it easier and more economical for farmers who might otherwise be put off by the hassle or cost. And since water treatment plants are finding that it’s more efficient to pay farmers to reduce fertilizer runoff at the source than to build additional treatment facilities, new funding models have emerged that encourage more farmers to introduce conservation measures to their land.  

The multistate Soil and Water Outcomes Fund, for example, pays farmers to create vegetative buffers, plant cover crops, or employ other regenerative agriculture techniques chosen by the farmer. Later in the year, an independent scientific team measures and verifies the reduction in nitrogen or increase in stored soil carbon. The fund then sells a mix of environmental credits to various public and private entities seeking to meet required or voluntary sustainability goals. Water quality credits, for example, allow water treatment facilities subject to strict nutrient reduction standards to fund pollution mitigation at the source instead of paying for expensive new equipment. Carbon offsets, meanwhile, are tied to the amount of additional carbon stored in the soil.  

Importantly, given the growing and valid criticism aimed at carbon offset schemes, those credits are tied to actual outcomes, “after they have been produced and verified,” says Eric Letsinger, CEO of Quantified Ventures, whose AgOutcomes subsidiary jointly manages the fund with the Iowa Soybean Association. The outcomes-based model is “a demonstrably more cost-effective means of achieving environmental improvements than existing ‘pay for practices’ approaches,” he adds, in a paper prepared for the Environmental Defense Fund.  

“Basically the sewage treatment plant pays into a fund, and the fund will contract with soybean farmers to manage their land in a different way, so as to reduce the amount of phosphorus and nitrogen that reaches the streams,” Levitt explains. “That’s a natural climate solution that is applicable to the entire Mississippi River Valley, and will clean up the water more efficiently than building engineered filters into the streams of Guttenberg, Iowa, or Des Moines.”  

In 2021 and 2022, the Soil and Water Outcomes Fund expanded from Iowa into eight more states, and paid farmers an average of $31 per acre to implement new conservation measures on over 241,000 acres of cropland. Those practices prevented 3.4 million pounds of nitrogen and 206,000 pounds of phosphorus from reaching waterways, and sequestered over 465 million pounds of carbon.  

Still, there’s a lot more ground to cover—literally—including millions of acres in Iowa alone. Cultural barriers remain, with some longtime farmers wary of deviating from a proven formula.  

“We need to get over that hump of changing what’s the norm,” Helmers says, perhaps hinting at the most powerful untapped nature-based solution of all: human nature. “We still need to create a sense of urgency—that we have a problem, and we need to do something about it.” 

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: This map illustrates how runoff from farms (green areas) and cities (red areas) drains into the Mississippi River, delivering nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico and fueling the annual hypoxic zone. Credit: NOAA.

Water in the West—one of the most enduring and confounding stories of human settlement anywhere around the world.  

Jim Holway, who retired as director of the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy this summer, has spent more than 40 years helping to solve the puzzle of ensuring sustainable water resources in this increasingly arid region. In the latest Land Matters podcast, he describes the challenges ahead, and the kind of leadership—and serious, good-faith negotiation—it will take to establish a more secure water future. 

With some places having their water restricted, and big reservoirs like Lake Mead drawing down to historically low levels, it has become increasingly clear that water from the Colorado River—distributed to nine states in the US and Mexico through a series of agreements and amendments hammered out since the 1920s—is no longer enough to meet the demands of a fast-growing population. 

How did the region get to this point? “I’d say it was a combination of optimism, beginning with allocating more water [than would be available], and then it was just ignoring science for political reasons,” said Holway. “If I want to get my water project approved, it’s going to be a lot easier if I can convince people there’s enough water left for their project too. Even once we should have known better, we acted like we didn’t know better.” 

The water allocations now have a structural deficit, Holway said, that is clear throughout the year-to-year ups and downs of drought and sufficient snowpack. Climate change is intensifying everything. 

“We designed a hydrologic system for a physical reality that is changing on us, and the change in the level of heat is driving the system. More evaporation and more demand for agriculture, more demand in urban use—that heat is actually a more significant factor than precipitation. Whereas there is a lot of uncertainty about what the future precipitation changes will be in the Southwest, it’s very clear that it’s going to be hotter.” 

While politicians debate climate science, Holway says, water and land managers know they have no choice but to prepare for the uncertain future that climate change will bring: “Droughts that cause inadequate supplies for historic uses, floods that exceed the infrastructure we’ve built to handle flooding, wildfires of much greater intensity and size, urban areas that are getting increasingly hot and leading to crisis situations in the middle of the summer—this is the reality of our future, and we need to adapt to deal with it.” 

Building the capacity of local communities to integrate land use planning and the management of water resources has been the calling card of the Babbitt Center under Holway’s tenure, including using scenario planning techniques to map out future supply and demand conditions. Importantly, agriculture—which uses approximately three-quarters of Colorado River water—has increasingly been at the table, Holway said. 

When asked to look to the future, Holway said, “It’s important for anyone doing this kind of work to find some way to sustain themselves. I suspect the thing that makes me most optimistic is when I look at the 20- and 30-year-olds getting involved . . . it seems that they really have an understanding of the challenges they’re inheriting.” 

One of those challenges is developing the capacity to work together as a civilization to address water shortages in a more serious and straightforward manner, he said. 

“When societies fail, it may look like it’s because of a flood, a drought, disease, or warfare. However, societies have survived those challenges before. Why do they not survive the next one? Typically, what we find is they have lost the ability to govern themselves. 

“To me, that is where my main pessimism comes from. It isn’t our water challenge. It’s, will we come together? Will we make the necessary decisions we need to govern ourselves? That is our biggest challenge, and it’s what we’re doing particularly badly at the moment.” 

Water, Holway said, “perhaps will help us rediscover our ability to come together and make collaborative decisions. There are very few things that humans see as critical to their survival [more than] a good water supply. That’s pretty clear and pretty compelling. Let’s hope it’s part of our path forward.” 

Jim Holway served as director of the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy from its founding in 2017 until late 2023. He was elected to the board of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, directed the Western Lands and Communities program with the Sonoran Institute, and served as a professor of practice in sustainability at Arizona State University and assistant director at the Arizona Department of Water Resources. He has degrees from Cornell University and the University of North Carolina, and was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners. 

You can listen to the show and subscribe to Land Matters on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more about the Babbitt Center as part of the Lincoln Institute’s work to mitigate and adapt to climate change at http://babbittcenter.org. 

Further Reading

Colorado River growers say they’re ready to save water, but need to build trust with states and feds (NPR)

John Farner Named Executive Director of the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy (Land Lines magazine)

Fellows in Focus: Neha Gupta (Land Lines magazine) 

The Babbitt Center: Who We Are (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy)

Babbitt Center Video Library (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy)  

The Hardest-working River in the West (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy) 

Sowing Seeds (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy) 

Get your own Colorado River Basin Map (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy) 

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Lead image: Jim Holway, founding director of the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy. Credit: Courtesy image.

John Farner, a leading expert on water, land use, and agriculture, has been named executive director of the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy. Farner will lead the Babbitt Center’s work to promote the integration of land and water management in the United States and around the world.

Farner, who joined the Babbitt Center in September, was previously global chief sustainability officer of the precision agriculture technology company Netafim. He succeeds founding director Jim Holway, who is retiring after leading the Babbitt Center since its launch by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in 2017.

“The Babbitt Center has established itself as a thought leader at the nexus of land use planning and water management in the Colorado River Basin under Jim Holway’s leadership, with a focus on connecting and supporting the communities that steward this essential resource,” said George W. McCarthy, president of the Lincoln Institute. “John Farner brings experience and perspectives to this role that will help us deepen our roots in the region, even as we expand our knowledge base and global influence.”

Farner has spent more than 20 years promoting solutions to global environmental challenges, and has addressed the United States Congress, the United Nations, and various other national and global organizations. Before joining Netafim, he served as head of sustainability, public affairs, and strategic initiatives for the US-based Irrigation Association, where he was the chief advocate and spokesperson for the industry before national and international policymakers, as well as NGOs. At Netafim, Farner oversaw initiatives related to agriculture, water replenishment, and corporate social responsibility.

“Water is the lifeblood of the West, and the decisions we make today will have lasting impacts well into our future,” Farner said. “I’m thrilled to be joining such a talented team as we embrace the challenge of making a positive impact on our land, water, and livelihoods. The spotlight on the Colorado River Basin is growing, and the Babbitt Center has proven to be the best resource for tools and solutions that help communities secure their water future. I’m excited to build upon our efforts and expand our reach, sharing what we’ve learned with others facing similar challenges in the United States and around the world.”

Since its founding, the Babbitt Center has developed tools and best practices to support community-led management of land and water resources in the Colorado River Basin, which is dependent on one of the most heavily used and overallocated rivers in the world. It works throughout the seven Colorado River Basin states, binationally across the Basin into Mexico, and with Native American Tribes, helping communities become more resilient and building an exchange of transformative ideas with other arid and semiarid regions.

“Effective land and water management is critically important, especially as the climate changes,” McCarthy noted. “The Babbitt Center is testing innovative new methodologies and approaches for both urban and rural communities, and we’re ready to share these ideas broadly as we help build capacity and resilience in the Basin and beyond.”

Learn more about the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy.

The Lincoln Institute provides a variety of early- and mid-career fellowship opportunities for researchers. In this series, we follow up with our fellows to learn more about their work.

While pursuing her doctorate at the University of Arizona, Neha Gupta participated in the Babbitt Center’s Dissertation Fellowship Program, which assists PhD students whose research focuses on integrating land and water policy to advance water sustainability and resilience. Gupta is now a joint assistant research professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. We caught up with her to talk about climate change, urban stormwater innovations, and her favorite cli-fi novels; this interview has been edited for length and clarity.

JON GOREY: What is the focus of your work, and how did your fellowship help advance that research?

NEHA GUPTA: A lot of my work is focused on urban hydrology, the use of stormwater as a resource, especially in arid regions, and collaborative approaches to water resource planning. I received the fellowship at the beginning of 2020—as we know, a very chaotic time in global history—so not only did it help me get across the finish line with my dissertation, but it gave me some stability in that time as well. Since then, I’ve engaged with people at the Babbitt Center and am working a little more closely with them; I got involved with being a small-group facilitator for some of the exploratory scenario planning work that they’re doing with workshops in Cochise County, and I point to the center as a place the students I’m working with and mentoring might want to partner with or eventually work for.

JG: What are you working on now, and what are you interested in working on next?

NG: I’m especially focused on green stormwater infrastructure. I’m involved in a lot of collaborative projects with the City of Tucson, the Pima County Flood Control District, and other water managers across the state. I’m also working on a statewide water reliability planning effort with the Department of Water Resources. So I’m helping manage that project at a high level, and also specifically looking at opportunities to use stormwater to recharge groundwater and support water resource needs in Arizona as things start to look a bit tighter across the Colorado River Basin.

In Tucson, we have a program called Storm to Shade that’s focused on maximizing green infrastructure, with a community outreach component and a maintenance and monitoring component. That program involves a couple of different agencies, and I work a lot with them. So it’s not just myself working in urban hydrology, but we have other people in the university thinking about it from a social, community-based perspective with an equity lens, we have landscape architects, and we all try to knit our work together . . . because stormwater really sits at the intersection of landscape architecture, urban planning, hydrology, soil health, equity, and more socially based components and perspectives.

JG: A tropical storm just dropped months’ worth of rain on Southern California in a few hours. Is that the kind of situation where some of that extreme rainfall could be collected, or is that more of a disaster than an opportunity?

NG: We’re trying to make it both. That’s exactly the kind of work that we’re trying to focus on. When we do get these bigger storms, a lot of that water is considered a threat to property. But that’s excess water that can be harnessed and used to support plants, which can then help address the urban heat island effect, and can create microclimate benefits in different areas of the state. They call it urban enhanced runoff, and that can be used for groundwater recharge projects. It’s really about treating water in a more holistic sense. And thinking about equity across an urban region, the wealthier areas tend to have more canopy and lower temperatures. So capturing urban stormwater is a resources benefit, but it can address a whole other slew of issues.

JG: When it comes to your work, what keeps you up at night? And what gives you hope?

NG: There isn’t a lot that keeps me up at night. We know that we live in a water-stressed region. It’s been this way for a long time, and it’s really about having creative ways to move water around to meet various water demands. We know that we live in an area that’s getting hotter. We know that we live in an area that’s going to be experiencing more unpredictable precipitation, whether it’s record-breaking dry years or record-breaking wet years. So I think to stay in this space in the long run, you can’t let those things keep you up at night. Otherwise you won’t get any sleep to show up the next day.

I think the hardest part, or maybe the thing that does keep me up at night, is the heat and the temperatures. Those probably cause the most immediate threat to life. But that’s why we’re focusing on ways to increase and support the urban canopy.

I’m very much a solutions-focused person, and we know these problems are not new. They’re just getting bigger and more pressing and unpredictable. But there are a lot of things we can do to address them. It really requires us working collaboratively.

JG: What’s the best book you’ve read lately?

NG: I am a pretty big fan of the “cli-fi” or climate fiction genre. On the more hopeful end, The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson is a great exercise in thinking about not only some of the terrible things that might happen as a result of climate change—and while this book came out a few years ago, we see some of these things showing up in the news now; the first chapter starts out with a heat wave in India that’s above the wet bulb temperature that humans can survive in—but also a lot of different environmental strategies. A book I recently finished that is on the more concerning end, but that I really enjoyed—it read like a movie—was called The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger. In that book, a Category 6 hurricane hits Miami, and essentially wipes it off the map. He really links together a lot of our existing societal struggles, but in the context of natural disasters that are amplified by climate change. So they’re kind of two sides of the genre—one’s a little more hopeful, the other a little more concerning—but I think they help seed the imagination and help us look a few steps out and wrap our heads around an overall slow-moving crisis that shows its face most visibly in natural disasters. I really appreciate a good story—but a story that can also help me with my own work and wrapping my head around the bigger picture.

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Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Image: University of Arizona Assistant Research Professor and former Babbitt Fellow Neha Gupta. Credit: Courtesy photo.