By TIM ALEXANDER

Illinois Correspondent

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois Nutrient Research and Education Council (NREC), founded in 2012, rewards farmers and other users of fertilizer products for demonstrating best management practices defined by the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy (NLRS).

These BMPs help ensure farmers receive the best possible performance from their nutrient applications, while enhancing their soil’s fertility and addressing environmental concerns related to fertilizer use. To date, NREC has invested almost $20 million in research projects, including nearly $4 million awarded this year for nine new and 19 ongoing projects across Illinois.

Maximizing efficiency, minimizing nutrient losses, and mitigating negative environmental impacts – including Illinois’ contributions to the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico – are common goals that bind together farmers, the fertilizer industry, agricultural commodity groups, and university researchers seeking to solve the vexing issue of crop nutrient losses.

Those three goals also define NREC’s overall research priorities. This is according to NREC Executive Director Julie Armstrong, who took time to explain the council’s mission and provide a glimpse into 2019 NREC project funding and research priorities.

“Illinois NREC is a farmer- and retailer-funded initiative for nutrient research,” said Armstrong, who joined the council in 2015 as its first full-time director after spending 17 years in various nutrient research industry roles. “It is important since the introduction of the (NLRS), with very little funding coming from the state for research initiatives.

“NREC is filling that gap of making sure that we have the science to back the practices of the Strategy, and giving farmers the tools to implement these practices on their farms and operations.”

Armstrong explained how NREC’s research priorities are pursued by sponsoring grant-driven projects that examine the effectiveness and economic viability of farming practices, including nitrogen and phosphorous management and tile and conservation systems. NREC grant partners include the University of Illinois, Southern Illinois University, Illinois State University, Purdue University, The Wetlands Institute, and the Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Assoc. (IFCA).

“When we are developing our research priorities, we really look at projects that fit into the three categories. Maximizing efficiency includes implementing the ‘4-Rs’ and making sure we are being as efficient as we possibly can be with our applications, and minimizing losses with things like cover crops, which capture nutrient runoff in the field.

“Finally, mitigating negative environmental impacts includes edge-of-field practices such as the use of woodchip bioreactors, saturated buffers, wetlands, or other such measures that are within our portfolio,” Armstrong said.

Universities are given NREC grant money to conduct and evaluate field conservation practices on both university research farms and, primarily, independent crop lands. Farmers are compensated for the use of a small portion of their crop lands as well.

Funding for NREC research initiatives comes courtesy of a special 2012 state statute that applies a 75-cent assessment on every ton of bulk fertilizer sold in Illinois. The 13-member NREC Council is charged with soliciting, reviewing, and funding projects and educational programs that fulfill the organization’s mission.

The IFCA serves as a liaison between farmers and the university researchers. Dan Schaefer, director of nutrient stewardship, works with IFCA’s large membership base of fertilizer retailers to identify farmers who may benefit from an affiliation with Illinois NREC.

“The staff at IFCA is really serving to bridge that gap between scientists and farmers,” Armstrong said.

The Bloomington-based IFCA has been receiving grant funding from NREC for the past four years, said Jean Payne, IFC executive director. The association provides farmers enrolled in NREC programs with industry guidance on recommended nitrogen application rates.

“Because we had such a dearth of research for so many years due to reduced state funding and budget cuts, there was a period when we weren’t doing much nitrogen work. But when NREC was founded and made grant money available, we set out to identify farmers who would put N rate trials on their farms. In the last four years we have conducted over 100 N rate trials,” Payne said.

“We go through retailers to connect with the farmers, and when we go out and speak about the (NLRS), sometimes farmers will come up to us and ask how they can get a rate study on their farm. We have found a lot of farmers like that.”

About 35 farmers in Illinois have signed on to participate in this year’s NREC “N-Rate Trial” program, which pays $1,000 in compensation to farmers willing to conduct university researcher-supervised crop nutrient trials on small sections of individual farms. The protocols for the N-Rate Trial program were developed by Dr. Emerson Nafziger of the University of Illinois, who also analyzes the results of the trials for NREC.

The data are applied to NREC’s Maximum Return to Nitrogen (MRTN) Calculator, a free phone app that provides applicators with an ideal recommended range of N to apply to achieve the maximum rate of return relative to the amount of N applied. N-Rate Trial results are posted by county on the IFCA website at www.ifca.com under the “Keep it For the Crop” balloon as results are gathered.

The Illinois Farm Bureau plays an active role in advising NREC initiatives and helping farmers connect with them, as do the Illinois soybean and corn associations. Illinois NREC also accepts a large amount of input from environmental organizations, which Payne said helps lend strength and validation to its nutrient research conclusions.

“The environmental groups are very interested and somewhat insistent that farmers be involved in this research, that we aren’t just doing this on research farms and are involving actual farmers,” she explained. “Before NREC, we really only had enough money to do research on university farms, which was good, but the desire of the environmental groups is that we include more growers.

“I think that it is an excellent piece of advice, because now these farmers that are doing these N rate studies on their farms are finding out for themselves that they can (use less N) and achieve the same or better results. And then they are telling other farmers about it.”

Illinois’ transparency in spotlighting how its agricultural sector is working to lessen nutrient loss and negative environmental impacts through the NLRS is helping the state’s farmers to, so far, avoid excess regulation and lawsuits, noted Payne. By merging the interests and perceptions of environmental groups, farmers, and commodity groups to educate farmers to minimize ag nutrient losses, the NREC is working to keep more stringent regulations affecting farm practices at bay.

To that end, the NREC Council will be developing 2020 program priorities later this summer, with individual grant proposals due by Oct. 1. “We will make our program decisions by the end of the year,” Armstrong said.

A complete list of 2019 projects and the most recent NREC Annual Report can be downloaded from the NREC website at www.illinoisnrec.org