Eastern Iowa Airport plans sustainable farming projects

CEDAR RAPIDS - The Eastern Iowa Airport, which is one of the largest farmland owners in Linn County, will participate in projects to reduce nutrient runoff and produce a renewable source of biofuel.

The municipally-owned airport has more than 2,000 acres it leases to five local farmers for the producing corn and soybeans. The farmland is located at the top of the watersheds for the Cedar and the Iowa rivers.

The airport announced Monday that it will work with Iowa State University's research team for STRIPS - Science-based Trials of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairie Strips - to establish an experimental study site. A 100-acre section of land will be divided into a test field and a control field with measurement tools put in place to test the runoff from each field.

Approximately 10 percent of the test field will be planted with native prairie strips with seed provided by Pheasants Forever,

During a 2007 to 2012 trial period, the ISU team found that a 10 percent conversion to prairie reduced sediment runoff by 95 percent, phosphorus runoff by 90 percent and nitrogen runoff by nearly 85 percent when compared with the losses from 100 percent row-crop, no-till watersheds.

Lisa Schulte Moore, associate professor of natural resource ecology and management at ISU and co-lead researcher on the STRIPS project, said the partnership will be mutually beneficial.

'Working with The Eastern Iowa Airport provides the STRIPS team with increased visibility for our science and the prairie strips practice,” Moore said. 'A lot more people will be able to see the prairie strips practice in this location.”

Along with the benefits of nutrient runoff reduction, introducing prairie strips will provide habitat for beneficial pollinators such as bees and butterflies. The STRIPS sites also support several species of insect predators that can potentially reduce insect pests of corn and soybeans.

In the second project, the airport will be converting 63.6 acres of low-performing farmland to grow miscanthus, a large perennial grass that produces more biomass of fuel per acre than other types of grass or prairie.

The University of Iowa will burn miscanthus to generate electricity, replacing part of its need to use fossil fuel. Through its Biomass Fuel Project, the UI is charged with achieving 40 percent renewable energy consumption by 2020.

'Up to now, there have been lots of good reasons to grow perennial energy crops, but money hasn't been one of them,” said Emily Heaton, assistant professor of agronomy at ISU and extension biomass specialist. 'By providing growers with a stable, long-term market, the UI Biomass Fuel Project removes much of the risk associated with trying a new crop like miscanthus.”

The prairie grass in the STRIPS project also will be used in UI's biomass fuel project.