Comments from 
Ron Warren near Bradgate
on soil conservation practices

It was great to meet you and get a chance to talk about the river.

You hit on one of my passions and I can get really excited about things that can and should be done to help preserve our future.

I hope you get to wear that shirt that says, "I helped save the Des Moines River"" and I hope that I can help be a part of that. I have been working on the conservation end of things here on my farm since about 1989.

I have put 70.8 acres into the Conservation Reserve Program and have that seeded down to grass.

We have improved the pheasant population by several hundred per cent in the last 10 years. Years ago the wind erosion was so bad that we would have drifts of sand out across the lane and you could not see the town of Bradgate only 1 1/2 miles away.

In 1991 we planted 2600 trees in a windbreak from the west side to the east side of the farm. We have cut the wind erosion by better than 90%. The past several years we have had green snap in the corn fields really bad. When we go to combine the area by the trees has the best crop. This last fall I could not make a full round with the combine on 1/3 mile rows in the first 100 rows by the trees. After we got past that first 100 rows we could make 10 rounds with the combine and still not have a full hopper.

This proves to me that the trees will provide protection for the crop and that we can afford to take some ground out of production and put in more windbreaks. This fall we will be seeding down another four sets of 70 foot wide windbreaks across the farm and next spring we will be planting over 9000 trees. We will set it up so that the trees will be selective harvested for lumber after 10 years and we will replant any that we take out for harvest. This will be a total of 15.6 acres put into windbreaks.

I will have 180 foot wide strips down between the windbreaks to farm. I feel that with the protection the trees will provide that I will more than pay for the lost ground with the increased production that I will get from the farm ground in the strips. I will also cut out the remaining wind erosion that we have. 

One other area that we are working on is the restoration of the streambank on the West Branch of the Des Moines River that runs around my farm on three sides. We have an area that is eroding away the bank and we will be working with the Iowa Tress Forever to restore that area and plant willows to keep the bank from washing out. Iowa Trees Forever established this as a demonstration site last year and we will be doing the plantings this fall. We will put rock in the base of the bank and come up the bank about 5 feet. From there we will plant willows to hold the bank. This will tie into a 150 foot wide filter strip that runs the length of the river bank. 

These are just a few of the things we are working on. I would like to see the DNR do more with silt beds on the river to help make the channel deeper and to help stop some of the flooding that takes place.

If you have anyone that could get us more information on this, drop me a note and I will follow up. Thanks for all that you have done so far and I will look forward to working with you on many of these other projects. 

See you later. Ron