Scott County Soil and Water Conservation District is very fortunate to be the recipient of several grants in 2008. We thank the sponsors of these grants and know that are work would be severely hampered without them.
Scott County Community Foundation has given us two grants.
One was a $500 grant to help support the costs associated with Soil and Water Stewardship week. This will help us to provide Conservation information to all elementary students in Scott County. Please click on the Soil and Water Stewardship link above to find out more information about this important program.
The other grant was for $1,000 to help support the Hardy Lake Sweep project. Every year volunteers come together to pick up trash around Hardy Lake. We provide them with all necessary supplies, drinks and lunch. Last year there were over 150 volunteers who truly made a difference to their community and world.
Clean Water Indiana has also provided us with two grants this year.
The first is a $2,000 Marketing Incentive grant. This money will be used to further the message of conservation in Scott County. The goal of our plan is to educate farmers on ways that they can better manage their resources, both monetary and conservational. We will accomplish this goal in three phases.
Phase one involves education. We will host two Soil Quality workshops. The first in June of 2008 will focus on Soil Testing. The second will be in March of 2009 and will focus on Cover Crops.
The second phase of our plan will be accomplished through marketing. We will advertise and promote the workshops in our local media. We also plan to provide educational articles focusing on Nutrient Management and Cover Crops to the local newspaper and also include articles in community flyers and our quarterly newsletter.
The final phase of this campaign is accomplished through follow-up with our customers. We will establish a list of landowners that attend the events and track if they felt the event was beneficial. We will also contact a sampling of landowners who receive our quarterly newsletter to see if they found the information useful. This follow-up will be conducted through telephone surveys.
The second grant is a $10,000 Sediment and Nutrient Reduction grant. The goal of our Sediment and Nutrient Reduction grant project is to increase the number of pasture and hay land producers who apply correct amounts of fertilizer and lime as indicated by soil tests. We will accomplish this through four steps.
Step one involves education. We will host a Pasture workshop in the summer of 2008 and emphasize the advantages of soil testing and variable-rate fertilizer application. This event will be advertised through our quarterly newsletter and local newspaper. The funding for this step is all ready paid by our district and the CWI Marketing Incentive grant.
Farmers know that soil testing can help their yield and reduce the application of excess nutrients, but they don’t want to spend the money testing pasture and hay land. Step two of our plan will be accomplished by offering free soil testing. Along with our partner Crop Production Services, we will offer up to $400 of free pasture or hay land soil testing for approximately 20 producers. The soil testing will take place in the month following the workshop.
Step three involves developing a BMP. We will offer a consultant $50 to follow-up on each soil test. The consultation will insure that the producer has the correct information and needed resources to see that fertilizer is applied according to soil test recommendations.
Now that the soil has been tested and the BMP written, the most important element of our project is application. Step four is a $250 incentive payment for actually completing the BMP and for application according to the soil tests. The plan can be implemented in either fall 2008 or spring 2009. The producer will receive this payment after providing receipt of application.
This is a great project and we believe so strongly in it that we have partnered with both Jefferson and Clark County. In addition to a multi-county partnership one final way we plan to maximize the effects of the grant is by documenting success. We want to be able to share the results of three or four of the farmers at future events, in newsletters or newspaper articles. We will stretch the dollars that have been allocated to us and give our project even greater impact on our community.
Watch for more information about the Clean Water Indiana grants as the year unfolds.