Grow crops, keep them sustainable, clean up the Mississippi River Basin

Excerpt

In 2009, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) announced that they would be offering money to some of the most impaired watersheds across a 13-state area: Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. These states have all been cited as direct contributors to the Gulf of Mexico Hypoxic zone (USDA 2012). Within these states, the Mississippi River Basin Initiative (MRBI) was rolled out to help producers and landowners blanket priority watersheds with conservation practices. This is a focused approach that works by identifying the most problematic areas and then using various conservation tools to clean up these areas and reduce our impact. Each state was charged with identifying their priority watersheds that would ultimately become eligible for the program. After identification and selection, local groups were then asked to submit proposals to apply for special partnership agreements that would work through existing USDA programs (Environmental Quality Incentive Program [EQIP], Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program [WHIP], Wetland Reserve Enhancement Program [WREP]) and serve as separate pools of money available only to those landowners in the priority watersheds. MRBI offers the same cost-share amounts as regular EQIP and WHIP and offers the same technical expertise.