Developing a Conservation Plan for Your Farm

What is a Conservation Plan?

A conservation plan is a written record of your management decisions and the conservation practices you plan to use and maintain on your farm. Carrying out your plan will achieve the goals of protecting the environment on and off your farm. After soil, water, air, plant and animal resources on your property are inventoried the resulting document becomes a tool for better management of your natural resources.

Benefits of a Conservation Plan

Following your conservation plan has many benefits:

• You will protect your soil and your farm’s productivity
• You will help improve quality of the water in your area
• You will improve your soil’s fertility and manage soil moisture
• You may attract desirable wildlife by creating nesting sites and winter cover
• You will protect the productive value of your land for future generations
• You can more readily comply with environmental regulatory requirements
• You may be eligible for USDA farm programs

What’s in a Conservation Plan?

A conservation plan includes:

• An aerial photo or diagram of your fields
• A list of your management decisions
• The location of and schedule for applying new conservation practices
• A soil map and soil descriptions
• Information sheets explaining how to carry out your specific management decisions
• A plan for operation and maintenance of practices, if needed.

What will you need to do?

You will need to know your crop sequence – what crops you plan to grow in each field. You’ll also need to put in information on how your land is farmed, what kind of tillage equipment you use, existing conservation practices, and your crop and livestock plans for the future.

How is a plan developed?

You will need to analyze your farm, field by field. The soil types on your farm need to be identified and also the slope and slope lengths of each field. It is beneficial to establish how much soil erosion is occurring on your farm in order to take preventative steps.

How can I measure Soil Erosion?

The Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) can be used to find out how much soil is eroding on each field. The RUSLE estimates the amount of soil erosion caused by water. An explanation and on-line help with this tool is available at: http://www.iwr.msu.edu/rusle/

You will find that five factors are used to figure soil loss trough erosion:

• rainfall
• soil erodibility
• Soil Loss slope length and steepness
• cropping and management
• erosion control practices

Notice that only the last two factors, cropping and management, and erosion control practices, are in your complete control. There are methods you can put in your plan to reduce soil erosion. Some options to reduce erosion might include:

1. You could farm on the contour instead of up and down hill, chisel plow instead of moldboard plow, and install a grassed waterway. The waterway will stop the gullying in the lower part of a field.
2. You could use no-till planting and install a grassed waterway.
3. You could construct a tile outlet terraces and moldboard plow on the contour.
4. You could add a close-grown crop, such as winter wheat, to your corn-soybean rotation, chisel plow on the contour, and install a grassed waterway.

Example Conservation Plan

After the plan is written

When you have inventoried your farm and developed your conservation plan the next step is to set up a reasonable schedule for applying any needed conservation practices. It may be several years before all your practices are installed. In addition to giving you more information on control of soil erosion, the SCCD might also be able to give you assistance on other natural resource concerns, such as pasture and woodland improvement, managing animal waste, wildlife habitat, irrigation water management, and stream bank protection.

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