Growers from Grangeville up to the Canadian border rely on rain to irrigate their crops, not giving much control to how much water they get. But they can control the quality of the water that runs off their crops and how it affects the river system. David Sparks, Idaho AG today with farmer Brent Uhlhorn. Speaker2: We're long term no till operation. My father started experimenting with no till in the early 80s. Went to full no till 100% on the farm in 1999. Big focus on conservation water tillage eliminating runoff erosion of those different kinds. Had really good luck with it, had our different rounds with types of residue management. We've done heavy harrows. We've done some mowing. Within the last few years, we've actually been able to quit having to do all that. The residue management packages on these, the newer equipment's quite a bit better. So we've been able to get through the residue clearance very well. And so now we just run through a combine. We can come right back in and direct seed into all this this field here it will go into a winter canola crop. But we can also come in and we can plant a spring legume of some kind a pea, a lentil, a chickpea, any of that get right into that, right through it. We can keep all this protection on the soil so we don't have any erosion come in. If we were to get a big storm of some kind, a big cloud burst. Speaker1: It never ceases to amaze me about how diligent farmers are in terms of being stewards of the land.
