MWRDGC established a Nutrient Loss Reduction Research and Demonstration Project on agricultural land at its Fulton County site to foster collaboration with the agricultural sector to develop and expedite nutrient reduction practices. The 13,500-acre property is located between Canton and Cuba, Illinois, about 190 miles southwest of Chicago and 40 miles southwest of Peoria. It was originally purchased in 1970 to restore strip-mined land; approximately 4,000 acres were converted to productive farmland.
Since 2015, research and demonstration projects have been established at the site in collaboration with many partners, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Crop Sciences, Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, and Illinois Sustainable Technology Center; Illinois Central College; Ecosystem Exchange; Illinois Farm Bureau; and Fulton County Farm Bureau. Projects include inter-seeded cover cropping, riparian grass buffer, denitrifying bioreactors, runoff irrigation, subirrigation, drainage water management, designer biochar, and watershed-scale nutrient reduction demonstration.
In 2019, a field day was held at the site in collaboration with IFB, Fulton County Farm Bureau, University of Illinois, and Nutrient Research and Education Council. Participants included the partners’ leadership, farmers, representatives from the agriculture sector and communities, and other stakeholders. Highlights of the field day included demonstration of a bioreactor installation and results from cover crop interseeding and drainage irrigation research.
In 2020, the partners received a U.S. EPA grant to develop and scale up an innovative bioreactor and treatment system to effectively capture nutrients from subsurface drainage water, recycle nutrient-captured biochars as a slow-release fertilizer, and keep nutrients in the closed agricultural loop. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the outreach on this collaboration was moved to a virtual format. MWRDGC, IFB, and Fulton County Farm Bureau worked together to prepare and share a research white paper and video tour of the research site, as well as to host a virtual farmer focus group, providing farmers with an opportunity to share meaningful feedback on continued research at the site.
All involved partners value the collaboration that has stemmed from this project and hope to bring farmers and the MWRDGC research team together at the Fulton County research and demonstration site in 2021.
For more information, visit https://old.ilfb.org/ifb-in-action/what-were-working-on/protecting-our-environment/nlrs-partnerships/rural-urban-partnerships/
