Nearly 100 area farmers, students and community members filled the Sleepy Eye Event Center in late November to hear Dr. Satish Gupta’s research findings on Minnesota rivers. Dr. Gupta, a Raymond Allmaras professor of emerging issues in soil and water at the University of Minnesota, shared about the importance of being a good steward of the land and encouraged farmers to take a hard look at current management practices.

“We can’t live saying that there are no environmental impacts today,” Gupta said. “Do as much as you can today to help combat potential issues in the future.”

The biggest take-away from Gupta’s research is stream flows are increasing because Minnesota is receiving more precipitation, not because of the increase of tile. He shared that farmers are not drastically applying different nitrogen loads to the land, which supports his data analysis of the watershed landscape is not much different from when farmers had small grains on their land.

“Try to follow the state guidelines for nitrogen applications,” Dr. Gupta said. “Just try to be a good steward of the land.

The Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council helped fund Dr. Gupta’s research. The Brown County Corn and Soybean Growers and their checkoff dollars invited Dr. Gupta in conjunction with their annual meeting. The meeting highlighted past accomplishments with the delegation approving a $500 donation to three food shelves in Brown County, which has become an annual tradition of giving among the Board. Steve Commerford, Jim Peterson and Dan Schmitz were all re-elected to the Brown County Corn and Soybean Board for a three-year term.

“Today’s meeting and presentation was very good with some great conclusions that will have impacts to agriculture in the future,” said Commerford, who is also director for the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association. “It is important to understand this so that we can help change policies to help create a positive change for our farmers.”