It seems like “dollars spent” has become the new metric for reporting improvements in soil and water conservation. I totally agree, we should know how much  money is being spent on protecting our natural resources, but I think “dollars spent” is a misleading way to report progress. Taxpayers are entitled to information that contains more specificity, such as tons of soil or pounds of nitrogen kept from entering water bodies. 

Better yet, progress reporting should include efficiency information such as the cost of saving a ton of soil (cost/ton of soil), or the cost of averting nitrogen (cost/pound of nitrogen), from entering our water bodies. 

Current reporting methods may sometimes go one step beyond dollars spent and provide the number of practices implemented. That doesn’t give us the full picture either, because we don’t know, with any degree of accuracy, the effectiveness of the practices.

Recently, the Iowa BMP Mapping Project issued a cumulative report on the number of practices installed;

Certainly, these numbers can be impressive. However, it is almost meaningless to know how many practices are applied, or the amount of money spent, if we don’t understand the individual or cumulative effectiveness of these practices. In all fairness, the goal of the Iowa BMP Mapping Project was probably not to determine the benefits of conservation work. But maybe it should it have been.

Let’s face it. As conservationists, it’s up to us to tell our story and promote the value of conservation practices that keep contaminants from entering waterbodies. It is essential we tell the public what they are getting for their million-plus dollar investment in clean water.

As stewards of taxpayer money, we should start reporting more meaningful metrics. I think we should figure out how to report:

https://www.iowaagriculture.gov/press/2018press/press01242018.asp

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2018/04/12/unequal-funding-here-s-how-much-money-has-been.html

http://www.chesapeakeprogress.com/funding

The opinions of the author are not necessarily those of Corn+Soybean Digest or Farm Progress.