Lessons Learned Developing a Nitrogen Management Tool for Iowa.

The scientific literature contains sophisticated analyses of natural resource problems with limited scope. Producers and conservation planners regularly address problems of much broader scope, but with much less sophistication. Everyone concerned would like to reduce the gap in sophistication, as long as the tools are simple to use. So, how can research accelerate the adoption of improved tools for conservation? As a case study, we present our experience in Iowa developing a tool to better manage nitrogen in tile drained agriculture for the Natural Resources Conservation Service. There is currently no accepted tool to quantify the effect of management on nitrogen loading. The NRCS in Iowa would like a spreadsheet tool for nitrogen similar to the existing Phosphorus Index. In addition to the challenges of "getting the science right", a number of barriers have appeared to delay the development and adoption of a nitrogen index tool. First, getting a new technology adopted simply takes a lot of time and effort, and a different skill set than is needed for research. Second, there is no standard institutional mechanism within the NRCS to adopt a new technology in a piecemeal fashion, which would be convenient for researchers. Rather, there is an understandable desire to provide standard tools for regional or national use. Unfortunately, this has the side effect of either asking researchers to pay for the development of regional databases, which is not seen as research, or of asking the NRCS to support data collection for unproven tools. Third, producers are concerned that any tools to quantify management effects on N loading would be used to regulate agriculture. Thus, a primarily technical question has political overtones. Any N management tools will have to be reviewed by Iowa technical review committee before being used by the NRCS.