Combat Nutrient Loss with Controlled Drainage

February 18, 2021

Video Transcript

- Patient and the Centers for Disease and Control ranks farming among the highest occupations for loss of life by suicide. What are some of the warning signs of suicide? And what do you know what to look for? Some of the common signs, warning signs of suicide, might include talking or writing about suicide or death, feeling hopeless, trapped, or like a burden, giving away prized possessions, making a plan or acquiring means, saying goodbye, isolation from others, loss of interest in things that were typically very important to people, and mood changes, which might be periods of highs to lows, or lows to highs. And one of those resources that I'd like to share with you is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. That number is 1-800-273-8255. And I know this can be a difficult topic to discuss, but know that there are a number of resources that are available to those that are struggling, and many of those can be found on our MSU Extension Farm Stress website. And so thank you very much for the work that you do, and know that there are a lot of people working very hard behind the scenes to support you as you support us. Thank you and have a great day. - [Eric] If you'd like to learn more about farm stress, please join us tomorrow, Friday at 11 o'clock. We've got a session called Mending the Stress Fence. If you're interested in that, you can find the Zoom link and the passcode in that final schedule that was emailed out to you. All right. So I am going to go ahead and turn things over to Dr. Ehsan Ghane. If you were on earlier today, you heard Ehsan talk about some other topics related to drainage. And so this morning, he's going to share our last session before the noon hour. So Ehsan, with that, I'm going to turn things over to you. - Excellent. Welcome everybody. Why don't we talking a little bit about controlled drainage today? So my name is Ehsan Ghane. I'm an assistant professor and extension specialist. I'm gonna talking about controlled drainage. In the morning, I talked about joining wet spots with the two options of the targeted draining where you put your drain pipes tiles in the wet spots, you carry the waterway, or you would put a blind in that. And each one had its own requirements of the soil and the conditions that would help you decide which one to go with. So now, assuming you got Panadol layout drainage system. If you were in the morning you to remember it's a parallel system is that you're tiling the whole field. In that case, you can do control drainage. So I'll explain what it is. So take a look at this video. I just made it probably like 10 minutes ago. So take a close look. In the next slide, I'm gonna ask you to tell me what this is. So you can use PollEv.com/sweetfield375. That website, if you log in, it'll help you, it'll give you the option or you can text sweet field to this number, 37607. So what was that? Was it soil disturbed by an army of earthworms? Was it freshly tiled field? Was it a freshly tilled? And then was it a surface of Mars, or none of the above? (giggles) I just made it like probably just seconds before I started speaking. Actually, if you heard on the news, this afternoon, you heard on the news that NASA's spacecraft, it's going to be planning to land on Mars this afternoon. So it's relevant. I mean, surface of Mars is irrelevant choice. So what was that video? Where is my phone? - [Eric] Ehsan, I tried this with a north poll everywhere on my phone. I'm the one who put in the surface of Mars. - Okay. - [Eric] Somebody wasn't just messing around. I just decided to put down. - Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I mentioned it this afternoon, NASA is gonna land hopefully safely, if I read the news right. Okay. So freshly tilled field, freshly, so the option B, firstly tiled field, the second one is freshly tilled is the only like one L different, but it's tilled or the one is just tile. So the answer is the fresh tilled, I'm sorry, freshly tiled, the one that's got 25%. So see this? So these are from here to here is the spacing between these two. This field was freshly tiled on, got to get this right, and obviously, you see the surface were above the drains, the soil is disturbed. So it's kind of like tilled, but not really for the purpose of drainage is just for installing. And then you can see it's parallel, right? So all of these laterals are parallel. I just got the video. Okay. Thank you everybody for participating. So we're getting into more of the water quality because that's one of the purposes of controlled drainage. This is a photo I took during one of my visits before pandemic, of course, on August 19, 2019, and one of the problems is that once algae gets the phosphorus, it starts growing, and then that harms fish like these fish here and also aquatic life, recreation, economics, it's just devastating. Most likely, you've heard about the Western Lake Erie, and other surface water bodies. So when the surface water is fresh water as opposed to like salt, so if it's fresh water, phosphorus is the problem, becomes a problem like this one. So that brings up the conversation about conservation drainage. You want to conserve. So in this idea, we keep in mind crop production, we have that, but we also want to bring in the environment. So our goal is to be in the overlapping of these two. That's our targets. The target is to be that. So the winner would be the one on the target on overlapping of these two; the crop production and the environment. So nutrient reduction strategies in subsurface drainage. There's edge-of-field practices, there's controlled drainage. I'm gonna be talking about saturated buffer, denitrifying bioreactor, P-filter, drainage water recycling. There's in-field drainage wants to like shallow drains and the blind inlet. In the morning, I talked about that blind inlet. But today, I'm gonna be going over this controlled drainage one. So the water components, if you were here in the morning, you've seen this. This is a useful graph, I would say, that explains these water components in the drainage system. So the dominant nutrient pathways that you can lose nutrients from the farm is surfaced on one of the ones. We talked about the surface runoff in the morning. That causes erosion, and erosion means that the soil is gonna be eroded away, that's precious, valuable soil. You want it to stay. It's gonna move away, and it's gonna carry particulate phosphorus. That's the phosphorus that's attached to the soil. That's gonna move that away. So over the last decades, not a really good effort has been put in place to reduce the surface from like buffer strips, riparian buffers, and so on, and soil health practices. They've reduced this really well, and it was a problem several decades ago. 20, 30 years ago, it was more of a problem then. So it's gradually become better and better. And as that has become better, we've seen that this one has been showing up. The drainage discharge, this one. And as we've reduced this one, worked on improving that one, now we see like, oh, there's another problem. There's a drainage discharge problem where the water comes out of the outlet, and that carries the soluble nutrients. Remember this. The surface runoff carried this part nutrient, the phosphorus that was attached to soil, now the one that the drainage is such it carries phosphorous that's in soluble form, is dissolved in water. Nitrate is also another one that's also dissolved in water. So that's being the recent focus. The concern has been elevated about this because of what's happening inside this area. But there are solutions to this. So to explain a little bit about this, I'm gonna show you this. This is a graph based on long-term conditions in Lenawee County, Michigan. So you've got January to December, and then on this axis, I've got precipitation and evapotranspiration. Take a look to see how precipitation changes over time. And this is what we expect in this part of the state. And you can see it's peeking around, and these are 30-year averages. This is not just one year. This is 30-year average, long-term average. And you can see May is high rainfall, June is high rainfall, and then it slowly goes down. Evapotranspiration is another component on that previous graph. That's where water transpires water, from the route it takes it and it evaporates and also it's evaporation. So this is what the graph for evapotranspiration looks like. You can see these months are cold, right? So it's not much happening there, but then in June, the growing season, this evapotranspiration teaks. So a lots of water is leaving through the crop. And then there's a gap distance between these two where there's controlled drainage potential. Why? Because crop has a demand. Crop has lots of evapotranspiration demand, right? It needs the water to grow here. Then, it only rains this much, and the distance between these two is the potential that you can actually, if you have any irrigation system, this shaded area is that potential for irrigation where you can actually supply the crop with some of the water that it needs. Of course, this depends on the distribution of how many days is dry and how many days is it wet rain? So here, I'm just generally speaking. I'm not really focusing into the distribution and the details, but generally there is potential here. That's my message here. My message is that there's potential that you can actually give some water to the crop with controlled drainage, or you can have sub-irrigation or other center pivot irrigation. That's where you can use that depending on your soils. So the graph down here is the water table depth. And so the zero is the ground surface. And then as you go deeper, you get deeper. So these are in centimeters, excuse, the metric system. So this one is four feet. The one that says 120 centimeters, that's four feet. So zero is the ground surface. That's four feet deep. This is what it looks like over the same period with the same rainfall. So we can see water table is at two feet. 60 centimeters is two feet. So it's at about two feet. These are average again. It's not like on a certain day because it varies day to day. If you average 30 years, long-term, you see it's about here, but then near the water table, it's getting deeper in July, August, September. And that actually is about the same time where there's potential for giving water back to the crop to grow better. And that's the water table. Okay. So moving from that topic of showing there is potential for that based on our weather that based on the soil type, of course, there may be a potential for putting some of the water back to benefit the crop that leads to the golden rule of drainage. So the golden rule of drainage is that drain only the amount of water that is necessary for crop production and not a drop more. By another drop more means that you keep that extra no drop more, you keep it for the crop. You only drain what you need to drain. So you can have field operation, you can plant, you know, helps you with the farming operation. But once you've done, I mean, there's a crop in there and there's a drainage system, I mean, that water is precious. See if you would want to keep it in there. Like I showed you in a graph, there's potential that the crop can benefit from that. So that's the golden rule of drainage. Drain only the amount of water necessary and not a drop more. And it's literally gold. So this is the controlled drainage. A diagram of what it looks like. So basically in a controlled drainage system, these are the laterals, this is the main pipe. And then this is the outlet. So in a controlled drainage practice system, we put a structure near the outlet that intercepts the main. Inside the structure, we put obstacles or weirs. So water, instead of water just quickly going out like this, water has to go up and over. You've seen a overflow dam. That's a weir on the river here in East Lansing and Lansing. So water has to go up, over and out, just like a weir or a dam, overflow dam. So that, what that does is that look at the crops. Crop is during the growing stage, and imagine you're in July, August, in that period and with some of the rain that's coming, this system helps you hold back and retain some of the water and the crop can benefit because if evapotranspiration is high, so then, this is how I can help the crop benefit. So there's potential benefit for the crop with this system. This is another graph. You can see here, I had the crop, but here I don't have the crop. So when I don't have the crop, so pay attention to the level of the weir. Here, I'm leaving some room for the roots to actually have aeration and breathe, right? I don't want to like flood the roots to kill it. So it's like here. But then here, you can see it's a little bit higher. See that it's closer to the surface because I don't have any crops. I don't want to kill the biological activity. So it's lower. But this is during the non-growing season. So I'm gonna be keeping more of the water and nutrients in the field. So here, I've got a side view of the same system. This is my DH, that's my main. Laterals are connected to it perpendicular to the screen. I've harvested the crop. Now, on the conventional drainage, if we have our wizard make some rain, it's gonna come down on the field. Thank you, wizard. And then, water table is gonna build. Then you got these nitrogen and phosphorus. These are soluble nutrients. Imagine them in the field, in the water, right? So now they are gonna go down the ditch. So these are, some of these come from fertilizer. Some of them are organic matter and mineralization, the sources of these. So they're precious. It's best to keep them in the field, but they're gonna end up down 'cause this water is gonna carry them. As long as if you have water leaving, then you're gonna have nutrients leaving with it. So imagine that same scenario. But this time, I'm gonna throw in a control structure. And then I'm gonna put a set of these weirs in there. And I'm gonna set it because this is after four field operations. I'm gonna put it one foot below ground surface based on my references, the crops, at the beginning edge of the field here. This time, it rains, water table comes up, water has to go over this and out. So this time I'm getting less water leaving, right? I'm holding more of water. So this time only some, a little bit of the nutrients, because some water is leaving too, right? In the other scenario, more of these N's and P, the nitrogen and phosphorous were leaving. But here, only a little bit is leaving. So I'm reducing nutrient loss in this case. It's during growing season, and I'm still keeping distance here so I can have biological activity. I don't want to kill their forms and biology here. So I'm keeping that distance there. Flooding concern during the non-growing season. So one thing that you should not do is that don't put the weir, this elevation at the ground surface, because if you do, this water is just gonna come up, and it's just gonna cause, see that water now? I mean, water is just coming up so high. It's gonna make the sort of saturated. It's gonna harm some of their biology, and in terms of water quality, it's gonna increase the potential for surface runoff. So that's why in the previous graph, I had it one foot below during the non-growing season. Now, this is a no-go. So let's say you have this season during the growing season, right? And it's flowing like this. And then, you're getting late March, early April, and you know, you want to plant. So 10 to 14 days. Let's just say 14 days to simplify, about two weeks about. Before your scheduled planting date, you are gonna take these out, and let this field drain. And that is gonna help. Actually, we don't want to, this is the ice cream boy causing a lot of trouble. And we had to install a no skateboarding sign to get rid of him. He has got lots of trouble for other sites too. So during the growing season, this one I explained with a diagram before. So typically during the corn vegetative stage of V6, you would want to, that's where I showed you in those graphs where there's potential. Evapotranspiration is high. You want to hold water in the field for that crop. So I'm gonna put this, this time one and a half feet approximately, and then if it rains, I'm gonna be holding some of the water. I'm gonna help provide some moisture to the roots zone in this area. So that's helpful for that. So there's potential yield benefit here during this growing season. We are actually doing research in Michigan on these topics that I'm explaining here in terms of the water quality and also the crop yield. So then before harvest, means so seven days before scheduled harvest, you wanna pull this out and let the field drain so you can actually get field operations start. But you don't need to do this every year. You may say, okay, what if there's just dry and there's no rainfall? Well, you don't have to do anything. I'll give you an example like this. October of 2020, it was so dry in Southwest Michigan. There was no water flowing. So we didn't even take those things out. If you remember the stock blocks were like this. So we just kept it because water on the opposite side was just not flowing. So, I mean, it doesn't do anything. You can just keep it in there, and keep an eye on the weather, of course. But we didn't do that because it was just dry. Forecast showed it was gonna stay dry, and so that's another way to look at this. This is a graph showing everything that I described in just one look. This is the non-growing season, and this is zero is the ground surface, and then you get to 48 inches down at this line. So it's January, February, and March. These are the non-growing season. This is what I had at one foot below ground surface on that diagram. Then here, this is for planting. You want to lower this so you can drain the field. You want to get field operations in spring done. And then, during the growing season, I can show you then, that's gonna go to about 18 inches, you can see, one and a half feet. Then during before harvest, you can lower it again. This is optional. Actually, I should say, this part is dependent on the weather. Like I said, we didn't have to do this one. When we got here, we just went like this. So that's what we did, and we didn't drain it because it was so dry. So if it's dry, mean you will keep an eye on the weather, and we did it this way. You know, it's just an extra effort going in and pulling those things out. We just kept it in there and added more to it to raise it up. Any questions, Eric, so far? - [Eric] Actually, we just had a couple come in. One is approximately how much nutrient loss is experienced during the time period before planting? - Oh, so the question, I think, if I understand this right, I think the question is saying that during... That's a good question. So I think, let me get the pen out again. So I think the question is that during this period, Eric, correct me if I understand right. So I think the question is saying that if you lower it here, how much you lose nutrients. Do you think that's the question? - [Eric] I think so. And I think we're assuming that there's been a spring tillage ahead of that. - Yes, yes. So yeah. So we understand the question then. So it is basically how much, if we're saving nutrients here, we're saving nutrients here, we're saving nutrients here, we're saving nutrients here, then how much are we losing here? Based on pre, we're doing research on this. And we guess, we speculate that nutrient loss in this period is gonna be very small. But we are doing research to find out for sure how important this is because firstly, phosphorus hasn't been researched with controlled drainage as much. The one that we're doing in Lenawee County is unique in terms of the quality of the work in terms of how we're taking daily nutrient samples. And so for nitrogen, it has been researched a lot in other States in Midwest. So they really haven't really considered this as significant, because when you look at the number of days, this part is, compared to the number of days, you're saving from like here to here is a small part of that. It's a small proportion of that. I really can't say what percentage. It hasn't been looked at in this way, but that's an excellent question. That's something we are looking at here to know if I go in and pull those boards out on this day, and then all of a sudden the water leaves. Remember the waterway that was held behind the weirs, that's gonna leave to prepare the field for planting. So how important is this part important? We are looking at that. Our guess is that it's gonna be insignificant because the total load because we care about the load throughout the whole year, and that's what really is determining the effectiveness of this controlled drainage practice. - [Bruce] So Ehsan, I wanna ask you a quick question, this is Bruce. We're not getting warm enough in most falls or ever following harvest in that period where you've got your water level up within a foot of the soil surface to get any meaningful denitrification, are we? I mean, the soils are pretty much cold at that point. - That's a good question. So the question is, so I want to rephrase the question a little bit differently. So in this part it's cold. So controlled drainage, I want to use your CD. Controlled drainage helps reduce nutrient loss. Like let's say nitrate loss with reducing flow. Because here I remember I was holding a water. I was reducing drainage's charge. And the main mechanism is reducing drainage discharge. It's not denitrification. Denitrification is a minor form of reducing the concentration of nitrogen there. There are two mechanisms that it has been investigated and research has found that denitrification is not the primary means of improving water quality for nitrate removal. It's flow reducing. Does that answer your question, Bruce? - [Bruce] Yeah. That's what kind of what I was getting at. I was just curious if it was a major player in that. It's not. That's good. - It's a little bit... Oh, sorry. - Yeah. - So it's a little bit different during the growing season. I mean, we talked about this one, temperatures down, even during this period, researchers looked at it and so far, we think that it's a very minor player here. Even if temperature is warmer, still flow reduction, I'm gonna type in flow. This is the major player in reducing no nutrients, both N and P. Next question. - [Eric] So Ehsan, we've got about 10 minutes left, and we've got a few more questions still in the Q&A. Would you like to take those now, or wait until you're finished? - Yeah, let me finish. I mean, I am almost done. So just to give you an examples of what these structures look like. There's this Agri Drain structure, Agri Drain Incorporation. There is Haviland drainage products. This one is Iowa, Haviland, Ohio, ADS, I mean, they're everywhere. They have a plant near Lansing. This is working. So there's three means. I've seen all three in Michigan. Just to give you, and then there's an automated one. You might ask, all of these three are manual. You have to use this raw metal, and then you have to pull them in and out. These are the weirs. Here, there's an automated one by Agri Drain where it actually just lowers these automatically based on predictions in rainfall. So it's pretty cool. But of course, you know that the price is gonna be higher with that. We did some research in Ohio to look at describe you. Then you can see, this is my former job, former when I was a student there, I should say. So there were seven farms. We worked with producers, and then we looked at this, and we found, so the red is free drainage. I think this is about 150, 60, 70, or a little bit less than 180 bushels for corn, and then the one for soybean or no, sorry, the one for controlled drainage was about 6% a little bit higher. So we did see that benefit. And this was, I remember this was a seven-year project, and then the same for soybean, but of course, soybean got a little bit less, but in terms of benefit, I can say that there's definite potential benefits that it could help. Like you explain the concept behind it that keeps the water and more moisture to the root zone during that period where it needs it the most. This system is best if the field is relatively flat, less than a 1% grade. You can still use it if you have like one and a half percent over or 1% and greater slope. But then you're gonna have to put one control structure at every one and a half feet rise. Also, it works best if you got, so if you have an undrained field, you want to design it, I really recommend you design it. You work with a drainage contractor, you want to do it yourself. And you do it in a way that is compatible with controlled drainage. And that's compatible if your laterals like these laterals, they follow the counter. And that would mean that they have minimum grades. So we have a drainage school, drainage education workshop in Michigan. It's an annual workshop where we actually teach drainage. So I encourage you to visit my website for the date for that workshop if you want to learn more about these. So we teach how to design controlled drainage and drainage systems. There's also EQIP funding for this. I'm gonna give you just what the rates are for this year. So if you, let's say you have a drainage map, you know where the layout is, right? You know the layout, and then the technical consultant, you're gonna hire them and they're gonna write a water management plan, just like I gave you that manager plan. Well, there's a specifics to it. It depends on elevation of the field. So this technician, technical consultant, they actually come up with elevation, tells you how many star blocks you put in that it would make it this many feet below the ground service and all that stuff. And the dates, you know, more exact dates where you want to do this. So it's a more water management plan. NRCS provides you with this value $2,121 to pay for the water management plan development. NRCS will give you, for each structure, they will give you $1,598, water control structure. So those structures, the price is probably 600 to $800. So this is a little bit higher. Of course, it's gonna pay for some of the labor because there's a little bit more labor in there too. And then, there's a water-managed area. What this means is that if you have, let's say I'm gonna draw that shape again, right? This is the ditch. So if I put the water here, this water, it's gonna go like flat like this. So the roots are gonna benefit only up to like this much, right? So the crops that are here are not gonna benefit because it's just so far up in the field because of the slope. That's what it means. The water-managed area is this area where the crop is benefiting. So for that, if you've got a flatter field, relatively flat field, then you can get more acres for that. And then per acre, NRCS gives you $7.93 for every year up to three years for those. So if you could do one for a hundred acres, then you'll get more if it's just a few acres. So it depends on the slope of the field. And so this would be, these are the NRCS EQIP incentives that are available for this. So Eric, I can take the questions now. I have a few more slides, but I, the other slides that I have are examples of calculations of how, you know, you would get to a payback period. But I can explain that if I have time afterwards after I answer the questions. - [Eric] Okay. I'll read a few more while we're watching the coins drop here. How many acres can one of these control structures handle? - That's very relevant to point number three. Water-managed area is another way of saying how many acres this can manage. So maybe I need to go to the next slide. So here's an example to answer that question. This is a farm. I've got elevation. This is my hundred feet, 101 and 104, an average of four tenths of a percent grade, and I'm gonna put my main on this side, and then I'm going to put my laterals, and then I'm gonna put the structure to be one and a half feet. So that's the answer to the question, how many acres is going to depend on how much elevation rise you got. So if your entire farm has one and a half feet difference in elevation from where your outlet is to the highest point in the field, you need one structure. But if it's three, you need two. So you just have to add that one and a half feet elevation for each one. So this example, see that I put one here, because this one is gonna go to halfway, 201.5, and then this one is gonna go from 101.5 to 103, and this one is going to 104.5. See that? That's an example of how many you need to answer that question. - [Eric] Okay, good. - This person is asking, they're saying interested to know what would be different in terms of changing the outlet level in a cover cropping system. Have you looked at different types of management systems? - No. The cover crop impacting this is new, but the key point is that the cover crops, when you plant them late fall, let's say, strategy's going after wheat or it's gonna go sometime in fall. If you remember, I had the weirs, I didn't want to put the weirs all the way close to the surface because of surface runoff, lowering the aeration and just causing a lot of problems. So if you had the corn crop, that's gonna damage that too. That's why you want to keep it low. You don't want to put the weirs all the way close. If you didn't have anything, you would do like about one foot below. But if you have a cover crop, depending on what cover crop it is, and how deep the roots develop when they go through, when they actually go through the winter, then you need to adjust that elevation. So the key point to remember is that give it enough room for the roots to have aeration. That's the key, depending on what cover crop it is and the root depth. - [Eric] Okay. Here's kind of a basic question. So you've been talking about water table levels and exactly where these different pieces of equipment all need to go. But what would be the best way to know exactly what depth your water table is at, at any given time? - Does that say where or... - [Eric] So if you want to know, well, is the water level in my soil, you know, a foot below, two foot below, you know, 20 feet below, I mean, aside from getting out with a backhoe and digging a big hole, what's the best way to know that? - That's a good question. So this is what we actually suggest to producers. So if you have, so let's say I just pulled this off. If you don't say, if you have a control structure, you can just look in there. If your water is here, water outside that, it's just gonna follow the same, and it's just gonna like this. But your question may be say, okay, I don't have a structure. I just have the outlet and I don't have anything to look into. Well, the easy thing would be is that you can actually get an auger, use an auger hole, and then put a PVC well in there just like two-inch pipe. And then, you can actually buy these. They have pre-made slots on the sites. I'm just trying to... These slots let the water in. And then you can have it laid on top. We actually have these that I'm explaining. So then you can lower a tape measure. For example, there's one way simple way where you can lower your tape measure, but before you lower the tape measure, you get these water finding pace. They're just like two, three bucks. Like a cream, you just put it on the tape measure, then you lower the tape measure, then you bring it up, and then it's gonna change color. It's gonna show you where the water was. Then you can actually know where your water is. If you don't want the exact number, if you just lower the tape measure in there, I've done it myself, even without any colors since you can see what the tape measure was wet. So that's how you would do it. Here, I put it in the buffer. So it's answered the way, we also have done this and you can also put it in the field, but then you just have to remember to slide this out and then make a new hole the next time you finish with field operations, but you don't want to hit it with the farm machinery. That was a good question. So these wells that I've drawn, it is just simple PVC pipe, about two inches diameter, and they will tell you where the water is. And then, that actually is an indicator of, you know, where the moisture is for the crop. That's helpful for that. There's also more expensive ways that you can put soil moisture sensors or more sophisticated ways too. - [Eric] Okay. I do have one more kind of a tough question for you, but before I get to that, I want to just let everyone know that we're pretty close to ending the session here for the morning. I will be putting in the survey link for those of you who will be moving on to another session. We'd like you to go ahead and follow the link and give us some feedback on how things are going for you during this week. And then also for those of you who are interested in CCA or RUP credits, at the end of that survey, you'll find an opportunity to put in your information, and request those credits. So I'll leave that in the chat box. Again, if you have been one of those folks who've just been having a bit of a challenge with accessing that survey, go ahead and let us know. Send us your email address, and we can sort of work things out on the backend. So Ehsan, I have one other question for you, and it's a pretty brief one. So I'm going to infer what I think this person is meaning. So all they said was payback period. And so I guess really what we want to know is what's the ROI. If I install one of these structures, whether or not I get some money back from NRCS, and I find that, okay, well now I've got, you know, increased, you know, crop yields, of course. This is all gonna be dependent on, you know, how much of yield increase and you know, the price of the property. - Yes, exactly. - [Eric] But can you give at least just a a basic estimate of what that payback period might be? - So I didn't get into this, but if you punch the numbers in and do a simple calculation, this is an example that I did for the field that I showed you. Remember the field with three control structures? So with the three control structures, and the labor and the freight for delivery of it, I calculated this much, $5,434. And then based on the Ohio data, I calculated these much dollars per year increased income from corn soybeans on average. And then when I divided that, I got about about 10 years payback period for this set of assumptions, you know, for that field size. number of structures. Of course, if you have a flatter field, let's say, if you had, this is three control sessions. If you had one, this number would go divided by three because if this is for three, then this number would go down a lot. And also another thing to consider is without EQIP. Here's the start with EQIP. When I do the same thing for three, I only get 1.2 years for considering the EQIP coming in. And even in this calculation, I did not account for this payment, this one, the $7.93 per acre for three years, because this is not for long-term. The one that I calculated payback for more than three. So then you get this one bonus in addition to that. In that calculation, I only had one and two accounted for there. But that's a good question. Thank you. - [Eric] Okay, great. All right. Ehsan, I don't have any more questions in the Q&A. So thank you again very much for both of your sessions this morning, really appreciates not only your good information, but then the ability to kind of bounce some questions off of you. So thank you. - You're welcome. Yes. Thank you everybody for staying tuned. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. My phone number and also my email both are on my website. Just search my name on MSU. And also we'll also have the drainage workshop that I mentioned. The information is on the website, and also we have a drain spacing tool that has recently come out that helps you come up with the optimum drain spacing. That may be another topic for another day. Thank you. Bye. - [Eric] Great. All right. - [Bruce] Thank you. - [Eric] All right, everyone. You have two options right now. So during the noon hour, if you have been on all week, you might already know this, but we've got a sort of more of a home horticulture or a home-based type of program over the noon hour. And the one that's coming up in just about 10 minutes is focused on home irrigation. And that'll be with Dr. Ron Goldie, and this may be his last time joining us. Dr. Goldie was stationed over at the Southwest research station over in Berrien County. We were retiring. And so you'll have an opportunity to hear some really good information from him, but it's focused on home horticulture. - [Bruce] Oh, I think that session, Eric, was on home horticulture and those folks that are smaller market garden type of production for vegetables too. So if you're interested in that, don't hesitate to go over there. Ron has done a lot of work on the station down in the swim rack down in Benton Harbor that touches on irrigation, especially drip irrigation for production over there. So please feel free to join him, and there are UOP credits for that class too. So you're not giving up anything there. So hopefully, we'll see you folks back this afternoon. - [Eric] Okay. Thanks, Bruce. So for those of you who might be interested in that, if you don't want to just take the hour off and go grab some lunch, I just posted the link to that session. So it's actually a different link than the one you just get used to get into the session here. So you can follow that link. It's also located in that spreadsheet that you got same passcode. But so anyway, that is it for the morning. We'll be back at one o'clock with Dr. Youngster Dung and Lyndon Kelly addressing another aspect of water management. We're gonna focus on more on the irrigation side this afternoon. So again, if you have not had a chance to fill out the survey or to follow that survey link that I put into the chat, I'm gonna go ahead and put that into the chat so it's kind of refreshed at the bottom. I'm gonna close the session out in about 30 seconds. So please go ahead and follow that link, and we'll see you back here at one o'clock. (coughing) - [Bruce] I've got a couple of decent recordings here, Eric, so... - [Eric] Okay. Sounds good.