Plan addresses gully problems

Kim and Kathy Koop have worked partnership with Irma Koop (right) to develop an effective conservation strategy in a large field that was developing gullies. Courtesy photo

Kim and Kathy Koop are Marion County Conserva?tion Banker Award winners this year for the work initiated on a large field Kim owns with his mother, Irma Koop, near Hillsboro.

Koop said he asked the Natural Resource Conserva?tion Service in Marion for planning assistance on the 332-acre field. The field was developing gullies, he said, even though it had waterways built upon it numerous years ago.

Koop said he uses larger equipment than what the field probably was designed for. He wanted to keep it all as one large field and to make it as farmable as possible.

He followed the plan to install 18.1 acres of waterways and 47,325 feet of terraces.

The waterways are in brome grass for future hay crops and some Conserva?tion Reserve Program grass that can?t be hayed, he said.

Koop continues to enhance the conservation on his land by using no-till with cover crops and grazing cattle on residue.

The crop mix on the land includes predominantly wheat and corn, Koop said, with some mix of milo and soybeans.

He grazes a cow-calf herd on stubble in support of his business of growing 800-pound feeder calves to finish out at a feedlot in Ingalls.

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