Timothy Gieseke is an Agriculture Water Management Educator at the University of Minnesota Extension. He has expertise in irrigation and water drainage. He is based in Mankato and works statewide. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is your background?

Tim: I grew on a farm in Nicollet County in New Ulm. My dad had a dairy farm and I helped out for most of my youth before the dairy got sold. I left the farm for a bit and came back about 20 years ago and we raised our three boys here. I crop farmed part-time from 1997 to 2017 when we quit crop farming and downsized to a custom rotational grazing system. Every year now we take about 20 cattle on our land and rotationally graze them throughout the summer. 

My career has been in multiple areas, but has always dealt with agriculture and water. Previous to Extension, I worked with Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and dealt with groundwater and a variety of surface water issues. Prior to that I had a business called Agriculture Resource Strategies, in which I worked on developing ecosystem service markets with agencies and universities. I also worked on federal farm policy in the early 2000s, and in the mid-nineties I worked at Carver SWCD. So I have a nice mix of policy and government positions along with having my own business. Now in my work with Extension, I get to pull from all those experiences to deliver materials for farmers to be more profitable and better land stewards.

What does your position with extension entail?

Tim: As a statewide Extension educator, the role is to bring in resources that farmers and others need for the best land stewardship. I pull together industry, research, and contractors around irrigation and drainage for workshops, field tours, and intermittent publications. My role requires broad dissemination of information in various modes. 

I work statewide and I deal with two major efforts; the Minnesota Irrigator Program which is about 5 years old and is generally based in the irrigation belt, a region of the state spanning from Dakota County all the way up through the northwest part of the state where there are sandy soils, and the Minnesota Drainage Program which is a few months old, and is focused on the southern half of Minnesota. 

I support the Minnesota Irrigator Program with field trips and workshops to provide the latest research and technologies to irrigators. 

I have more expertise in drainage, and during this last year I put together the Minnesota Drainage Program. We had our first workshop at the end of March with Le Sueur SWCD about the future of drainage and modernizing drainage systems. 

What strategies can improve irrigation system efficiency? How can farmers best manage water as we see increased drought and flooding events?

Tim: The key with irrigation systems is to manage evapotranspiration, otherwise you are spending money to put water on the ground and let it evaporate. Evapotranspiration tells a farmer how much water is evaporating from their plants and land, and when the evapotranspiration is high that means the crop will need water sooner. The ideal strategy is to reduce the evaporation while increasing the transpiration of water, which is when water is being absorbed by plants to grow.

Improving soil health can reduce evaporation and improve transpiration in the field. I like the saying “you can’t solve all problems with soil health, but you can’t solve any without it.” Good soil health will help retain and hold water longer during drought, serving as a water storage strategy. Good soil health can also ensure better aeration in soil, limiting water loss and reducing nutrient runoff during heavy rains.

For farmers with irrigation systems, there are some strategies to improve efficiency. One is using soil moisture sensors to help localize evapotranspiration rates of plants across your fields. Irrigation scheduling tools can work in combination with those.

In addition, variable rate irrigation systems improve efficiency by watering plants differently across the field depending on the soil type, so the system isn’t giving too much water to certain areas that are susceptible to flooding. By reducing excess watering, variable rate irrigation is also an environmentally beneficial practice by reducing nutrient runoff.

Can irrigation systems serve as a climate adaptation strategy on farms?

Tim: Yes, and farmers are very good at adapting to weather and climate change. Irrigation systems really help when we have drought and drier conditions.

What would you say to a farmer that is concerned about return on investment for an irrigation system?

Tim: Irrigation is a big investment, but once you have a system installed, the return depends on upkeeping the nozzle system to make sure they are effective in applying an even dose of water. Another investment for irrigation could be made on variable rate technology. As I mentioned, this technology determines how water is distributed across the field, which pays off if you have variable soils throughout the field.

Are there drainage strategies that can help reduce nutrient and sediment runoff from farm fields into watersheds?

Tim: For farmers with drain tiles, there’s a few strategies to help reduce water loss. Controlled drainage is considered a conservation practice because it reduces the downstream flow of water and thus retains water and nutrients in the field.

Saturated buffers are an edge-of-field practice. With these buffers, water is partially diverted from the field into a perforated drain tile line that allows water to slowly seep out into the soil before it reaches the stream or ditch. When the water is percolated through soil, nutrients are filtered from the water before it reaches waterways, thus reducing nutrient pollution from the field during rain events.

Woodchip bioreactors are another edge-of-field strategy for water to be rerouted and filtered before it reaches a stream or ditch. The bioreactor is a trench with woodchips in it, and the woodchips act as a substrate for the microbiology to consume nitrates in the water as it flows through them. If you ever put woodchip mulch around plants, you might have noticed the woodchips use up the nitrates instead of the plant. Similarly, woodchip bioreactors can treat significant amounts of nutrients during a low-flow rain event, preventing nutrient loss into waterways.

Another practice to reduce nutrient runoff is water storage and recycling. Water recycling involves capturing drain water and storing it in a pond, which can then be reapplied on the field as irrigation later. It’s a large undertaking, but if you have enough land to capture water into a pond, you can recycle some of the water that’s already been on your land to water your crops in the months ahead.

Those are some of the practices that a farmer can do on their field to reduce nutrient runoff in drainage systems.

Why is water management relevant for farmers?

Tim: It’s less uncommon that a farmer gets 6 inches of rain at once. A good example of a place we’re seeing extreme precipitation is in Le Sueur County in the Cannon River watershed. During the last thirteen decades since records have been kept, there’s been around 6 inches more precipitation per year than there was 100 years ago in that area. A future can look like farmers modernizing and maintaining drainage systems and storing water in areas that are challenging to farm.

What programs or conservation resources do you recommend to farmers?

Tim: Being a previous soil and water conservationist, I think it’s key that farmers get their newsletters and stay up to date on government funding to support conservation. I’m a big fan of Soil and Water Conservation Districts, which serve as a first stop for farmers to get plugged in to conservation opportunities.

The University of Minnesota Extension also has a variety of helpful information on our website, and farmers can follow our Crop News to stay up to date on the Minnesota Irrigators Program and the Minnesota Drainage Program. Farmers can also contact me directly for irrigation or drainage questions, but as a state-wide educator I have limited capacity for one-on-one site visits.

Interested in connecting with Tim? Connect with him at: 507-766-9495 or tgieseke@umn.edu

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Conservation advisors work one-on-one with farmers to assess resource concerns and find opportunities for stewardship improvements. These advisors can be found at organizations across the state, from Extension offices to Soil and Water Conservation Districts to wildlife-focused non-profits. MFU regularly features conservation advisors to share how their assistance can support your farm goals. Read more in this series here.