GOSHEN -- How well are farmers doing at keeping topsoil in their fields and out of surface water?

That's the question answered by a statewide Soil Tillage Transect Survey that's going on right now. Elkhart County's survey happened last week, and the results will be compiled with the rest of the state.

THE ISSUE

Dirt, fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides are good in fields. They're not good in creeks and rivers. And when farm topsoil runs into ditches or creeks, the farmer can be left with what are known as "clay knobs," or hills barren of lush dirt.

THE FIX

"The main thing anytime you're trying to prevent soil erosion is keeping the ground covered," said Nancy Brown of the Elkhart County Soil and Water Conservation District.

THE TEST

"The purpose of the transect is to look for trends in farming," Brown said. "The idea is we can establish and we can see what the trends are with the tillage methods of our local farmers and then we can address it with them."

Brown, Jim Lake of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture and Bev Stevenson, district conservationist for the U.S.D.A. Natural Resources Conservation Service , all criss-crossed the county, methodically checking hundreds of fields to look at conservation practices.

THE BENEFITS

Soil conservation is good for waterways. For instance, hundreds of man-hours were spent cleaning up Cobus Creek this spring to return it to its past glory as a trout-fishing stream, something that had gone downhill due to runoff.

"In Indiana sediment is the largest pollutant by volume in surface water," Brown said. "If the soil goes to the waterway, the nutrients and pesticides that are attached to that soil go to the waterway with it. That fertilizer in a cornfield's a great thing because it makes great corn, but that fertilizer in the water causes algae blooms and is not such a good thing."

Keeping crop residue in fields not only keeps topsoil there, it improves the soil and over a long time helps boost yields. And while corn in no-till fields often has a harder time emerging, "no-till corn has a real advantage in July and August," said Lake.

"The bottom line is it costs less," because it requires fewer trips through fields in tractors, Lake said.

"A typical no-till field with at least 50 percent cover can reduce erosion by 50 percent," he said.

THE HURDLES

Still, it takes some convincing to get farmers to use this approach. For one thing, Stevenson and Lake said, it's overcoming "the way it's always been done" mentality. While corn emergence has some farmers hesitant, Lake said hybrids are now available specifically to grow in no-till fields.

WHERE WE ARE

Elkhart County hasn't been one of the greatest conservation counties in the state in years past. Still, younger farmers are aggressively adopting the no-till methods. "That's good for all of us," Stevenson said. It remains to be seen how well we're doing as a county.