URBANDALE, Iowa - The Iowa Soybean Association’s Certified Environmental Management Systems for Agriculture (CEMSA) program is designed to help farmers incorporate an Environmental Management System (EMS) into a farm operation. CEMSA focuses on in-field management issues that impact soil and water quality — tillage, nutrient management, and weed and pest management.

Since CEMSA is similar to the Natural Resources Conservation Service's nine-step planning process, many anticipate that CEMSA will help them prepare for the Conservation Security Program (CSP).

Statewide, some 70 farmers in Iowa have started CEMSA. Doug Gronau farms near Vail, Iowa, and says that CEMSA was a natural fit for him. “I'm on the Iowa Farm Bureau Board of Directors, and my assigned area of interest is conservation. One of the conclusions I've come to is that farmers need to take responsibility for the environment in their operations. CEMSA is one way to do that, and when tied to Farm*A*Syst, CEMSA can be a very powerful tool.”

Heath Ellison is an agricultural environmental specialist with the Iowa Soybean Association (ISA). Ellison worked with Gronau in developing the CEMSA plan for his farm. He says the process has been refined. “We’re doing CEMSA plan development one-on-one, visiting farmers several times. That allows us to move through the process in a matter of weeks instead of months, and it assures a more uniform, quality-oriented EMS.”

Gronau agrees that the process is simple. “The biggest challenge is getting your mind right. By that I mean that you need to understand the CEMSA process. At the beginning it seems fragmented, but when it comes together, you can see that it's really beneficial in evaluating a farming operation.

“And working with Heath and the Iowa Soybean Association was easy. We had a good start on CEMSA, because we'd already decided to go to a no-till operation. It all just fell in place, even as we moved into the Phosphorous Index and other aspects of the program.

“I have already seen how CEMSA benefited our operation. One of the things we did as part of our CEMSA plan was reshape waterways. This spring we got between 2 and 5 inches of rain with a 60 mph wind, but even the newly-seeded waterways did the job. We were really glad that we had that done.”

For farmers who are considering CEMSA or Farm*A*Syst, Gronau has some advice. “The first thing I would say is don't be scared of evaluating your environmental performance, because the things you find might actually end up saving you money in the long run. And with CSP coming, CEMSA is going to make CSP application a lot easier — so that when everything is said and done, a CEMSA participant should be able to just step into the program.”

To learn more about CEMSA, contact ISA’s Director of Environmental Programs Roger Wolf at 800-383-1423.