Paul Simonsen and his wife Janet farm in Renville County and participate in the Discovery Farms Minnesota program.

written by Jonathan Eisenthal

For years, Diamond Lake has been the summer gathering place for the Simonsen family. Four years ago Paul and Janet built a house there to replace the family cabin. Fishing, swimming and jet skiing all have their devotees among the three generations.

So Paul and Janet Simonsen, who farm in Renville County, are very conscious about water quality.

That might be the top reason they decided to sign on with the farmer-funded research program called Minnesota Discovery Farms — 11 different farm operations across Minnesota, representing the spectrum of crops, cultivation methods, topography and geography that can be found in Minnesota agriculture — united by an interest in developing real-world, on-farm data about the amount of sediment and nutrients that run off their fields.

“Water quality is very important to farmers throughout the country,” Paul Simonsen said in a recent interview. “It’s going to be more and more important as time goes on. I thought, this is something where I can do my part….monitoring nutrients or sediment running off.”

The Simonsens divide their farm into a three-part rotation, raising corn on one third and soybeans on a second third. For many years, they raised vegetable crops on the remaining third, but switched to sugar beets recently.

Paul said the Discovery Farms field monitor has already yielded interesting data in their first three years of participation.

“I’ve learned that run-off from farms is probably not as extreme as what some groups say,” Simonsen reported. “On my farm, we are finding there hasn’t been very much run off. And I’ve got open tile inlets — some people say they’ll soon be a thing of the past, but the amount of sediment and nutrient flowing through and running off has been very low.”

Simonsen noted that even this year, when the field monitor recorded 14 inches of rain on their farm in June, they did not see elevated levels of sediment and nutrients. But Simonsen didn’t join Discovery Farms to pat himself on the back. He, like the other farmers in the program, know that every farm in Minnesota is different and more real-world, on-farm data is needed.

The more years of data from a variety of farm types farmers have, the better farmers can understand how to adjust practices to minimize the impact on the environment.

The Simonsen’s have always been interested in conservation and stewardship of natural resources. Paul and Janet planted 90-foot buffer strips of native prairie vegetation along the entire length, on both sides, of the county ditch that runs across their land.

“The idea of creating wildlife habitat really appealed to me,” said Simonsen. “I really enjoy hunting pheasant, and I like to see the wildlife that’s attracted to the prairie grass and that makes use of it.”

Paul is a past president of Minnesota Corn Growers Association, and currently serves as chairman of the Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council. His work on behalf of soybean growers has taken him to 10 foreign countries, all in Asia, most recently to Vietnam — the fastest growing export market for American-grown soybeans.

The Simonsen family takes pride in its role providing food to a growing world, and doing it in a way that preserves the natural world for generations to come.

This post is part of an ongoing series to highlight Minnesota corn farmers participating in Discovery Farms Minnesota, which is a farmer-led effort to collect real-world, on-farm water quality information from different types of farming systems.

You can learn more about Discovery Farms here and here. Click here to read the first Discovery Farms Profile in this series.

Look for other Minnesota corn farmers participating in Discovery Farms to be profiled in the near future.