The Southern Plains Agriculture Resources Coalition will spark rural sustainability and profitability through greater use of no-till practices and conservation systems for producers, consumers, and communities by promotion of market based incentives, education, demonstration, participation, and research.

Introduction

The Southern Plains Agricultural Resources Coalition (SPARC) serves an area of Oklahoma west of Interstate 35. The goal of SPARC is to broaden its coverage to neighboring states in the southern plains region. SPARC serves producers of agriculture products as well as consumers. This includes all communities, policy makers, tribes, landowners, and water users throughout rural and urban areas. The Southern Plains Agricultural Resources Coalition will spark rural sustainability and profitability through greater use of no-till practices and conservation systems for producers, consumers, and communities by promotion of market based incentives, education, demonstration, participation and research.

Objectives

SPARC has determined that the three priority resource concerns with the greatest potential for beneficial results are:

1. Soil Quality

Soil organic matter is the key component for improving soil quality. Many soil quality concerns can be reduced or totally eliminated by increasing soil organic matter. Members of SPARC felt that soil quality could be greatly improved in the area if producers were to adopt the practices of no-till and crop rotation. Education of producers on the benefits of managing crop residues is one objective that SPARC hopes to accomplish. Other items include promoting better producer incentives through government programs, promoting research and demonstration through government, institutional, non-profit organizations, promoting increased awareness to producers and the public on the benefits of no-till farming and crop rotations, securing funds to purchase no-till drills and planters for demonstration purposes, providing a forum where producers can share expertise with other producers, and promoting marketplace incentives for producers who use no-till and crop rotation practices.

2. Economics

The Center for the Study of Rural America, out of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, has identified some of the basic issues and concerns involving economic development in rural communities. Rural communities have been characterized by poor job growth, low and stagnant incomes, and continued out-migration. The ability of communities to attract new businesses and help existing businesses to grow and reach market is hampered by aging infrastructures, lower skilled labor, and insufficient capital. The economic and business development policies of many rural areas are unfocused, outdated, and ineffective. The goals are not clear and lack diversity. SPARC agrees that these conditions exist in the Southern Plains region and must be corrected to revive economic development.

Essential components have to be in place to insure the profitability for a business. An abundant, highly skilled and well educated labor force is needed to provide the human capital necessary to produce a product or provide a service at the most efficient level. Sufficient levels of capital must be available to assist start up businesses, expanding businesses, and to be used to recruit new businesses. An infrastructure that can support and provide necessary basic services that support business development opportunities must be in place. Communities need governmental policies that promote, enhance and facilitate business development and job creation. Entrepreneurs exploring, identifying, and developing diversity and value-added agricultural products and services must be encouraged.

3. Water Resources

SPARC intends to bring about some of these desirable changes by educating agricultural producers on ways to incorporate sustainable and conservation practices in an integrated system. Encourage government policy that will foster conservation practices and rural economic development efforts. Facilitate rural and urban interests to work together as a cohesive group with common goals. As a result, agricultural enterprises will be highly diversified and profitable, rural communities will be growing, value-added industry will be expanding, and with new opportunities, youth retention will increase. There are numerous and diverse issues related to water resources in the Southern Plains region. Many water bodies have regulatory issues, i.e., water quality does not comply with some aspects of state standards. In this region, sediments and elevated nutrient content are key water quality issues. Sedimentation effects storage capacity in reservoirs and can cause excessive turbidity. Elevated nutrients can result in oxygen depletion and in extreme cases fish kills. Degraded stream channels in the region contribute to problems in reservoirs. Reservoirs with high sediment loads include Clinton Lake, Lake Altus, Optima Lake, Foss Reservoir, and Fort Cobb Reservoir. Agricultural practices that are often implicated in degraded stream channels include cattle grazing in streams and farming too close to stream banks. Groundwater contamination is associated with saltwater from oil and gas drilling, agricultural nitrates leaching, and spikes of nutrients around animal feeding operations. An invasive species, salt cedar, depletes water quantity and degrades native habitat throughout the region.

Although population levels are low, competition can develop among agriculture, public supply, recreation, and aesthetic uses, particularly during drought. Improved drought preparedness and pro-active, rather than reactive, response to drought is needed at farm and community levels. In some parts of the region, groundwater depletion poses a risk to natural springs, putting critical habitat at risk. Proposals for the sale and inter-basin transfer of large quantities of water are highly controversial. Oklahoma City has substantial water rights from local rivers or groundwater, leaving limited options for many rural communities. The "ideal" for regional water resource management would be cleaner water bodies, stable stream channels (e.g., fencing and control access to grazing, re-establishment of riparian vegetation, buffers along streams), improved infiltration in fields and pastures, better mechanisms to meet diverse demands (e.g., conservation at all levels, market systems, and improved water law), pro-active planning and response to drought, dependable and equitable water supply for households, and enforcement of new laws to prevent contamination.

Fostering a stewardship ethic through education and outreach to farmers, consumers, landowners, community leaders, children, churches, agricultural and community development professionals and researchers is a priority need in this region. In particular, it is essential to bring field-level agricultural and natural resource professionals to the table as advocates for conservation and sustainability. Progress would be enhanced if conservation were targeted to fragile parts of the landscape, which would require changes in policy at federal and state levels in agriculture, oil and gas, and other sectors. Water reuse will be critical to meet future public supply requirements. Agencies, farmers, and consumers will need to be moved out of their "comfort zones" to become more open to new ideas and approaches for marketing "earth friendly" food products and rural recreational and tourism experiences. Great Plains RC&D will share a leadership role with SPARC to accomplish this objective.

What are ecosystem services?

Ecosystem services are little understood and too sophisticated for us to reproduce even with the most advanced technology, yet the important roles of these natural services are not being recognized adequately in economic markets, government policies or land management practices. As a result, ecosystems and the services they provide are in decline.

Pollination

Fulfillment of people's cultural spiritual and intellectual needs

Regulation of climate

Insect pest control

Maintenance and provision of genetic resources

Maintenance and regeneration of habitat

Provision of shade and shelter

Prevention of soil erosion

Maintenance of soil fertility

Maintenance of soil health

Maintenance of healthy waterways

Water filtration

Regulation of river flows and groundwater levels

Waste absorption and breakdown

The markets component of the Ecosystem Services Project will define a range of ecosystem services that can be bought and sold through a new currency/commodity such as a carbon, water quality, salinity or biodiversity credit.

Once commodities for ecosystem services are defined we will actively work with catchment communities to find buyers who are willing to invest in environmental services.

The following is an excerpt from Developing a Scientific Basis for Managing Earth's Life Support Systems by Gretchen C. Daily.

The Ecosystem Services Framework

When human activities approach or exceed the environment's capacity to sustain them, growth in those activities is rarely brought to an immediate, grinding halt. Rather, the people so engaged suddenly find themselves confronted with a set of trade-offs in the allocation of resources to competing uses and users. These trade-offs are becoming increasingly vexing and difficult to resolve, from both ethical and practical perspectives. They involve our most important ideals (such as ensuring a prosperous future for our children), our oldest tensions (such as between individual and societal interests), and sometimes our bloodiest tendencies.

At the local level, allocation of land or water to competing activities often involves a zero sum game. This is apparent in the widespread loss of water and land from native habitat to farms and, increasingly, to urban and industrial purposes. On what basis should such allocations be decided? How can individual preferences for alternative allocations be aggregated fairly? How can the costs and benefits of alternative schemes be distributed fairly? And how can future generations, the parties with the most at stake, be represented at the bargaining table? At the international level, these questions are writ large. Consider efforts to allocate among nations permits to produce chlorofluorocarbons, to harvest certain marine fish stocks, or to use the global carbon dioxide sink. How these questions are decided will profoundly influence the willingness of nations and individual actors to make and comply with agreements.

Many of the trade-offs facing us today arise in novel circumstances, without precedent or institutional framework to provide guidance for their wise and peaceful resolution. Society is poorly equipped to handle them. Throughout most of human history, environmental impacts were local and reversible, but they are now increasingly regional or global and irreversible on a time scale of interest to society. Many people do not have to wait for resource constraints to take on crisis proportions: they face such crises every day, with poor prospects for escape.

Trade and innovation make possible escape from local resource constraints, and often thereby forestall the appearance of such trade-offs. When trade-offs do appear, they are usually not as stark as was suggested in some early writings. Nonetheless, the approach of natural limits is becoming ever more apparent at the global scale. For more go to the following link: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol3/iss2/art14/#TheEcosystemServicesFramework