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 Agriculture is not the first thing that comes to mind when most people think of New Jersey, the home state of Professor John Moncrief. “People think of smoke stacks,” he says, “but New Jersey is the garden state.”
Moncrief grew up on a 50-acre farm in the garden state, where his family called on him to lend a helping hand. “My dad put me on a tractor and then went to work at the factory,” John recollects. As a result, he got to experience farming at a young age. With this agricultural upbringing, the Midwest was a natural place for John to migrate. He began his college education in forestry at the University of Wisconsin-Steven's Point but soon switched to soil science. “There were too many people in forestry, and there were more opportunities in soils,” he explains.
During his college years John discovered that he enjoyed the Midwest and wanted to stay. After earning a Master's in soil physics at Montana State University, he returned to Wisconsin to receive a Ph.D. at Madison. This path led to his current position as a professor in the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate.
Today John's research centers on conservation tillage and residue cover, looking specifically at how tillage management affects farmland and the environment. That means his research can have broad impacts that reach well beyond the Midwest. In fact, when fertilizers from the farmlands of the Midwest enter the Mississippi River through soil erosion and runoff, they can eventually make the 2,300-mile trip to the Gulf of Mexico. Within the river system, the excess nutrients fuel growth of algae, which leads to a depleted supply of dissolved oxygen for fish, shrimp, and other aquatic life.
Thus John understands the importance of his work. “My research affects people who farm and people who don't, because it affects water quality,” he explains. “The challenge is to increase the farmer's profit without hurting the environment.”
He recently worked with other members of the department on an ambitious project known as the Minnesota Phosphorous Index. The index is a management tool that estimates the relative risk that phosphorus is being lost from a field and delivered to a nearby ditch, stream, or lake. |
 Phosphorous can reach nearby water in one of three ways: erosion, rainfall runoff, or snowmelt runoff. John's tool considers all three. The user puts in information about the land, crops, tillage, and applications of phosphorous. The tool calculates relative risk and makes recommendations for land-management practices. Where risk is low, few changes may be recommended. Where risk is high, the tool recommends changes that best target the source of phosphorous delivery. |
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Above: Site of a phosphorous-runoff study in
LeSueur County, Minnesota |
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The Phosphorous Index has caught the attention of many people, including farmers, educators, state and federal regulators, and members of the chemical industry. The tool is available for download at http://www.mnpi.umn.edu/.
Moncrief shares his findings with other scientists by publishing in journals. “We like to keep up with each other's research so we're not reinventing the wheel,” he says.
Farmers are interested in his work as well, and John enjoys doing extension work throughout Minnesota. “I like helping farmers understand what they observe,” he says. John has received awards from the American Society of Agronomy for his extension publications. He also works closely with other educators, such as county extension agents, and with regulators, such as the Pollution Control Agency.
John, who bikes to work every day, likes to get outdoors when he has free time. He enjoys hunting, fishing, and backpacking. He takes his four grown children on bi-annual backpacking trips to Montana. John's wife would rather go to Disney World, “because she likes running water,” he says with a big grin. The two have been married more than 30 years, and they celebrated the birth of their first grandchild in 2005. |
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