ISA recognizes Schaefer for excellence

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — While Dan Schaefer was honored as the recipient of the Dave Rahe Excellence in Soils Consulting Award, his thoughts were about the work done by numerous certified crop advisers throughout Illinois.

The Illinois Soybean Association presented Schaefer with the ILSoyAdvisor award during the Soybean Summit Feb. 1.

“I reluctantly accept this award because I can think of 10 individuals that I work with that I feel would be more deserving. I am thrilled to be getting an award and I am appreciative of it, but I accept on behalf of others who work heavily in soil and water conservation, soils consulting and other dedicated CCAs who work alongside farmers every day,” Schaefer said.

“I think at one time Illinois had more CCAs than any other state, and it may still be. So, there are a lot of people doing a lot of good work. To me, it would be hard to point out just one individual.”

Schaefer serves as Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association director of nutrient stewardship. He spent 30 years in the ag retail business as an agronomist and plant manager for Illini FS. There he worked directly with growers on improving their yields through agronomic practices and recommendations and assisting the University of Illinois with on-farm research to improve nutrient efficiency.

He has a master’s degree in agronomy from the University of Illinois and is a certified professional agronomist, a CCA, and a 4R nutrient management specialist. He was named CCA of the year in 2010 by Illinois Farm Bureau and Farm Leader of the Year in 2018 by the Champaign News-Gazette.

Schaefer hopes his time and effort as a CCA will help farmers begin to adopt and incorporate conservation practices in their own operations.

Work Ahead

With planting season two months away, Schaefer is focusing on all of the good work researchers are doing in the state.

“We’ll have the same research activities with Emerson Nafziger and the Maximum Return to Nitrogen and N rate trials for the N rate calculator, with Lowell Gentry and the tile studies in Douglas County, and with Eric Miller and Lowell Gentry in Piatt County with bioreactors and cropping systems research,” he said.

“Laura Gentry alluded today to some of the things we’ve seen with cover crops, being able to reduce nitrate loads, and we find that we have the system in place that we can advance to at least a 30% nitrate reduction in tile loads really quick by just adopting cover crops, and less tillage and moving our nitrogen applications to a spring and early sidedress application.”

Unfinished Business

The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy Biennial Report released last fall noted the state has a lot of work ahead to meet the strategy’s goals of reducing the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in Illinois waterways.

Schaefer was asked about the frustration in knowing, based on sound research, what practices work in reducing nutrient losses, yet those practices are slow to be implemented on farms.

“We’ve got to make the practice changes. The fortunate thing I guess is I see the results of the cover crop research firsthand. I see how much nitrate is taken out of the tile lines. I see how much phosphorus is held within cover crops. I see all of that stuff but yet how do we get that adoption out to the farm gate. That’s probably the hardest thing we’ve got ahead of us to get done,” he said.

“My biggest worry is that we have voluntary practices that we can do right now, but we’re not adopting those practices fast enough, and at some point in time I think the environmental groups’ patience are going to run out on us and then we’re going to end up with regulation of some sort. We want to continue to stay on the voluntary side of change our practices.

“We want to have the ability to make our decisions on our own. If you go to regulations, it’s black and white. But under certain conditions, if it’s still voluntary we can go one way or the other and flex a little bit and still do the right things. I’m still really concerned with the amount of tillage we have that went on in central Illinois this year.

“With this winter storm coming in (Feb. 1), I’m afraid a lot of soil is going to move. It may not move now, but if you go back and look at March 2019, we had a snowstorm, we had rain come on top of that frozen ground and then we got that sheet erosion. We had a lot of soil that moved, and I’m afraid if we don’t have a slow melt of the snow before we get a heavy rainfall, we’re going to have the same problem.

“I understand if you had ruts in the field from this fall, yes, you had to till. But we don’t have to till it pure black. We don’t have to till bean stubble. We don’t have to chisel plow bean stubble. There’s no reason for it.”

Rahe Award

The award was named in honor of Rahe, an ISA CCA Soy Envoy in 2019 who was passionate about soil management, having spent the majority of his career specializing in the field.

He passed away suddenly in April 2020, but during his year as a CCA Soy Envoy, Rahe authored blogs for ILSoyAdvisor covering topics such as soil compaction, micronutrient management, cover crops and more. In addition to writing for ILSoyAdvisor, he wrote his own blog, Observations in Agriculture.

Rahe’s 40 plus-year career saw him work for organizations like the Natural Resources Conservation Service as a soil scientist, Soil-Right Consulting Services Inc. and most recently his own soil testing company, RPM LLC.