Editorial: To clean up our water, go 'nuts' like this Iowa farmer

Seth Watkins has impressive Iowa agriculture bona fides: He’s a fourth-generation farmer. He raises 600 cows and tends 3,200 acres east of Clarinda in southwest Iowa. His grandmother, Jessie Field Shambaugh, founded 4-H. Yet some Iowans have called him “nuts” for sowing grass where he could plant more corn, he told the Register.Watkins has broken out of the two-crop cycle in which so many farmers are caught. He grows corn but also oats, alfalfa and cover crops. He grazes his cattle on pastureland, and about 400 acres of his land have been restored to prairie or set aside for ponds and protection of wildlife and streams. And he’s seen better financial returns as a result, he said, even if it comes at the cost of huge corn yields.“My job as farmer is not to produce; my job is to care for the land. And when I do this properly, this provides for all of us,” said Watkins.