Following Ohio's farm phosphorus from field to Lake Erie.
Jordan Hoewischer, Director of Water Quality and Research at Ohio Farm Bureau, talks with scientists and state officials about where farm phosphorus goes and what might hold it back. The conversations stay plain and practical, moving from the lake itself to tile drainage, high-phosphorus hot spots in fields and eroding stream banks.
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Field Day with Jordan Hoewischer is the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation's podcast about farm nutrients and the water they end up in. Its host, Jordan Hoewischer, is the Farm Bureau's Director of Water Quality and Research, and the show plays like his running conversation with the people studying the problem. Guests come from The Ohio State University, USDA ARS, Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory, the University of Illinois and ODA. By his own account he starts every guest the same way: who are you, where did you come from, what are you doing. Episodes 38 through 42 make up a five-part series on legacy phosphorus. The host anchors it in Toledo, where an algal bloom over the city's Lake Erie intake left the city without water for two and a half days. In episode 38, ODA Director Brian Baldridge and Justin McBride talk H2Ohio, and legacy phosphorus is explained as a soil bank account that drains slowly when only a little is withdrawn each year. Research cited there puts the time to cut a soil phosphorus test in half at eight to 16 years with no phosphorus applied at all. Dr. Chris Winslow of Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory speaks from the lake. That talk turns to a circular economy for nutrients, one that has to work on both the animal side and the human side. Episode 40 heads the other way, from the lake to the field, as the host puts it. Dr. Will Osterholz of USDA ARS brings edge-of-field monitoring, and tile drainage is recast from a way to shed water into a tool for slowing and recapturing it, with drainage water management structures and saturated buffers in the mix. Dr. Jay Martin and Dr. Michael Brooker, interviewed in their office, discuss high-phosphorus hot spots inside fields, sections that may have received manure or municipal waste. The few sites they have managed successfully show reductions outpacing other practices along the field edge. What that adds up to across the Western Lake Erie basin, they say, is not yet known. Dr. Andrew Margenot rounds off the series with stream bank erosion, a source the host openly calls new to him. Margenot says plainly that the public and policymakers expect phosphorus to be solved as quickly as nitrate, when the lag could run 50 years even with everything done right. The two also stop to sort out the vocabulary itself: legacy, residual, old and new phosphorus. The host frames the topic carefully, not as a way to shift focus from farming but as a piece of the puzzle. Outside the series, Episode 21 with Dr. Aaron Wilson, a research scientist at The Ohio State University, is a lay conversation about weather and climate after a wet, difficult 2019. Episodes close with an invitation to email the host at the Farm Bureau with questions. What comes through is a farm organization's water quality lead working the problem out loud with the people who measure it.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants the Lake Erie phosphorus problem explained in plain terms by the researchers and officials working on it, heard from the side of an Ohio farm organization.
What sets it apart: It comes from inside the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, where the organization's own water quality director questions scientists and state officials. Its five-part legacy phosphorus series follows one nutrient across the lake, farm fields, drainage tile and stream banks.
Director of Water Quality and Research Jordan Hoewischer hosts conversations with experts and leaders who are helping to shape and secure the future of Ohio's ag industry for generations to come.
A phosphorus bank account takes years to empty; Jordan Hoewischer makes you ask where the losses go.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded look at phosphorus hot spots and why field measurements matter before watershed decisions are made.
High-phosphorus farmland can sound like a narrow technical issue, but this episode makes a clear case for why these hot spots matter in the Western Lake Erie basin.
A clear, grounded review of an episode that broadens Ohio's phosphorus equation beyond the farm field.
Stream bank erosion moves into Ohio's phosphorus discussion here as a source that can fall outside the usual farm-centered frame. Jordan Hoewischer and Dr.
A practical look at legacy phosphorus, algal blooms, and where nutrient solutions may matter most.
Legacy phosphorus comes through as a systems problem, with algal blooms in the lake tied to the wider movement of nutrients through agriculture, wastewater, consumption, and disposal. Dr.
A practical field-level look at phosphorus loss, monitoring, and drainage systems as water-quality tools.
Phosphorus control feels most useful here once the discussion follows water from the lake back to the field. Field Day's 40th episode has Jordan speaking with Will Osterholz, a USDA ARS research soil scientist, about edge-of-field monitoring, soil phosphorus loss, and what field…
A patient look at why legacy phosphorus keeps Lake Erie on a years-long timetable.
Lake Erie's water problems come through here as a slow accounting story, not a quick-fix crisis. The episode opens a legacy phosphorus series by tracing how phosphorus already stored in soil can keep shaping water quality long after it was applied.
Research translated for working agriculture.
Field science for organic agriculture.
Practical agriculture guidance, one segment at a time.
Sugar beet research, delivered in step with the season.
Agricultural engineers on careers, safety, awards and new machinery.
["Field Day with Jordan Hoewischer episode 42 argues that stream bank erosion belongs in phosphorus accounting alongside fertilizer and manure.", "Dr.
Will Osterholz of USDA ARS says his team’s 40-field Ohio dataset attributes 85% of tile-drain phosphorus loss to legacy phosphorus stored in the soil.
["Field Day with Jordan Hoewischer episode 39 continues the Legacy Phosphorus Series with Dr.
["About 3 percent of elevated fields may account for 13 percent of the Maumee Basin phosphorus load in Field Day with Jordan Hoewischer episode 38.", "Jordan Hoewischer, Ohio Farm Bureau's Director of Water Quality and Research, sits down with Ohio Department of Agriculture Director Brian Baldridge and H2Ohio engineering manager Justin McBride.", "Baldridge says the House budget cut H2Ohio by 45 percent, even though the governor's original budget stayed flat and Ohio agriculture is still tied to the Toledo water crisis and Lake Erie blooms.", "McBride says H2Ohio's MyFarms database covers a little over one million acres and about 26,000 fields, and the soil-test trend has been falling across northwest Ohio since the mid-2000s."]
Field Day Podcast episode 41 puts Jordan Haywisher with Jay Martin and Michael Brooker from The Ohio State University on legacy phosphorus fields in the Western Lake Erie Basin.
Host Jordan Hoewischer interviews Dr.
Jordan Hoewischer interviews Aaron Heilers about the Blanchard River Demonstration Farms Network, which showcases conservation practices and offers tours for farmers.
A roundtable discussion about insurance programs offered by Nationwide and Farm Bureau for Ohio farmers.
Host Jordan Hoewischer interviews manure researcher Glenn Arnold about his work on manure application technology and its impact on water quality.