Story courtesy Dick Tremain
(Estherville)- Just like his father did more than 40 years ago, Estherville farmer Mark Guge is winning awards for his conservation efforts.
Guge (pronounced GOO-Gee) is the 2008 National Cattlemen’s Association Environmental Stewardship Award winner for Region III. Guge and his father have been using conservation practices on their Estherville area farm for over 50 years and winning conservation awards since 1966.
He also promotes conservation practices and programs to others. Guge helped organize the Iowa Lakes Controlled Grazing Project in cooperation with Iowa State University and USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and served as project coordinator for a Leopold Center funded educational program aimed at helping cow/calf producers. He has traveled the state as a spokesperson for the cattle industry.
Guge credits his father, Myron, for instilling in him a love for the land and a desire to protect it. Guge says his father started working with the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) in the 1950s. He was the first in the neighborhood to use contour farming, install terraces and grassed waterways and use high-residue tillage methods to save the soil. Guge says his father also took severely sloping land out of production, seeded it into forage and made hay to feed his cattle. It was these conservation methods, Guge said, that helped his father earn the 1966 “Conservation Farm of the Year” award presented by The Sioux City Journal. Many awards followed in later years, as did additional conservation practices.
Wayne Shafer helped Guge install conservation practices on his farm in the 1990s. Shafer was a NRCS district conservationist in the Emmet County office at that time and is now the district conservationist in Winterset.
Shafer said water testing by the Iowa Lakes Community College proved his paddock system improved water clarity and turbidity.
Information on conservation practices is available at your local county NRCS office.
