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Field not compliant with conservation standards

JANESVILLE — A cornfield owned by Rock County is not in compliance with conservation practice requirements, according to a letter written by county conservationist Tom Sweeney to the UW Extension office.

Randy Shotliff rents and farms the field north of Highway 14 near Highway 51.

The county has the ability to terminate the lease for non-compliance. But the county agriculture and extension committee Wednesday night voted to send a letter to Shotliff asking him to attend a future committee meeting to talk about the problem.

A depression in the field is supposed to be planted along the contour of the land. The field was planted that way, but Shotliff or an employee later went over the field with cultivating equipment in a straight north-south pattern, Sweeney said.

Shotliff told the Gazette today that he believes he is in 100 percent compliance.

“Rotary hoeing had to be done in a contour direction,” Shotliff said. “Not doing that would be a foolish move on my part.”

Also, Shotliff is to keep at least 30 percent of last year’s crop cover on the field at all times. When a county conservation staff member measured the residue on June 5, it was only 26 percent, Sweeney said.

Since then, Shotliff has applied nitrogen to the field. That fixed the contour ridges but further depleted the residual cover, Sweeney said.

The letter will remind Shotliff that last year he violated the terms of the lease by not reporting nutrients applied to fields.

Shotliff is in the second year of a three-year lease; this is the second three-year lease he has entered with the county.