By Isaac Kolousek

Growing up on a farm in rural South Dakota, I heard someone say once that no matter how much it rains, a farmer will always complain about it even though deep down they’re grateful for it. This is what helped guide me towards the Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences program at South Dakota Mines after figuring out that my initial degree in Computer Science was not where I wanted to go with my life. I wanted to understand why it did or didn’t rain on our farm, but it rained on our neighbor’s farm. I also wanted to understand why farmers, whose entire lives rest in the hands of the weather, don’t get the focus they deserve when it comes to forecasts.

After I got into high school and college, I started hearing the other side of complaints against farming; “It’s bad for the environment,” “They’re the real cause of climate change,” “They don’t care about anything but making money,” and on and on and on. I couldn’t figure out why this was. Growing up on a farm, I saw how the agricultural community cares for the environment, which is what they make their livelihood from, and how they care for their crop, which is what feeds the world. Ultimately, I learned that the reason for all this complaining is a lack of understanding from both parties. So, using my education in Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences as well as my work experience, I decided that I could try and make a change on this front with my Senior Research.

Through my internships with Bayer Crop Science as well Climate LLC, I learned about how the government is aiming to use farmland to help sequester carbon and help large companies meet their “Carbon Neutral” goals through secondary means. Sequestering is the process of capturing molecules out of the atmosphere and putting them into the soil through the process of photosynthesis. This process is the target of a larger, global goal to reduce pollutants in the atmosphere set in motion by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, I have observed that there’s a fundamental lack of knowledge about how the environment (through temperature and precipitation) changes the soil’s ability to sequester carbon (as well as other pollutants such as ammonia and methane). Talking with farmers and businesspeople alike, I’ve gathered that while they understand that soil sequestering is happening, they don’t understand the ins and outs of the process and how it changes based on those “never enough” or “always too much” rainfalls that I heard about growing up.

My research will target corn fields across eastern South Dakota, taking bi-weekly soil samples and comparing those results with the weather (specifically rainfall events) on those fields. Using the soil samples, I will be able to measure how much sequestering and/or respirating the field has done in the past two weeks and conduct analyses. Respiration is the release of molecules into the atmosphere as a byproduct after consumption. This happens for animals when we breathe and through plants during the process of photosynthesis. Tracking these respiration rates will show how those rates fluctuate throughout the growing season. With this knowledge, I hope to better educate those on both sides of those complaints I’ve heard so that they can have a better understanding of what’s going on and why it matters to both an entire industry but also to all current and future inhabitants of our planet. More in-depth research or even a continuation of this research could help drive local and national policy on how we as a society target pollution and greenhouse gasses. Increased education and information about how we can use plants, and therefore the AG industry, to improve the quality of our atmosphere could allow us to use something we already do to help turn the tide on climate change. All of this put together could ultimately lead to a better lifestyle for the socioeconomic classes in these rural farming communities, as well as the environment for the generations who will come after us.

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Isaac Kolousek is an Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences major. After graduation I plan to continue my work with Bayer Crop Science and Climate LLC, working to advance the role of technology within the Agriculture Community. Growing up on a farm and finding my passion careerwise in the weather has allowed me to find my niche in both talking with rural farmers as well as helping show them how they can leverage new weather tech to improve their decision-making processes through improved records collection as well as to quantify new data points that previously had to be taken off of feel instead of numerical data.