The fate of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture hangs in the balance while state legislators discuss further budget cuts.

The Leopold Center was founded in 1987 as part of the Groundwater Protection Act. That act put a tax on nitrogen fertilizer and a registration fee on pesticides.

Iowa State gets about 35 percent of those funds. The rest is divided between the University of Iowa, the University of Northern Iowa and a general fund.

The $1 million proposed cut represents 86 percent of the funding and would effectively shut down the center, said Mike Duffy, associate director for the Leopold Center.

“It’ll be such a dramatic change, and the Center as we know it now will no longer exist,” said Duffy, professor of agricultural economics.

Senate Majority Leader Stewart Iverson has doubts as to whether the Leopold Center would actually be shut down.

“First of all, the personnel at the Leopold Center are paid by Iowa State. That’s separate from the funding,” Iverson said. “There’s still a couple hundred thousand dollars in there that they can do some things with.”

Iverson said other companies who value the Leopold Center will also be willing to help with future funding.

“I know there are companies wanting the information that the Leopold Center provides,” Iverson said. “They also have the ability to go through and get some grants and some other things to continue their operations.”

Duffy said the center is engaged in a wide variety of invaluable research.

“We work with integrated pest management, animal management, manure, water quality, forest and erosion control. Just a wide variety of projects that are designed to illustrate profitability but are also environmentally safe,” Duffy said. “All the work we do looks toward profitability for the individual operations.”

Duffy said studies have shown Leopold Center research programs have been conducted in nearly all 99 counties in Iowa, and have been shown to increase operations’ profitability.

“One of the studies that was done showed that for every one dollar the Leopold Center put into the project, it generated $8 in the local community,” Duffy said.

Duffy is concerned about the broader messages being sent by the potential cuts.

“One of the things that is really disturbing to me is that the legislature is signaling a change in the attitude toward groundwater, surface water and protection of the environment, by trying to find alternatives.” Duffy said.

Duffy said he isn’t sure whether the legislation just isn’t worried about the environmental issues, or whether they will rely on regulations to solve the problems the Center’s researchers are working to resolve.

“We’ve tried to find practices so we don’t have to regulate, and they’re moving away from that approach, which is the approach that was put forward 15 years ago in the Groundwater Protection Act,” he said.

Iverson said it becomes a matter of deciding what is the most important function of government.

“There’s some things that we need to reevaluate, and I think what we’ve done is, well, with even the Regents and community colleges, we’re trying to hold that together as best we can,” Iverson said. “There are no good decisions and no good resolutions to the problems that we’re in, and you know that’s why we’re taking a look at a number of programs.”

Duffy said the Leopold Center works to help the mid-sized family farms, and that support needs to be preserved.

“Without this kind of work, then we’re continuing to see support for those types of farms erode and we continue to lose them,” he said.

“I’m often told, `Oh, big farms are inevitable,’ and my response has been, `It’s only inevitable because of the decisions we make.’ “

“We are where we are because of our decisions and right now, we’re making decisions that are going to make it inevitable because we choose not to fund, to help or to show that we favor the family-sized farm,” Duffy said.