LEWISTON, Idaho — Doug Finkelnburg takes a long-term approach to supporting dryland farmers in northern Idaho.

Agronomists and others already provide expert growing-season advice, he said.

“That is a small part of what I do, but not the majority,” said the Lewiston-based Finkelnburg, who serves five counties as University of Idaho area extension educator for cropping systems. He likes to “lean into systemic challenges to sustainable agriculture.”

Before becoming an extension educator at the start of 2013, he worked for five years for UI as an agricultural research support scientist. In that role, he often worked with producers and private interests on tasks such as variety testing.

As an extension educator, “what I’ve attempted to do is look for problems that weren’t currently being addressed on a landscape scale, and try to dig in and add to the conversation there,” Finkelnburg said. He sees “greater latitude in this position addressing systemic challenges. It is a good place to go.”

Climate change, for example, “is facing everyone,” he said. He is the Extension point person on the UI-led, multi-stakeholder Innovative Agriculture and Marketing Partnership project. Funded by a $55 million USDA grant, it focuses on producer-driven work to carry out carbon-sequestering or carbon-offsetting practices.

One of the accepted practices is to lower synthetic nitrogen through zonal application, or by substituting compost or manure.

“It’s an area where we have a lot of potential gains to be made” by decreasing input costs while maintaining productivity, Finkelnburg said.

Cover crop grazing is another potential opportunity through the project, he said. Earlier, a UI project showed winter-planted wheat performed better where animals grazed the previous season — likely due to nutrients added in a concentrated area.

Farmers planting a cover crop or mix of crop species may have multiple goals — from improved soil health and greater below-ground biodiversity to a financial return on the crop itself, such as for forage, Finkelnburg said.

Cover crops planted in fall and harvested in spring can be held back by the region’s commonly dry autumns and cool springs. He is on a research team that is looking into changing cover crop termination dates to later in the growing season while still qualifying the main cash crop for loss coverage. Targeted benefits include having more flexibility in how the cover crop is used without reducing the performance of the following crop. Soil acidity is becoming a bigger issue in the area, Finkelnburg said. Adding lime, the focus of several UI researchers, reduces acidity and raises pH but can be cost prohibitive for use on a large scale.

Researchers have been selecting for more acid-tolerant wheat varieties, though “we’re not seeing the variety advancement in rotation crops peas, lentils and chickpeas,” he said.

PNW Herbicide Resistance Initiative researchers, including Finkelnburg, seek integrated weed-control solutions that go beyond chemical efficacy and look at the issue as “a people problem” in terms of “how people manage weeds,” he said.

Analyzing whole systems, targeting fence lines and field entrances, and mechanical destruction of weed seed at harvest have helped to reduce spread, he said.

Doug Finkelnburg

Age: 43

Title: University of Idaho Extension cropping systems area educator, north-central region.

Education: B.S. and M.S., environmental science, UI.

Residence: Lewiston, Idaho.

Hometown: Pocatello, Idaho.

Associations: Idaho Association of County Agricultural Agents, American Society of Agronomy, Certified Crop Adviser program.

Family: Wife, Carrie, one young son.

Hobbies: Fly fishing, gardening.