One of the major challenges that Iowa’s crop and livestock producers face is the growing concerns of society on environmental issues and how production systems may affect ecological quality of Iowa’s landscape. Some of the proposed environmental regulations,such as nutrient water quality standards and total maximum daily loadings of pollutants (TMDLs) to Iowa’s water bodies, are likely to govern the future of our livestock and farming activities on the landscape. For example, one of the ongoing discussions in the Environmental Protection Commission (EPC) is to consider putting a ban on applications of liquid swine manure prior to soybeans. If approved, this could bring some serious implications for swine producers and remove their flexibility of applying swine manure to soybean. Another issue being discussed is the impact of cover crops on nutrients loss from row-crop production systems.