Iowa farmers can clean up water by growing real food

It seems that much of Iowa’s TV, radio, and print news, advertisements, and commercials about our recent model of industrial agriculture are trending more toward innuendo, willful ignorance, propaganda, and “only half the story” articles, rather than fact based news reporting, articles, and advertising.

Iowa is, and has been, the major contributor of ag pollution to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead zone’s size fluctuates from year to year regardless of any conservation practices that some Iowa farmers might use.

Iowa’s surface and groundwaters are so polluted that there are rivers, streams, and lakes are basically off limits for humans. Luckily, advanced water plant technology can, to some extent, clean up the water that we use for drinking, cooking, and personal hygiene. Wastewater plant technology is advanced enough that the cleanest parts of Iowa rivers and streams are normally where those plants discharge their treated effluent.

There is little information in the news on what would actually clean up our waters and air from this inherently (it has to) polluting industrial ag model.

Mike Naig’s recent op-ed in The Gazette (“Make the cost-saving benefits of E15 available to all Americans,”Feb. 12) calling for corn based E15 gasoline to be year-round and nation wide is an example of an “only half the story” article. Naig says this would be good for Iowa without ever mentioning that if he is successful in this endeavor it will guarantee continued nitrate pollution to Iowa’s waters far into the foreseeable future.

The Iowa Plan, and its successor the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, were put together to lower Iowa’s industrial ag pollution going into the Mississippi and Missouri rivers some 20 years ago. In these last 20 years Iowa’s industrial ag pollution has doubled. Farm field tile lines, which give direct access to streams and rivers for ag pollution, have gone from a total of 880,000 miles to now 2 million miles, more than doubling pollution access to our streams and rivers. So those plans haven’t worked.

According to recent information from the University of Iowa, Iowa can build ag conservation practices and plant cover crops, but we will never catch up to the ever increasing pollution coming from this industrial model of ag.

If we want clean water, air, and healthy soil, in Iowa, we will have to change agriculture from this recent industrial model of corn and beans, and animal confinements with their toxic waste which is spread on fields, to a system that raises actual people food and crops that can be used for commercial products. We have grown small grains, vegetables, fruits, and we pasture raised animals. And, we have grown the deep rooted cover crop hemp, most recently during World War II for the military. Hemp can supply food products and it has thousands of industrial uses, many of which replace petrochemical products.

There is a historical marker by the old Decorah train station building that includes a December 1870 newspaper article about railroad shipping business for a month. The agricultural shipping business for that month included 1,383,490 lbs. of wheat, 66,960 lbs. of barley, 40,330 lbs. of flour, 2,290 lbs. of butter, 2,860 lbs. of tallow, 330 lbs. of wool, 6,880 lbs. of hides, 16,000 lbs. of live cattle, and 24,000 lbs. of live hogs.

Agriculture in its many forms and models has been around for some 10,000 years. We didn’t have the water, air, and soil problems, and this extreme pollution in Iowa until the 1950s and 60s with the introduction of this recent industrial model of agriculture. As the train station business shows, we have raised people food relatively free of pollution for years in Iowa. If we want clean water in Iowa, we can and should raise people food again.

Bob Watson lives in Decorah.