An Urban's Rural View

On the list of states dribbling nitrogen and phosphorous into rivers and causing "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico, Iowa ranks high. No surprise there: A state with porous soils, extensive farm tiling, frequent heavy rainfall and an annual grain output exceeding Canada's will tend to leak nutrients.

No surprise, either, then, that the state has a voluntary, science-based program to reduce nitrogen and phosphorous runoff by 45%. The Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy envisions action by both "point sources" (factories and wastewater treatment facilities) and "non-point sources" (mainly the state's 92,000 farms). It calls on farmers to adopt conservation practices that will reduce the state's nitrogen discharge by 41% and its phosphorous discharge by 29%.

That's impressive, but it leaves questions to be answered. By when should the nutrient-reduction targets be achieved? More fundamentally, who will pay for the conservation practices?

For practices that make economic sense (think: applying the right amount of fertilizer at the right time), the burden naturally falls on farmers themselves. But what about practices that don't pay for themselves? What about taking land out of production at field's edge or installing bioreactors that run drainage out of tiles through nutrient-absorbing wood chips? Who will pay?

In fairness, it isn't just Iowa that's ducking that question. Congress slashed $6 billion from ag-conservation programs in the latest farm bill. It chopped another $600 million from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and Conservation Stewardship Program in the $1.1 trillion "cromnibus" bill to fund the government for the next year (http://tiny.cc/…).

Does Congress prefer environmental regulation? That seems unlikely; many Congressmen rail against "regulatory overreach." Does Congress think that without regulatory pressure or taxpayer support, farmers will adopt practices that, to them, are all cost and no benefit? If not, who does Congress think will pay?

Water-quality questions were front and center at the eighth annual DTN/Progressive Farmer Ag Summit in Chicago. Leading the discussions were Sean McMahon, executive director of the Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance, and Tim Smith, an Eagle Grove, Iowa, farmer who has won conservation awards.

One takeaway from their presentations: Conservation works. Over three years Smith reduced the outflow from his farm substantially, from well above the 10 milligrams per liter threshold to well below it. He used a variety of tools, from planting cover crops to delaying fertilizer application, from bioreactors to buffer, filter and prairie strips.

Another takeaway: Conservation costs. Smith estimates his bioreactor ran from $7,500 to $8,000 between outlays for control structures, excavation, wood chips and other materials. It drains from 30 to 40 acres of Smith's 800; to drain the whole farm would take seven or eight bioreactors.

And that's just one farm. Estimates for all of the practices needed on all the farms in all of Iowa's sensitive watersheds run into the billions.

Who will pay?

As executive director of the Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance, McMahon spends a lot of time trying to find funding for voluntary farmer efforts like Smith's. The alliance is a clean-water initiative of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, Iowa Soybean Association and Iowa Pork Producers.

The commodity groups have put their money where their mouths are, with each pledging a million dollars over five years. The Iowa Soybean Association funded a quarter of the cost of Smith's bioreactor. Uncle Sam chipped in the rest.

The Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy encourages cities and wastewater treatment facilities to fund farmers if farmers can do the job cheaper, so that's another possible source of funds. Foundations are still another.

McMahon hopes to enlist support from food companies but he knows that won't be easy. They want to make clean-water claims for their products, he says; they don't necessarily want to pay farmers to make the water cleaner.

And so we still have only partial answers to the who-will-pay question. Meanwhile, advocates of voluntary solutions are only too aware that efforts to impose regulatory solutions are working their way through the courts.

"If we're going to preserve our freedom to operate," McMahon told the Ag Summit, "we need a lot more Tim Smiths."

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanity@hotmail.com

(CZ)

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