Hey heres a radical thought - Why don't we start buying our eggs locally? From farmers that might spend their money locally with you....It might hurt the local economy in Wright County Iowa and hard working farmer DeCoster, but it would sure do away with alot of these problems. Know your farmer, Know your food!

I love it, environmentalists, big oil, and car mfg. Politics makes for strange bedfellows.

Chris, a 20 foot filter stip won't do much good when you 60 feet to the river because of all the rain this year. Blame the corp. and others for not letting us try to hold the river banks. Bob

Sometimes when your position is being over run; all you can do is have the guts to call in an artilllery strike on your position and hug the ground. Many groups have virtually declared war on agriculture. And this is just the thing that gets them them news and EPA attention. Clean up this thing guys even if it is just a 5 foot wide strip you leave.

No, you shouldn't plant up to the rivers edge. However, Ive seen and we have fields with filter strips that are doing the same thing(breaking off at the rivers edge). How did a river or creek get as wide as it is in the first place. Yes we should do everything we can to prevent erosion, runoff ect. But in extremely wet years with increased waterloads that will ultimetly lead to more erosion.

I don't know which river you were floating down but you might have been looking at crop "slumped down the sides of the banks" on our farm. The filter strip program is administered by the FSA. It has rules and regs. Farmers plant filter strips because it is the right thing to do. They are costly and have to be maintained. What you saw was the aftermath of the power of Mother Nature. Filter strips are useful but they will not stand up to the force of a river at or near flood stage. The filter strips along our fields are 100' wide and several times we have lost those strips literally down the river. As you were looking up to the bank tops did it ever occur to you that a farmer would NOT take his tractor, planter, and his/her life to the very edge of the river bank? Farmers may be perceived to be uneducated clods but they are not stupid.

Guys, this wasn't my first float down a river, and it wasn't an area managed by the Corps or Engineers either. People can blame Mother Nature and wet years, but it was pretty obvious a lot of people weren't putting any time or effort into trying to address the problem. Meanwhile, there were areas where the river erosion wasn't nearly as bad and the corn wasn't planted to the edge.

Chris it may not have been actively managed by the Corps but just start doing something and see how quick they show up. Ask a the local County how hard it to try to save bridges along some of the rivers because of all the red tape.

Why in the world did we spend countless time and money developing SURE if the election-year-politics-game pumps out Ad Hoc disaster $ right before the election anyway? And good luck Mr. Vilsack on adding 100,000 new farmers. These politicians are nuts! They really don't know (as my grandpa would say) ___ from shinola.