The story below is about this year's $20 billion crop  harvest and its 
impacts.  It's a good, well-written  story.  But what is missing is any mention 
of the environmental  impacts.  

The argument could be made that the environment is absent  because this is 
an economic story.  But I can't agree with that  argument, because this 
story does mention sociological impacts on beginning  farmers, small town 
schools, etc.  Furthermore, water pollution has an  economic cost.  And the impact 
of rowcrop agriculture on Iowa water  quality is not minor, but major, and 
is also a big reason why the  Gulf dead zone, which also has an economic 
impact, is growing. 
 
The REGISTER does cover the environmental impacts of  farming.  But almost 
always, it does so in separate  stories.   I can't help but think that the 
separate coverage, and the  absence of environment concerns in most 
agricultural  business stories, may have some tiny connection to the fact  that even 
though Iowa has some of the worst water quality in the  nation, many Iowans 
don't know that, don't know the real reasons why, and/or  don't think it 
really matters.   
 
I can see the impacts of those high crop prices and high land prices in my  
own county, where tile systems are being expanded and repaired,  thereby 
increasing yields but also sending more pollution down the creeks,  where 
trees and shrubs are being ripped out in some places so crops can be  planted 
right up to the edge of the field, and where some CRP land is  going back into 
production.  Until those impacts are at  least considered important, if not 
as important as the  big-dollar impacts on farm equipment dealerships, I 
don't know how we in  Iowa are ever going to solve our water problems.   
 
_http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110925/BUSINESS01/309250034/What
-a-20-billion-harvest-means-to-Iowa-s-economy?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Front
page_ 
(http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110925/BUSINESS01/309250034/What-a-20-billion-harvest-means-to-Iowa-s-economy?odyssey=tab|topnews|text
|Frontpage) 
 

Cindy Hildebrand
[log in to unmask]
Ames, IA  50010



"The sumac foliage is reddening, and the locusts along the low banks of the 
 Skunk near Colfax are already tinged with yellow. Sumac seems to have been 
among  the plants most frequently observed by the early travelers in the 
prairie  region." (Selden Lincoln Whitcomb describing central Iowa on 
September 9,  1906)

 


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