Cindy, you should submit this as an LTE.

Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:50:19 -0400
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: something is missing
To: [log in to unmask]




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|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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