Green Blog: Water Pollution and the Farm Economy

As many people know, the astounding increase in agricultural output that marked the latter half of the 20th century came at a high environmental price. Agriculture is a major contributor to global warming, and runoff from farm fields helps pollute rivers and streams.

In the United States, nothing quite symbolizes this issue like the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, which is largely a consequence of fertilizer runoff from the Midwestern farming region.

Now the Environmental Working Group, a Washington outfit known for its work on agricultural issues, is calling attention to the lingering problems with a new report titled ?Muddy Waters.?

While it focuses on water quality in Iowa, the report makes a broader point about the relationship between agriculture and the environment. When the Clean Water Act was adopted in 1972, farms were largely exempted from its requirements. That means getting farmers to adopt practices that limit runoff has been a voluntary activity.

The new report throws the effectiveness of this approach into doubt. (So did an ambitious series this year by the reporter Perry Beeman in The Des Moines Register that covered similar ground.) ?The Clean Water Act has done a great job of cutting industrial pollution, but farm pollution continues unabated,? Craig Cox, a co-author of the new report, said in a statement.

The idea of imposing major pollution requirements on farmers is a touchy subject in Washington. The Obama administration?s agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, is a former Iowa governor who advocates the voluntary approach. No doubt, Mr. Vilsack is aware of the firestorm he would face from farm groups if he came out for mandatory controls on farm runoff.

It?s true, as farm groups argue, that as yields continue to rise over time and farmers adopt techniques that allow them to mete out fertilizers more judiciously, fertilizer pollution per unit of farm output is falling. Yet that factor has been substantially offset in recent years as high farm prices encouraged farmers to plant more acreage.

The numbers compiled by the Environmental Working Group suggest that in absolute terms, we are basically making no headway on the pollution problem.

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/water-pollution-and-the-farm-economy/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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