What I like about this, and your other posts, Chris, is that you do not just broad brush what shoud happen, you actually provide real potential solutions, backed up with evidence. Guess who I'm voting for for Iowa Agricultural Secretary!
Finally real talk about population and resources. They are out of balance as badly as spending and taxes. We're living on borrowed time in more ways than one.
One example is the IPBS farm show MARKET TO MARKET. Every week there are genial financial-expert discussions about the prices and futures of the corn and bean and hog and cattle deck chairs. Meanwhile, the natural-resources ship slooowly sinks.
Here is another suggestion for 1,000,000 acres: turn it into some villages consisting of parcels from 1/3rd acre to 5 acres for growing some people. Design some villages that are connected by walking trails and separated by farms and natural features. Get some young families out there. They won't be farming to make a profit but they will be growing some more of their own food. We need to empty some cities.
This is one of the big challenges of land use reform. The choice of designating land for biofuel development does very little to improve fuel efficiency, worsens climate change, and has the environmental consequences you mentioned.
The challenge for many of these issues are financially based expressed politically as lobbying. And the corn lobby is a big one!
In my lifetime--and in my father's farm as well--I have seen the effects of the transition from rotation of corn, soybeans, oats, hay, pasture (alfalfa/clover/timothy), and manuring . I've seen the growth of monocultures, the overuse of nitrogen as hedgerows are bulldozed, erosion has increased, and animal habitat is degraded. Mr. Jones is pointing to solutions, some of which some of us remember.
Checking out the local gas stations, I find that Ten gallons of E10 costs $38.99 and nine gallons of E0 (no ethanol) costs $40.04. Since there are nine gallons of gasoline and one gallon of ethanol in 10 gallons of E10, I would that call that Voo Doo economics, not economic development. These folks want you to believe using ethanol is a bargain but when they throw the ethanol in for free and actually give you $1.05 for the sheer pleasure of supporting their market, I call that a loss leader. In my day this was classified as illegal predatory pricing and was often litigated in the courts. Keep in mind, nothing is free in today's world and when the government is involved, if you don't pay up front you will pay in taxes.
Absolutely on the mark, thanks for putting so many strands together. Exploiters want to a place to pollute to grow corn and only corn, no matter what the costs to Iowa communities--exactly like any other region that is being exploited for coal, for oil, for natural gas, for pipelines... for bananas... the beating will continue unless people of Iowa realize what is happening to us and act. We know good farming, we know good land restoration, we know great ways of being in Iowa, if only the people we elect act on what we already know. Thanks again.
In this season of corn sweat, when extremely uncomfortable humidity is elevated by transpiration from millions of acres X 30,000 corn plants/acre, when airplanes and helicopters are flying fungicides on tasseling corn to eke out 10 more bushels per acre (maybe), here we are, corralled in toxins, liberty-lassoed by their domain of 21st century, unsustainable technologies combined with 19th century, frontier ethics. What is 10 more bushels/A worth when we are burning it? What is the prospect of growing on depletion in an increasingly inhospitable climate that industrial land use worsens?
For the most part, I believe you are right about mono culture crops of corn and soy. The long term lead up to wood and nuts as a crop, hasn't been explained. Iowa once produced 1/3 of the tree fruit in the 1920's Then a late frost wiped out many of the trees and the entire crop in one fail swope ended that as I understand it. Climate change has yet to be dealt with and temperture spikes and changes in everything including ocean currents and sea levels rising. So, until we get a handle on it, nothing is for certain.
How many farmers in Iowa use bio diesel and E-85 in their implements and farm equipment? Is coal shipped to Iowa for distillation? How much fossil energy is put into biofuel crops and industrial production? Is this a Rube Goldberg machine? I sense it is at best a net zero, make-work program rather than a wise strategic plan...
[I]gnoring the biophysical reality that more corn means more nitrogen which means more water pollution."
The very high CO2 footprint of fossil-based Nitrogen fertilizers takes corn-based fuels out of efficient stack in the carbon economy. Same for other fuel crops: the carbon footprint of the inputs finds its way through to the carbon footprint of the biofuels and therefore energy.
What I like about this, and your other posts, Chris, is that you do not just broad brush what shoud happen, you actually provide real potential solutions, backed up with evidence. Guess who I'm voting for for Iowa Agricultural Secretary!
Finally real talk about population and resources. They are out of balance as badly as spending and taxes. We're living on borrowed time in more ways than one.
One example is the IPBS farm show MARKET TO MARKET. Every week there are genial financial-expert discussions about the prices and futures of the corn and bean and hog and cattle deck chairs. Meanwhile, the natural-resources ship slooowly sinks.
Here is another suggestion for 1,000,000 acres: turn it into some villages consisting of parcels from 1/3rd acre to 5 acres for growing some people. Design some villages that are connected by walking trails and separated by farms and natural features. Get some young families out there. They won't be farming to make a profit but they will be growing some more of their own food. We need to empty some cities.
This was actually tried as a small federal pilot program in Iowa in the 1930's
More details, please? I would like to look this up. I want to see it happen by de-regulating some growth management laws, not by a government plan.
No. Urban farming!
Very well done Chris. You've posed some real alternatives. Big Ag won't like them but they are real alternatives.
Gosh! These ethanol subsidies are sort of like socialism, aren’t they?
This is one of the big challenges of land use reform. The choice of designating land for biofuel development does very little to improve fuel efficiency, worsens climate change, and has the environmental consequences you mentioned.
The challenge for many of these issues are financially based expressed politically as lobbying. And the corn lobby is a big one!
In my lifetime--and in my father's farm as well--I have seen the effects of the transition from rotation of corn, soybeans, oats, hay, pasture (alfalfa/clover/timothy), and manuring . I've seen the growth of monocultures, the overuse of nitrogen as hedgerows are bulldozed, erosion has increased, and animal habitat is degraded. Mr. Jones is pointing to solutions, some of which some of us remember.
Checking out the local gas stations, I find that Ten gallons of E10 costs $38.99 and nine gallons of E0 (no ethanol) costs $40.04. Since there are nine gallons of gasoline and one gallon of ethanol in 10 gallons of E10, I would that call that Voo Doo economics, not economic development. These folks want you to believe using ethanol is a bargain but when they throw the ethanol in for free and actually give you $1.05 for the sheer pleasure of supporting their market, I call that a loss leader. In my day this was classified as illegal predatory pricing and was often litigated in the courts. Keep in mind, nothing is free in today's world and when the government is involved, if you don't pay up front you will pay in taxes.
Absolutely on the mark, thanks for putting so many strands together. Exploiters want to a place to pollute to grow corn and only corn, no matter what the costs to Iowa communities--exactly like any other region that is being exploited for coal, for oil, for natural gas, for pipelines... for bananas... the beating will continue unless people of Iowa realize what is happening to us and act. We know good farming, we know good land restoration, we know great ways of being in Iowa, if only the people we elect act on what we already know. Thanks again.
They’re doing to corn what the petroleum industry did to fracked gas: trying to create a new market by lying about the impacts.
A crop looking for a market...my slogan is ABC, anything but corn, but you have a much more mature and reasonable analysis
In this season of corn sweat, when extremely uncomfortable humidity is elevated by transpiration from millions of acres X 30,000 corn plants/acre, when airplanes and helicopters are flying fungicides on tasseling corn to eke out 10 more bushels per acre (maybe), here we are, corralled in toxins, liberty-lassoed by their domain of 21st century, unsustainable technologies combined with 19th century, frontier ethics. What is 10 more bushels/A worth when we are burning it? What is the prospect of growing on depletion in an increasingly inhospitable climate that industrial land use worsens?
As my old biology/ecology hero E.O. Wilson said:
“The real problem for humanity is the following:
We have Paleolithic emotions,
Medieval institutions,
And god-like technology.”
Paying farmers (or anyone else) to raise row crops (e.g., corn, soybeans, etc.) has been a disaster. Make it stop!
For the most part, I believe you are right about mono culture crops of corn and soy. The long term lead up to wood and nuts as a crop, hasn't been explained. Iowa once produced 1/3 of the tree fruit in the 1920's Then a late frost wiped out many of the trees and the entire crop in one fail swope ended that as I understand it. Climate change has yet to be dealt with and temperture spikes and changes in everything including ocean currents and sea levels rising. So, until we get a handle on it, nothing is for certain.
How many farmers in Iowa use bio diesel and E-85 in their implements and farm equipment? Is coal shipped to Iowa for distillation? How much fossil energy is put into biofuel crops and industrial production? Is this a Rube Goldberg machine? I sense it is at best a net zero, make-work program rather than a wise strategic plan...
[I]gnoring the biophysical reality that more corn means more nitrogen which means more water pollution."
The very high CO2 footprint of fossil-based Nitrogen fertilizers takes corn-based fuels out of efficient stack in the carbon economy. Same for other fuel crops: the carbon footprint of the inputs finds its way through to the carbon footprint of the biofuels and therefore energy.