Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Read our reports from selected 20th anniversary sessions

Back to Leopold Letter Fall 2007

 


Rethinking agriculture: Healthier plants, healthier animals

Whether you choose to call it “friendly fire” or unintended consequences, the results of our actions on environmental and energy issues are not necessarily going to produce the outcomes we predicted or desired. Four discussants in a panel on “Rethinking Agriculture for Healthier Plants and Healthier Animals” considered why and how this happens, and what might be done about it.

The premise of the article that sparked the session discussion was that most of those advocating new energy technologies are not encouraging any reduction in overall energy consumption, so there is no guarantee the new technologies will be able to meet the continuing high demand for energy. (The session began with a discussion on the article, Friendly Fire)

Lance Gibson, who grew up on a grass-based farm in northeast Iowa, and is now an ISU associate professor of agronomy, has heard about Iowa’s water problems since he was a kid. He cited the Leopold Center as the only place where he’d been able to get funding to research his ideas about what would help improve water quality. He agreed that new energy technology will not replace the stores of fossil fuel-based energy, and the consequences of ignoring that fact may be self-defeating. He worries that the public is being told things about energy that simply aren’t true; they need to be aware that existing or emerging “answers” aren’t going to fix the problems. And we have come to believe that we can’t survive without all of our “stuff.”

Jim Kerns and his wife Jody own a locker in Edgewood that processes hogs, beef, deer, buffalo and goats. They also farm 80 acres of row crops, have some land in CRP and pasture, and planted a tree farm as a legacy for their children. He pointed to some unintended consequences of USDA regulations dealing with mad cow disease. Because their locker is USDA-inspected, they cannot accept downed cattle to be processed, even if the downing is benign (i.e., from a broken leg) rather than disease related. He also cited the downstream financial crises of the ethanol boom for producers – they can get high prices for corn but then can’t afford to feed it to their livestock, which may in turn affect his locker supplies.

Jody Kerns pointed out that ecological attitude and behavior changes are not likely to occur until people are significantly affected financially, and we may be reaching the tipping point with $3 per gallon gasoline. She questioned whether there is a reasonable spot to intervene before things become catastrophic? What signals tell us when and where to take action? Ruefully, she wondered if “We live in a country where we’re going to take starving people’s food to make gasoline.”

Margaret Smith, who works with Value Added Extension to Agriculture at Iowa State, suggested that we needed to use positive and negative feedback loops to critique environmental issues. She also argued that many unhappy consequences are indeed foreseen and then ignored. As she put it, “We don’t monitor very well in our culture.” She cited a need to adjust our consumption levels and more closely gauge our eco-footprints. She asked what other changes can we make besides technological ones, and also asked how we disrupt our cultural sense of entitlement. – Mary Adams


Policies to move farmers toward ecological, profitable farming

Mike Duffy, ISU Extension economist, painted a less than rosy picture of the current U.S. government investment in policies and programs to improve the environment through agricultural modifications. USDA spending on conservation has declined significantly over the last decade. In 1995, conservation subsidies made up 25 percent of the USDA commodity subsidy budget, but by 2005 that percentage had shrunk to 9 percent. Iowa conservation subsidies weren’t much higher comprising only 10 percent of the total in the 2005 budget.

He posed the fundamental question: What are we trying to accomplish with our conservation policies? There are so many possible goals: Decrease water pollution, increase soil quality, improve wildlife habitat, and increase aesthetics of rural life. But it is difficult to maximize or minimize more than one goal at a time and there are always tradeoffs, or as economists prefer to say, “There’s no free lunch.”

Among the policy approaches used to encourage environmental change:

  • Taxes and fines
  • Subsidies, whether federal, state or local
  • Combination of approaches such as carbon trading and conservation compliance measures (the United States spends $1 for every $25 Europe spends)
  • Legal (pesticide registration)

Other possibilities for environmentally forward policies include carbon exchanges, social accounting with respect to environmental quality aspects of agricultural practices, and acknowledging positive and negative externalities related to agricultural production. Currently, not all costs (such as ecological ones) are accounted for in costs of production. As Duffy pointed out, “Some say, let the market work, but sometimes the market fails.”

Questions were raised about why the Conservation Security Program (CSP) hadn’t been successful and Duffy cited problems from the start with the way the program was rolled out and the funding deficiencies that crippled it. He showed results from a study of several Iowa watersheds regarding their experience with CSP. The Raccoon River watershed survey respondents were very negative about the program, while other watershed residents were less critical of the program.

Dave Swenson, an ISU researcher in economics, talked about the results of his recent study on “Economic and Fiscal Impacts of Organic Crops Conversion.” He noted that regional economic vibrancy, including economic health and community stability, is a major concern in Iowa. The harsh realities of rural community change are consolidation of economic activity, along with deterioration of economic and fiscal capital. The most effective role for local governments in this situation has been slow to emerge.

In northwest Iowa, Woodbury County decided to employ tax-based incentives to encourage farmers to convert their conventional operations to organic production. The civic officials thought the move would help counter conventional agricultural problems, stem population drain, offer higher profit margins on poor-quality land, and keep more family farms in business. Swenson’s study measured the economic impact outcomes of conventional vs. organic agriculture in the county.

Direct values per 1,000 acres showed some advantages to organic production:

  • Conventional inputs cost $209,000; value added was $170,000.
  • Organic inputs cost $140,000; value added was $369,000.

However, despite the price premiums linked with organic production, the need for increased community services provided by the county offsets the local government tax revenue gains. Swenson stated that it doesn’t pay back the community financially to use tax abatement to encourage conversion to organic operations, and civic leaders will have to use other criteria (i.e., ecological, social) to justify using public funds to encourage such conversion. – Mary Adams


Learning from Leopold's legacy

The three people selected to speak at the session that celebrated the Leopold Center’s namesake represented different aspects of Aldo Leopold’s life, but all spoke with the same passion and heartfelt love of the man whose writings and legacy are still being employed.

Wellington “Buddy” Huffaker is the director of Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, which was founded by Aldo’s children. He works in Aldo’s surroundings, teaching visitors to the new Legacy Center and the “Shack” of Leopold’s ideas. The Leopold Foundation is trying to ensure that his ideas endure.

“We have both an ethical and moral responsibility to nature and the role of nature in human society,” remarked Huffaker. “Leopold lived on the land without spoiling it. And he was one of the best communicators of these principles.”

Huffaker reminded us that we don’t see the long-term payoff of land ethics, although the generations that come after us will. They will enjoy the trees and prairies that we have planted.

Iowa State University Vice President for Extension and Outreach Jack Payne stated that he is “a second-generation Leopoldist,” having had several of Leopold’s students as his professors. He noted that Aldo was involved with agriculture his entire life but was not a farmer. Leopold earned a living by working for the U.S. Forest Service, in game management, and was a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As the first wildlife management professor in higher education, Leopold challenges, through his essays, that the farmer, the environmentalist and agribusiness work together.

Jerry Rigdon is head of the Leopold Heritage Group in Burlington, Iowa, Leopold’s birthplace. The group was formed three years ago, striving to preserve what is left of Leopold’s “trampings” around Burlington and the Mississippi River. The land he explored has disappeared with the town’s growth and Keokuk’s locks and dam. Rigdon is concerned with what we have lost since Leopold’s time: prairies, sloughs, and species of animals and birds.

But Burlington’s Flint Creek, one of Leopold’s boyhood environments, has been reclaimed by area environmentalists. Rigdon said that Leopold’s writings change people’s hearts and minds individually, and that we need to apply his message to all aspects of the environment, both rural and urban.

Huffaker summed up the session, “What we do is an epilogue to A Sand County Almanac. An ethic is not written.” – Carol Brown


Rethinking agriculture: A living land

“The land is not a machine.” Dana Jackson summed up the session, "Rethinking Agriculture for a Living Land," in fairly simple terms. After starting the discussion with comments on two thought-provoking essays (Don’t buy local! and Where there’s muck there’s brass), the panel agreed that one size doesn’t fit all for solutions to feeding and fueling our nation.

"Don’t buy local" author Richard Conniff says that buying local isn’t necessarily the best decision: some foods are best raised (or grown) in more appropriate geographic areas than others. For example, someone in California buying “local” rice supports rice that was probably grown in heavily irrigated deserts at huge environmental costs.

Laura DeCook and her husband Mike, operate a family ranch in southern Iowa, raising grass-fed cattle. She offers a compromise: give the consumer the option to buy locally. Their organic beef is in local stores next to the other beef, of which we can only speculate about its origin.

Jackson, associate director for The Land Stewardship Project in Minnesota, stated that we need to think of our local dairies, wineries, and orchards as community assets, which we generally don’t do now. Dave Swenson, an ISU economics research scientist, followed up, “we have an economic impact opportunity when we buy local. The more money we keep in the community for a length of time, the more sustainable we can be. The horticulture environment is one area where being locally-sustainable works. There are certain areas where we can enhance our local economy. It’s not all or nothing.”

When it comes to fueling ourselves, the panel agreed that producing “bio-gas” may not be the best idea either. "The second article talked about encouraging the production of biogas from cow manure and methane. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) has proposed a bill that gives tax credit for evolving "bio-gas" producers.

All panelists agreed that this idea goes in the wrong direction, calling this a “closed loop process.” Jackson pointed out that we are making decisions with the expectation that we will continue with our current lifestyles. "There are other ways to think about the energy issue – to conserve energy instead of increasing production. Our landscape needs to be a 'living landscape.'" – Carol Brown


Healthy people and landscapes: Iowa's future food systems

More questions and thought-provoking observations emerged after hearing Joan Dye Gussow and Angie Tagtow speak about changing Iowa’s future food systems.

Gussow, professor emerita and former chair of the Nutrition Education Program at Teachers College in Columbia University, challenged her listeners to eat more food from their region. “Scale issues are huge. What does it really cost to produce our food? We need to engage eaters to the food system. Every person should know a farmer.”

“We had bad spinach, ground beef, and scallions, but it took the pet food catastrophe to open our eyes to where our food comes from,” she pointed out. She said that diseases such as E. coli could be eliminated if cattle could be raised differently.

Tagtow, an Iowa nutrition consultant, presented her Vision for Good Food in Iowa, summing it in four words: Healthy, Green, Fair and Affordable. Her presentation highlighted Iowa's many food contradictions.

“The food grown in Iowa does not meet human nutritional needs,” she said. “Crops are grown in Iowa –but most are not grown for direct human consumption. For example, our corn goes to feed livestock, for conversion to corn syrup, and to make ethanol.” But two-thirds of Iowans are considered obese. Tagtow observed the same federal agency that controls agricultural subsidies also controls food guidelines.

"The nutrition density is greater in the foods grown in Iowa and processed foods take more energy than whole foods,” she said, giving us another reason why buying local makes sense. Tagtow’s vision is that “all eaters have equal and regular access to safe, nutritious, seasonal and sustainably produced food to maintain a healthy lifestyle.” – Carol Brown


Harnessing Iowa’s wind energy

Bill Haman spoke to a full room in the day's last round of breakout sessions. After a day packed with information, everyone at “Harnessing Iowa’s Wind Energy” was still engaged.

Haman manages industrial programs and the Alternate Energy Revolving Loan program at the Iowa Energy Center in Nevada. He started simply by posing the question to the audience, “What is wind?” But there was stillness in the air as we tried to give a technical definition. He let us off the hook by providing, “Wind is a byproduct of solar energy, coming from the uneven heating and cooling of the earth.”

Iowa is the tenth windiest state and third in wind energy generation, following behind Texas and California. The northwest corner of Iowa is windiest, but it is not consistent. The Iowa Energy Center has been monitoring the wind by month with March and April being the windiest. There is virtually no wind in Iowa during the summer months when energy demand is at its highest.

Wind power development is in its infancy in Iowa. Technology and research are expanding. Currently we don’t know how to store wind energy so it must be used as it is generated. In addition to power storage, researchers are looking at harnessing strong wind and low wind speeds (a turbine begins to generate energy when winds reach 7 mph), turbine design and materials. The wind industry will create manufacturing jobs, vocational jobs including operators and maintenance, and new academic programs are being created to study wind energy.

There are several school districts in Iowa that have erected wind turbines to generate power for their buildings; Spirit Lake was the first school district, building their first turbine in 1993. Cerro Gordo County is home to the first Iowa wind farm. There are 11 wind farms in Iowa with several more being built.

Wind energy is beginning to make an impact on the agriculture industry. Farmers are erecting turbines to power their homes and facilities such as hog confinements. Now there are price incentives, financing plans, and tax credits to encourage wind power. Farmers are combining their resources to leverage better prices for their power and less money to connect transmission lines.

But Haman warned that pencils need to be put to paper before you put up a turbine on your farm. Several factors need to be considered to determine whether wind energy is a feasible option. According to Haman, one needs to ensure that turbine location “is within a good wind regime, within close proximity to the utility grid, having favorable terrain, and good neighbors.” – Carol Brown

 

Back to Leopold Letter Fall 2007