UNI biology professor Laura Jackson (left) answers questions after the 2005 Shivvers Memorial Lecture.

Jackson’s presentation was this year’s edition of the annual Shivvers Lecture, which explores ways that agriculture can sustain natural resources and small farms. Presented in memory of John Shivvers who farmed near Knoxville, the series is hosted by the Leopold Center.

Jackson teaches courses in ecology, conservation biology and restoration of agricultural landscapes and since 2003 has represented UNI on the Leopold Center Advisory Board. In 2002, she co-edited a book of essays, The Farm as Natural Habitat: Reconnecting Food Systems to Ecosystems, with her mother, Dana L. Jackson, senior program associate for the Land Stewardship Project in Minnesota.

Here are excerpts from the presentation.

About the Iowa landscape
When I moved from Kansas to Iowa in 1993, it was truly shocking to see an ecological sacrifice zone with virtually no native plant or animal species for miles and miles and miles. I am always astounded that I can get on Highway 20 in Cedar Falls and drive west for six hours and not see – with the exception of riparian zones along the rivers – a single patch of native vegetation.

In most areas of the upper Midwest, land in agricultural production is barren for nine months of the year. Because of our corn/soybean rotation, we’re looking at a system only collecting solar energy about three months of the year…We’re just using a tiny fraction of the energy that comes into our state… and we should be using more of it.

It hasn’t always been like this. Between 1860, when we first started plowing down the prairies, until about 1960, we maintained a roughly equal proportion of row crops and sod crops – hay or pasture in rotation with crops, or small grains like oats, barley, wheat and rye that were in the rotation because they were necessary.

Loss of biodiversity
We’re seeing a number of losses of species diversity. Notable are the loss of large vertebrates, such as pallid sturgeon and the interior least tern, associated with the Missouri River where they are being affected by hydroelectric dams used for flood control and for channelization.

Grassland nesting songbirds such as the bobolink and western meadowlark … migrate from Argentina and Central America every year and attempt to nest in the former prairies. At one time they could nest in farmers’ hayfields, but today there are so few of those left that their numbers are declining.

Ecosystem restoration
We need to restore the tallgrass prairie ecosystem. That doesn’t mean restoring prairie plants but the ecosystem services that prairies provided. We need to reduce soil disturbance and tillage … No-till has been a benefit, but no-till still has bare dirt and no deep perennial roots for most of the year.

There has been progress in Iowa in developing more perennial systems and options for people. The Leopold Center’s grasslands program works with all kinds of approaches and producers who may want to convert a small part of their operation to rotational grazing or some other use of the land.

Obstacles to change
In order for my ecological dreams to work, farm policy needs to change. There’s no way it will fix itself.

We need to balance the interest of taxpayers, eaters and farmers, and I believe those taxpayers and eaters and farmers all are wishing for a healthy environment in which to raise their children.

We need to reward clean water, carbon sequestration, biodiversity. These are the multiple benefits that agriculture can provide our society. We also need to make conservation policy performance-based instead of practice-based.

Lessons from Easter Island
Jared Diamond’s new book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is pertinent to the questions that we’re facing in the Midwest … [He writes that the] history of ecological failure is that an inordinate amount of energy and precious human and natural resources get poured into precisely the wrong thing. The Easter Islanders found a forest of giant palms seven feet across, 60 feet high. By the time they were done, they were cannibals, living in chaos and want.

They were convinced that it was very important to build magnificent statues on massive stone platforms without benefit of cranes or fossil fuel. Their island had the perfect soft stone to do it.

Over time, as various clans competed for dominance on this tiny island, the statues grew in size and people became more adept at moving these 60-foot tall statues nine kilometers across the island on wooden rails. As living conditions were deteriorating and their forests were disappearing, they decided that what they really needed to do was to add red hats – 12,000-pound red stones on top of the statues.

How do we recognize these red hats? How do we recognize the things that we are ceaselessly investing in that are not doing a good job? May I suggest bushels per acre? It’s going to be hard to give up on this demanding god that we have pleased so well for so many years.

We need to remember that it is the land and the health of the land that is our true family, our true source of wealth and strength and long-lasting security and support. Aldo Leopold encouraged respect for this web of life, a healthy respect because it’s related to our existence.