Tag: corn
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In the Heart of the Corn Belt, an Uphill Battle for Clean Water
Iowa State Senator David Johnson has led the fight to reduce agricultural pollution of the state’s waters. Casey Beck Runoff from farms and feedlots has badly polluted Iowa’s waterways, more than half of which do not meet federal quality standards. Now, an unlikely coalition is calling for stricter controls to clean up the drinking water…
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Strips of prairie plants slow loss of soil, nutrients and water, double biodiversity
Matt Helmers from Iowa State University discusses STRIPS near a flume. Photo by Jane Hodgins, US Forest Service. Newtown Square, PA, October 2, 2017 – A clean white plastic flume in an Iowa soybean field is testimony to a novel and possibly heretical idea: prairie plants, once plowed under by farmers growing corn and soybeans…
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Farmers drawing groundwater from Ogallala Aquifer faster than nature replaces it
Every summer the U.S. Central Plains go dry, leading farmers to tap into groundwater to irrigate sorghum, soy, cotton, wheat and corn and maintain large herds of cattle and hogs. As the heat rises, anxious irrigators gather to discuss whether and how they should adopt more stringent conservation measures. They know that if they do…
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Simple River-Cleaning Tactics That Big Farms Ignore
Iowa is the largest corn producer in the U.S.—and the second largest producer of nitrate pollution in the Mississippi River Basin. Photograph by Amy Toensing, National Geographic Creative. By Elizabeth Royte. Photographs by Dennis Chamberlin PUBLISHED December 7, 2017. This story was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit investigative…
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Water quality deal lacks allure in swath of Iowa
Photo: Jack Boyer of Reinbeck refills his air seeder Nov. 10 before spreading for cover crops on his farm in Grundy and Tama counties, where he has been growing cover crops for seven years. A retiree of John Deere, he researched and experimented with different crops on his own land and found that cover crops…
