Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Should we subsidize new farmers to become water quality (and carbon) certified?

According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, only 1% of the farms in Minnesota farm organically and only 5% sell directly to consumers. Between 1997 and 2017 the number of farms in Minnesota declined by almost 13%, nearly 10,000 farms. Since 96% of the farms in Minnesota are classified as "family farms", there's an implied loss of 10,000 farming families over a 20 year period, an average loss of 500 families per year. About 30% of Minnesota's farmers (producers) are 65 years old or more. From what we've read, not too many farmers of retirement age are willing or able to move to new styles of farming. As of early 2019, the 600th Minnesota farm received its water quality certification. That means that less than 1% of Minnesota farms have been certified. At the rate we're going, the sun may burn out before all of Minnesota's agricultural lands get certified.  We need to consider how to facilitate and accelerate transitions to water quality certified farms for newer, younger farmers.

September corn field
September corn field
Photo by J. Harrington

Most of Minnesota's cropland produces corn and soybeans. (I never eat field corn but munch too many snacks made with corn products.) According to the Iowa Corn Growers Association, the following represents a breakdown of the end uses for corn:

Corn Uses: Iowa Corn Growers Association
Corn Uses: Iowa Corn Growers Association

We're still looking for comparable information for soybeans. From this quick overview, we can think of no reason why row crops should be exempt from water quality requirements. We strongly question whether American farmers are "feeding the world" (27% of corn goes to ethanol production). If some of the oil and gas production facilities are subject to stormwater discharge permits, why aren't the larger farms subject to similar requirements? For that matter, as the world moves toward eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels, the US should aggressively consider imposing more stringent water quality discharge requirements on oil and gas production facilities. It's past time we followed the basic strategy of taxing and regulating what we want less of more onerously than those things we want more of, things we depend on to provide us with clean air and water. The way we produce row crops needs transformation.

Corn Maze



Here is where 
You can get nowhere 
Faster than ever
As you go under
Deeper and deeper

In the fertile smother
Of another acre
Like any other
You can’t peer over
And then another

And everywhere
You veer or hare
There you are
Farther and farther
Afield than before

But on you blunder
In the verdant meander
As if   the answer
To looking for cover
Were to bewilder

Your inner minotaur
And near and far were
Neither here nor there
And where you are
Is where you were

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