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Environment Iowa is part of a growing network of environmental, farmer and citizen groups that are working to protect our air and water from agricultural pollution, while increasing the benefits to the environment from agriculture and keeping farmers on the land.

Our waters, our wildlife, and our outdoor recreational opportunities are all damaged when water runs off farm fields carrying sediment, nitrogen, manure, phosphorus, pathogens, and pesticides into our waterways.  

Brief Summary

Much of Iowa was once a river of grass akin to the Florida Everglades – water moved slow and clean.  Soil was built, not sluiced down to the Gulf of Mexico. Carbon was sequestered.

The conversion of nearly all of Iowa’s wet and dry prairies into farm fields between 1840 and 1900 dramatically altered the hydrology of our state, creating defined perennial streams where none existed before, and increasing the speed and amount of water running off the land.  

That problem has been exacerbated in the past 50 years due to nitrogen fertilizer’s ability to “age” soil and increase compaction, according to new Iowa State University research.

After this year’s dramatic floods, proposals are being made to shift some Iowa farmland out of corn and soybeans and into perennials, which hold the water (and soil) far better than row crops.  Perennial cover can take the form of pasture, conservation plantings like CRP, or certain energy crops.
 
Proposals are also being made to dramatically expand the use of cover crops under corn and perhaps soybeans.  Management of cover crops together with corn and soybeans is generally somewhat more complex than just doing a corn-soybean rotation but the environmental benefits are significant. 

Both perennial crops and cover crops if applied to a large number of targeted acres will significantly reduce agricultural water pollution, reduce agriculture’s hydrologic footprint and thus reduce flooding.  These practices will also reduce particulate air pollution and help address the recent non-attainment declaration for particulate pollution in eastern Iowa by EPA.  Both also significantly improve wildlife habitat on the land and in the stream. 

Environment Iowa will press legislators to enact policies which cause such shifts in agricultural production while carefully ensuring that these shifts do not put farmers out of business.