Making Sense

Dennis Keeney writing in the Tribune has his to say:

Now Gov. Chet Culver wants to rebuild Iowa. I think we should instead remodel Iowa while we have a chance.

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The intensity and timing of the rains, when crops were small and the soil lay bare, did little to slow down the torrential rains and give water a chance to spread out and slow down. Soil erosion rates were off the chart.

To make matters worse, more than 100,000 acres of conservation reserve land were planted back to corn, and in anticipation of high grain prices, more fertilizer than ever was applied to the land, fertilizer that now is headed down the Mississippi River. Now there is a call for more conservation reserve land to be plowed for corn (for ethanol) next year.

The storms were not caused by our dysfunctional agriculture.
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It is time to remodel our agriculture. Make it green. Have the nerve to turn our back on the political handouts (notice how the state already is salivating at the billions in federal monies that will go into repairing the damage).

Instead of paying for a reestablishment of row crops, let's put perennials in erosion prone areas, plant trees in appropriate riparian zones and for windbreaks, rotate crops between longer lasting legumes and row crops. And we should insist that more, rather than less, land goes into conservation reserve. Rural communities will thrive and Iowa will be known as the Green State instead of the Flood Bowl.

There is WATER OVER ROAD. It is the roadblock that hinders true diversity and progress in Iowa. Natural disasters will happen again, and yet again.

But a diverse resilient state will weather these storms.

Dennis Keeney, of Ames, is a senior fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

I think he makes a lot of sense. You can read the entire article here.