No. Not when we’re talking about how long it takes for a lake to fill up with mud.

According to a new Iowa State University study, before the first European settlers reached what is now Iowa, it took 631 days for a single millimeter of sediment (that’s four-hundredths of an inch, less than the diameter of a regular pencil lead) to accumulate on the bottom of Iowa lakes. It now takes just 59 days.

Researchers found that while sedimentation rates began to rise as soon as western agriculture arrived, “the largest increases in sediment deposition occurred after 1950, concurrent with agricultural intensification.”

The Iowa State assessment of 32 Iowa lakes showed that more mud has flowed into lakes since agriculture “intensified” dramatically after World War II than over the previous 100 years of western agriculture, in spite of the $294 billion (inflation adjusted) that federal taxpayers have spent since 1935 on soil conservation measures to encourage farm businesses to control this pollution.

The sediment smothers aquatic life and carries with it excess phosphorus. Combined with the excess nitrogen supplied by modern agriculture, this sometimes creates toxic algal blooms and makes waters unswimmable. The algal blooms also deplete oxygen in the water, resulting in fish kills in Iowa and contributing to the notorious “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.

The new study is the latest in a series of reports showing that agricultural “business as usual” is not stemming the tide of pollution from farming operations:

• Data assembled by the Iowa State Daily Erosion Project has shown that soil erosion regularly exceeds “sustainable” levels. EWG’s analysis of the data showed that many farm fields lost 10, 20 and even 100 tons per acre in a single downpour. Much of that mud ends up in Iowa’s lakes, streams and rivers.
• Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ Water Quality Index data show that 60 percent of monitored stream segments in the state were in “poor” or “very poor” condition on average between 2008 and 2011, largely because of pollution from fertilizers and manure applied to farm fields. Another 39 percent of the stream segments were in “fair” condition and only 1 percent in “good” condition. None were rated “excellent.” EWG’s statistical analysis of these data showed that Iowa streams will be just as polluted in 10 years unless aggressive action is taken to stem polluted farm runoff.
• EWG’s Troubled Waters report traced the cascade of threats that overloading Iowa’s water with fertilizer and manure runoff poses to human health. Excess nitrogen in water can cause blue baby syndrome in infants, and algae and cyanobacteria blooms generate excess organic matter that water treatment plants must handle carefully to avoid creating carcinogens. The same cyanobacteria blooms can produce toxins that directly harm the liver and nervous system. The multi-billion dollar burden of removing agricultural pollution from drinking water falls not on the farm businesses that produce it but on taxpayers. Nationally, the cost of removing nitrogen alone is $4.8 billion a year, with many millions more to remove organic matter and cyanotoxins.

It is painfully clear that voluntary incentives alone are failing to clean up Iowa’s polluted water. The same is true of 125,006 miles of streams and 1.26 million acres of lakes across the nation that EPA reports being polluted primarily by agriculture.

We need a basic standard of care that defines the measures landowners must take to prevent polluting lakes, streams and drinking water. We are not proposing that every farmer get a permit from EPA. We are proposing a standard that asks landowners to implement simple but highly effective steps – such as leaving a strip of grass or trees between stream banks and their row crops, preventing livestock from trampling stream banks, and healing the gullies that scar too many Iowa farm fields. In addition, we need well- and securely funded voluntary programs that encourage landowners to go even beyond this basic standard of care.

Progress must be measured in the water, not in dollars spent or practices deployed. The new Iowa State sedimentation study adds another layer to the growing mountain of evidence that business as usual will not deliver the clean water that Americans deserve.

When I co-founded the Environmental Working Group in 1993, Mark Lynas was ripping up farmers’ crops. Back then I dismissed people like Lynas, then affiliated with those who criticized GMOs.  Their attacks did not seem grounded in science and did not approach our very real food and farming challenges with the same research-based intellectual rigor that we practice at EWG.

Nor did I fight beside smart organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund, Consumers Union and the Center for Food Safety to make the scientific case to the federal Food and Drug Administration in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We should have persevered even when FDA decisions left advocates with no way to raise scientific objections, as we do with pesticides.

At the time, it seemed quixotic to campaign against GMOs.  The FDA and USDA were blithely rolling on their backs for multinational corporations that were poised to reap billions of dollars in profit from the technology.

Now I see the error of my ways.

Had I paid more attention, I might have foreseen how badly this technology would go awry.  Toxic chemicals would be slathered on crops to battle GMO-resistant pests and weeds. According to a recent study by Washington State University professor of agriculture Chuck Benbrook, the use of herbicides has increased by 527 million pounds, or 11 percent, since 1996, as more and more GMO crops have been planted.

I might have been prescient enough — given EWG’s experience with Monsanto – to recognize that the company’s assertions that GMOs were viable were not to be trusted.

And I totally missed the boat by failing to anticipate that GMO technology, as much as misguided government policies, has driven the spread of corn and soybean monoculture across millions of acres of American farmland. In the last four years, farmers have plowed up more than 23 million acres of wetlands and grasslands – an area the size of Indiana – to plant primarily corn and soybeans.

Oddly enough, Lynas did not extend an apology to the farmers whose crops he destroyed. And while he’s apologizing to those farmers, he should apologize to the organic farmers he falsely impugns by suggesting organic food is less safe than food manipulated by scientists in Monsanto lab coats.

Regarding the safety of organics, Benbrook says:

The most significant, proven benefits of organic food and farming are: (1) a reduction in chemical-driven, epigenetic changes during fetal and childhood development, especially from pre-natal exposures to endocrine disrupting pesticides, (2) the markedly more healthy balance of omega-6 and -3 fatty acids in organic dairy products and meat, and (3) the virtual elimination of agriculture’s significant and ongoing contribution to the pool of antibiotic-resistant bacteria currently posing increasing threats to the treatment of human infectious disease.

Lynas drives home a fact that many of us know: to continue to feed the world’s booming population, we must intensify crop production.  Yet even the United Nations, in a recent report, notes that “in order to grow, agriculture must learn to save” and highlights that herbicides can be replaced with sustainable practices like integrated weed management.  While Lynas claims to have discovered science, he seems to have missed the fact that feeding the world would be a lot easier if more crops were consumed by people rather than by animals or by cars burning environmentally-damaging ethanol.

The truth is, the scientific community has not reached a consensus on GMOs.  Experts have grave doubts about the “coordinated framework” the U.S. government employs to review GMO crops. Several smart people, among them journalists Jason Mark and Tom Philpott and the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Doug Gurian-Sherman, have categorically debunked Lynas’s claims that the science is settled.

What the science does conclusively show is that we don’t need GMO crops to better manage water-polluting chemical fertilizer. So says the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, which recently found that a diverse crop rotation reduced nitrogen fertilizer use by 86 percent while maintaining yields.  It concluded that diverse rotations “reduce the risk of creating herbicide-resistant weeds.”

It turns out that we need better farmers and a better farm bill, not better seeds.

In short, I shouldn’t have allowed unscientific, hysterical ideologues like Lynas to color my views about a fight clearly worth engaging—and that we’ve belatedly launched — on GMO labeling. At least with labeling, Lynas and I agree that consumers deserve, as he says “a diet of their choosing.”

As this blog and others demonstrate, the debate about GMOs in not over. In fact, it’s just begun. Millions of Americans came out in support of federal and state initiatives to require labeling on food with GMO ingredients in 2012, their momentum helping new initiatives, such as I-522 in Washington, sprout up in the new year.

Luckily, Lynas assures us we are “entitled” to our views.  As Americans, we are also entitled to the right to know what we’re buying, eating, and feeding our families.  That right, and its surrounding dialogue, have yet to be silenced.

Last year’s drought is pushing crop insurance claims toward a record $15 billion – most of which will be shouldered by taxpayers. Over the years, the cost of crop insurance has steadily grown from $2.9 billion in fiscal year 2003 to $13.1 billion in FY 2012, according to USDA’s Risk Management Agency. That exploding price tag is drawing lots of attention in a year when cutting government spending is at the top of Congress’ agenda.

Taxpayers pick up so much of a farmer’s crop insurance premium that, Taylor writes, “U.S. farmers could be claiming $3.85 for every dollar they paid to insure their 2012 crops.” And this can’t just be dismissed as a result of the drought. Taylor cites estimates by Kansas State economist Art Barnaby that from 1988 to 2011 farmers got back $1.89 for every dollar of their premium payments. Most taxpayers can only dream of getting that kind of return from their auto or homeowners insurance; it doesn’t happen.

Finally, Taylor correctly points out that one reason for the record-breaking claims is USDA’s highly subsidized and very popular Revenue Protection program. This type of insurance policy is so appealing because it’s currently paying out at the drought-inflated crop price, not at the much lower price the crop was insured for last spring. The 2012 guaranteed corn price “jumped from $5.68 per bushel at planting to $7.50 per bushel at harvest,” Taylor notes. Thanks to taxpayers, many farmers who lost their crop are likely to make more money from insurance than they would have earned if the drought hadn’t struck – an outcome she pointed out in her earlier, and aptly titled, “Extreme Insurance” post.

Something’s Gotta Give should be required reading as round three of the farm bill reauthorization debate starts up this year. Taylor predicts changes to crop insurance will be on the table, such as reducing the share of premiums paid by taxpayers, increasing the deductibles on subsidized policies and “further reducing the margins going to agents and insurers” who sell, service and profit from the government program.

I sincerely hope she is once again on the mark. Common-sense reform of crop insurance could create a fiscally responsible and sustainable safety net for farmers while upping much needed investments in conservation, nutrition and healthy food – all while cutting the deficit. That would be a farm bill that just might make it through Congress this time.

• Citing corn ethanol’s impact on rising food prices and car engines, professors at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Alabama argue for reform of federal requirements to blend ethanol into gasoline.

• A new analysis by economist Thomas Elam shows that a family of four paid $2,000 more for groceries in 2012 than in 2006. The increase is largely due to the skyrocketing price of corn used in animal feed. Elam singles out the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a federal policy that mandates corn ethanol production, as the main driver of higher food costs. He concludes: “Other than major increases in corn production, the only other possibility for food affordability relief is to amend the RFS and lower ethanol production incentives.”

• Laws in the U.S. and Europe that increase corn ethanol production are continuing to harm the world’s poorest countries, The New York Times reports. In Guatemala, eggs have tripled in price, and farmers are planting their crops on highway median strips due to spikes in food prices and severe land shortages – problems created by diverting corn crops for use in vehicle fuel.

• The government forecasts that corn ethanol production will rebound after a drought-stricken 2012 in order to meet the requirements of the Renewable Fuel Standard. Under it, 13.8 billion gallons of conventional biofuel – i.e. corn ethanol – must be blended into the motor fuel supply in 2013. To fulfill the blending mandate, corn ethanol use will increase to just below 11 percent of the gasoline supply by 2014. The only way to accommodate this much ethanol is by allowing higher fuel blends onto the market, a move that will put consumers at risk of damaging their engines and force the U.S. to revamp its entire transportation infrastructure.

• A drought-reduced harvest, coupled with rising demand for livestock feed, has depleted corn stockpiles more than analysts expected, Bloomberg news service reports. As of December 1, inventories were just over 8 billion bushels – 17 percent less than a year earlier – said a Jan. 11 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Tighter supplies may drive up costs for meat companies including Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, which employs more than 48,000 people worldwide.

Numbers in the News:

4.5 billion bushels: the amount of this year’s corn crop – about 42 percent – that will go toward making ethanol.

The film “Promised Land,” now showing in theaters across the country, plays off the intense national conversation about the relatively new natural gas drilling technology called high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing – better known by its nickname, fracking. The unknown consequences of this technology frame a drama about the moral dilemmas posed when people in small, economically depressed communities confront the promises and pitfalls of resource development.

Because of this movie and the Oscar-nominated documentary “Gasland,” which starts off on filmmaker Josh Fox’s family land in rural Pennsylvania, many people may think fracking is confined to natural gas drilling operations in three massive shale formations: the Marcellus in the eastern U.S., the Bakken in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford in Texas.

But a new report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with a map showing wells fracked between September 2009 and October 2010, makes clear that fracking affects millions of Americans in fully three-fifths of the states, among them, Washington, California, Kentucky, Nevada, Tennessee, Wyoming, New Mexico, Alabama and California.

Source: Environmental Protection Agency

The point is fracking is not an issue that’s somewhere out there in America. It’s in our backyards. That’s why we want the facts, all of them, not just the marketing lingo the drilling industry peddles. And we need to be sure that our regulatory agencies, whether federal, state or local are up to the task of protecting the nation’s air, water and land and the public health.

Events that used to be called “acts of God” – but that we now realize are increasingly driven by human activity – became the most important environmental news stories of 2012 in the opinion of Environmental Working Group’s staff of scientists, analysts, lawyers, organizers and others. Topping their list was the devastating and ongoing drought that beset much of the United States. As a group, climate-related events – including superstorm Sandy – garnered more votes than any other topic.

Close behind, however, were two stories about genetically modified organisms and the concerns they raise, which ranked second and third in importance for the year. Third in overall votes were a cluster of stories related to the congressional debate over reauthorizing the five-year farm bill, a discussion that will continue next year if industrial agriculture interests don’t succeed in slipping a “secret farm bill” into lame duck legislation aimed at tackling the nation’s fiscal crisis.

Here’s how EWG’s staff ranked the biggest stories of the year.

1. The worst drought since the 1930s spread over almost half of the continental United States, driving up food prices, endangering water supplies and navigation on the Mississippi River, and unleashing bitter policy debates about the proper role and design of crop insurance programs.

New York Times: Widespread Drought is Likely to Worsen

New York Times: Experts Issue a Warning As Food Prices Shoot Up

2. In California, a referendum initiative that would have required that labeling of food containing genetically engineered ingredients lost in the face of massive advertising expenditures by industrial agriculture and chemical and pesticide makers, but 48.6 percent of voters supported it. Clearly, the national conversation about genetic engineering will go on.

San Francisco Chronicle: Prop 37 Lost, But Backers Keep Fighting

Mother Jones: Did California Voters Defeat the Food Movement Along with Prop 37?

Appetite for Profit: Lies, Dirty Tricks, and $45 Million Kill GMO Labeling in California

Jackson Free Press: GMO Food Battle Not Lost

3. Contradicting the claims of companies that develop market genetically engineered seeds, a careful study finds that that GMO crops increase, not decrease, the amount of herbicides that growers use.

Seattle Times: Modified Crops Increase Herbicide Use, WSU Researcher Says

Science Daily: “Superweeds” Linked to Rising Herbicide Use in GM crops, Study Finds

4. News reports that some food producers mix ground beef with “pink slime” – chemically treated beef trimmings officially known as “lean finely textured beef” – leads to a precipitous drop in sales and the closing of several plants that made it.

USA Today: Company to Close 3 Plants Over “Pink Slime” Ground Beef

Huffington Post: Americans Have Beef With Food System Transparency

5. (tie) The every five-year battle to reauthorize the farm bill, which sets national agricultural policies and funds food assistance programs for millions, raged all year on Capitol Hill, pitting industrial agricultural interests and subsidy proponents against reformers (led by EWG) seeking to rein in lavish support for profitable growers and to strengthen conservation requirements.

New York Times: U.S. Farm Bill

Ag Mag: Top 10 Reasons to Reject the House Farm Bill

5. (tie) Food Policy Action, a new coalition of food policy reformers led by EWG President Ken Cook, launched a scorecard to grade members of Congress on their votes on issues related to food policy.

New York Times: Lawmakers Rated on Food and Farm Policy Votes

CNN: Your Food, Your Vote

7. (tie) EWG’s “Plowed Under” report showed that huge swaths of land are being plowed and planted to grow cash crops as a result of record-high commodity prices and misguided incentives in federal farm policy.

7. (tie) The U.S. Department of Agriculture issues new school lunch policies that set calorie standards, reduce salt, sugar and fat and double the required amounts of fruits and vegetables, but Congress and industry push back in an effort to weaken the new rules.

Food Politics: USDA to Allow Flexibility in School Meal Standards

9. (tie) On Capitol Hill, allies of industrial agriculture use the drought as an argument for expanding crop insurance, but reformers take aim at proposals that would turn the crop insurance “safety net” into enviable profit guarantees for highly successful growers.

Washington Post: Drought Puts Crop Insurance Under Scrutiny

Chicago Tribune: Crop Insurance Has Become a Taxpayer Ripoff

Cedar Rapids Gazette: How Much Should Farmers be Protected?

10. EWG’s “Troubled Waters” report shows that that excess nutrients flowing into rivers and streams as a result of poor farming practices are forcing drinking water utilities to spend vast sums on water treatment and endangering public health.

Huffington Post: Protecting Water at the Source

Politico’s David Rogers quotes an aide to Boehner as saying:

We can’t drop a farm bill in the middle of whatever is negotiated. A 1,000-page bill on top of whatever is negotiated will just make our vote situation harder.

As we have seen, Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) will have a hard enough time rallying Republicans to support deficit reduction legislation that includes new tax revenue and reforms entitlement programs even without including a farm bill that actually creates new entitlement programs for the largest and most successful farm businesses.

Read more at Ag Mag.

Table Scraps:

A Des Moines Register editorial cites Murky Waters, EWG’s latest report on Iowa water quality, and argues for stronger standards to improve the state’s rivers and streams. KMA radio also covers Murky Waters in a recent report.

GOOD magazine has a piece on how consumers can guard themselves against misleading food labels.

Tweet of the Day:

‏@EWGFoodNews The Top 10 Stories of the Year in Agriculture, Food and Water | Environmental Working Group: http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2012/12/the-top-10-stories-of-the-year-in-agriculture-food-and-water/#.UNS9tQ_qJ9o.twitter …

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House Speaker John Boehner made the right choice when he refused to include a trillion-dollar farm bill in legislation designed to avert the “fiscal cliff.”

Politico’s David Rogers quotes an aide to Boehner as saying:

We can’t drop a farm bill in the middle of whatever is negotiated. A 1,000-page bill on top of whatever is negotiated will just make our vote situation harder.

As we have seen, Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) will have a hard enough time rallying Republicans to support deficit reduction legislation that includes new tax revenue and reforms entitlement programs even without including a farm bill that actually creates new entitlement programs for the largest and most successful farm businesses.

That’s right. Advocates for more farm welfare are trying to bypass the House of Representatives and jam a secret farm bill with new entitlements into legislation designed to fix the nation’s finances.

Why? Because farm welfare advocates know that if the farm bill comes up for full debate and a floor vote, bipartisan House champions of reform will not only reject new entitlements for farm millionaires but will also subject the existing subsidies to meaningful limits such as mean testing.

No wonder EWG joined the National Taxpayers Union, R Street and other groups in urging Congress to reject a secret farm bill.

As EWG’s Scott Faber said,

It would unconscionable for our nation’s leaders to bypass the House and attach a trillion-dollar farm bill to legislation designed to right the nation’s finances. This is especially true in light of the fact that both the House and Senate farm bills actually increase unlimited crop insurance subsidies at a time of unprecedented farm wealth. At a time when our nation’s leaders are asking ordinary Americans to contribute to deficit reduction, it is simply shocking that the same bill, the “fiscal cliff” bill, might give even more subsidies to farm millionaires and might further expose taxpayers to liability for farm payments.

A $1 trillion farm bill, especially one that has never been considered by the full House, has no place in a deficit reduction package.

The time to pass a new farm bill in the current session has come and gone. That work should be left to a new Congress to craft a better bill for American farmers, consumers and taxpayers. Right now, Congress should just finish its work on deficit reduction legislation and provide needed disaster relief to drought-stricken livestock operators.

Sources familiar with the deficit talks paint a very different picture: of the speaker digging in, saying he can’t include the farm bill in any package for fear of losing more Republican votes

The House and Senate bills promise savings between $24 billion and $35 billion over 10 years, chiefly from food stamps and crop subsidies. But Boehner believes adding a farm bill is too cumbersome at this stage and it is better kicked over to a new Congress.

“We can’t drop a farm bill in the middle of whatever is negotiated. A 1,000-page bill on top of whatever is negotiated will just make our vote situation harder,” a Boehner aide told POLITICO. “If we can agree on a top-line number, we suspect the committees will have a much easier time getting to a bill next year under regular order.”

EWG has been calling on Congress for the past several months to pass a responsible extension and take up the farm bill in 2013.

Read more at Ag Mag:

Congress Should Not Pass A Lame Duck Farm Bill

Farm Bill Extension: Should Support Stewards, Not Insurance Subsidies

Fresh Start Needed on Overripe Farm Bill

Table Scraps:

Iowa State University professor Bruce Babcock tells food and farm columnist Alan Guebert that Congress’ farm bill proposal is “just insane.”

Registered dietician and author of Small Bites Andy Bellatti writes about the four biggest food stories of the year and what they taught us.

Wisconsin State Farmer reports farmers using engineered corn still face increased threats of pests and yield loss.

Center for a Livable Future’s Roni Neff lists four simple things consumers can do to have a climate-friendly diet.

‎Tweet of the Day:

@CoryBooker Pleased to see @usmayors Food Policy Task Force pushing for Farm Bill that fairly funds SNAP. #SNAPChallenge

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Cedar Rapids Gazette reports:

The critique of voluntary conservation comes just weeks after state leaders announced the Iowa Nutrient Management Strategy, which is intended through voluntary conservation practices to greatly reduce nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizer washed into state waters from farm fields.

“I can’t see how a voluntary program would yield the necessary amount of change in the way we farm,” said Susan Heathcote, water programs coordinator for the Iowa Environmental Council…

…[Rick Robison, environmental policy advisor for the Iowa Farm Bureau] cautioned that controlling runoff from non-point pollution sources such as farm fields is limited by available funding, weather, soil types and tillage practices.

Iowa farmers are becoming increasingly aware, he said, that if they can’t make voluntary conservation practices work, they will likely face legislation or regulation through the courts.

Increased public demand for clean water will put additional pressure on everyone to make the strategy succeed, said Kevin Baskins, spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources, which also helped develop the strategy.

Table Scraps:

Congressional leaders trying to reconcile House and Senate versions of a new farm bill are in a”quaqmire,” writes Politico’s David Rogers.

Tom Philpott highlights the water quality impacts of food and farm production in Mother Jones.

The Chicago Tribune publishes a piece by Psychology Today Magazine that gives consumers tips on how to reduce exposure to pesticides on produce.

The Hill has more on EWG’s new executive director.

‎Tweet of the Day:

@SlowFoodUSA The new monopoly: Four companies control btwn 50-85% of food and agriculture. http://bit.ly/VDItdt @foodandwater

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