Land

Federal crop insurance policy is rewarding Southern Great Plains farmers’ failure to adapt to drought and hotter weather, and encouraging practices that could lead to another Dust Bowl, according to a new report by the Environmental Working Group.

President-elect Donald Trump is skeptical about climate change. But if he's wrong and scientists are right, his Mar-a-Lago mansion and golf resort in Palm Beach, Fla., and other properties bearing his name in the Sunshine State and elsewhere are threatened by global warming-driven rising sea levels.

During her failed bid for vice president in 2008, that was Sarah Palin's crowd-pleasing chant promoting her energy policy. Now the pithy catchphrase – and the former Alaska governor herself – could make a comeback. 

Photo Courtesy of Christopher Halloran / shutterstock.com

Manure pits that hold livestock and poultry waste give off foul-smelling toxic air pollutants that can be deadly to farmworkers and local residents, who often are powerless to defend the health of their families from the noxious emissions.

Recently, spring weather in upper Midwest has been warmer and dryer, leading farmers in Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota to plant corn in early April. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Crop Progress Report, since 2013 there's been a big rise in corn planted by mid-April, the earliest farmers in the region can plant and be eligible for federally subsidized crop insurance. 
 

Drinking water, lakes and rivers in Iowa and across the Corn Belt are in serious trouble because of polluted farm runoff.  To tackle the problem, for decades we’ve taken the approach favored by agricultural interests – making federal tax dollars available for conservation practices that curb runoff, encouraging farmers to adopt those practices, then hoping enough of them volunteer to do the right thing.

The federal crop insurance program has come under attack for its increasing cost, environmental impacts and secrecy. But the farm lobby, the crop insurance industry and their political patrons maintain that despite its flaws, crop insurance is better, cheaper and less likely to lead to environmental harm than disaster programs.

Requiring farmers to plant 50-foot wide grass strips, or buffers, between cropland and streams would jumpstart progress toward cleaning Iowa’s dirty water while affecting only a handful of growers and a minuscule number of acres, a new report from Environmental Working Group shows.

In 2007, corn ethanol was offered up as an environmentally friendly alternative to gasoline. But nearly seven years to the day since Congress put it in play, we’re still not seeing the benefits. In fact, quite the opposite.