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Farmers, Conservationists Struggle To Save Precious Topsoil

Posted on: Monday, 28 July 2008, 11:25 CDT

Farmers are discovering the consequences of massive flooding throughout the Midwest. The excess rainfall has caused the nutrient-rich topsoil to be washed away.

Jim Lankford, a corn farmer, said his crops used to stretch to the White River, now the river has eroded a new route for itself through his crops. The flood spread rocks in other spots, making it look as if Lankford planted soybeans in a gravel road. Elsewhere, silt is piled up like sand dunes and uprooted trees still litter cornfields more than a month after the floods.

"It's the worst I've ever seen in my life for this area," the 62-year-old farmer said.

The floods may have caused up to $3 billion in crop losses in Iowa and $800 million in crop damage in Indiana, according to estimates from agriculture secretaries in those states.

Now farmers and conservationists are engaged in an argument over what to do with the erosion-prone land.

Farmers want to continue to try to grow crops on marginal land, while conservationists hope to plant trees, native grasses or ground cover to act as a natural flood buffer.

In Wisconsin, flooding damaged about $2.8 million worth of conservation structures, such as dams, levees, ditches and waterways, said Don Baloun, a farm conservationist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resource Conservation Service in Madison, Wis.

Some land in Illinois is still submerged.

"It could be fall for some of our counties on the Mississippi River before we see what kind of damage farmers did experience as far as erosion," said Donald King of Illinois' USDA's Farm Service Agency.

"It takes thousands of years to form one inch of topsoil," said Jane Hardisty, Indiana's state conservationist. "Within a day, we lost it. It's just devastating."

Sediment also causes trouble in water quality for those downstream. Scientists have linked the growing “dead zone” off the Texas-Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico to the flood runoff.

Some states already have established ways to save their soil. Missouri, for example, has nearly halved its rate of soil loss since the mid-1980s, when it dedicated a special tax that generates $42 million a year for soil-conserving practices such as terraces, retention ponds and grazing rotations.

The conversion of row-crop land to pastures over the last 20 years in northern Missouri also has helped conserve the precious few inches of top soil left in that part of the state, said Bill Foster, who heads the state's soil and water conservation program.

"If we lose very many more inches of soil, we won't be farming," Foster said. "It's critical to keep in place."

The $2 billion-a-year Farm Service Agency’s Conservation Reserve Program gives money to farmers for not planting crops. That saves an estimated 450 million tons of soil each year.

Environmental groups recently sought a federal court injunction to stop hay production and cattle grazing on some conservation land. A judge in Seattle ruled that the USDA did not conduct an appropriate environmental review, but said a reversal would be unfair to farmers and ranchers counting on using that land.

Conservation program officials announced earlier this month that farmers in flooded-damaged areas of 16 states could graze livestock on conservation land to help them cope with rising grain prices and flood damage.

"Our CRP land is vital to the balance we promote at USDA between production and preservation," Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said. "I commit this resource knowing that we must redouble our conservation effort at every future opportunity."

One of the program's founders, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., wants to also allow farmers to plant crops on more stable conservation land.

Environmental groups say there are risks to opening up conservation program land to planting. Marginal land planted with ground cover or trees acts as a natural flood barrier, said Sara Hopper, director of agricultural policy for the Environmental Defense Fund. Planting crops could mean less protection against floods, she said.

"It's going to make a bad situation worse, particularly over the long run," she said.

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On the Net:

• Natural Resource Conservation Service
• USDA Farm Service Agency

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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