WATERLOO, Iowa – Scene one: In the rich farmland near Ames, Iowa, concrete slats are being lifted to the foundation of a new hog barn as a farmer reinvests his recent profits in a new production facility.
Scene two, an hour’s drive away: In downtown Waterloo a father and his two sons fish in the Cedar River along a bike trail that will soon stretch more than 100 kilometres through the valley.
These scenes may seem to be from two separate worlds Ð urban and rural Ð but they are intimately connected by what is becoming a precious commodity: clean water.
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What the farmer does to the water that goes through his barn will eventually affect the quality of rivers that flow through cities like Waterloo, a community hoping to use its attractive river to boost its embryonic tourism industry.
And the water quality regulations that Iowa cities press the state government to implement will flow back up the river, streams and soil of Iowa’s farmland to barns like the one outside Ames, forcing tough standards on producers.
In Iowa, as in Canadian provinces, intensive livestock operations have faced tougher regulations in the past decade.
And like the Prairies, Iowa has seen countless ugly fights over new hog barns. Promoters claim they won’t affect local water quality and describe their opponents as “enemies of change,” while opponents claim “pig factories” will poison the water and ruin the environment.
But unlike the Canadian Prairies, where hog production has only recently boomed, Iowa has long been a pork powerhouse.
With this 50 year history of producing 15 million pigs a year, Iowa’s water pollution control experts have experience dealing with the water quality issues that the Prairies will likely face in the future as livestock numbers grow.
But, perhaps surprisingly, hog barns Ð whether large and industrial or small and simple Ð drew little attention when these water experts gathered for their annual convention. Agriculture was highlighted as a problem, but the hog industry wasn’t in the crosshairs.
Wayne Gieselman is an official in a state where farming is treated like motherhood and apple pie, but he doesn’t mind breaking taboos by blaming some farming practices for environmental problems.
The head of Iowa’s natural resources department’s environmental services division said frank talk about farming and water pollution isn’t that controversial with ordinary farmers.
It’s their representatives that he clashes with.
“I get a ton of flack from the political types and the folks who lobby in the legislature, but my farming neighbours all know these issues are all around them,” said Gieselman, who once operated his own mixed grain and livestock farm and still works on his son’s farm.
“And (farmers are) willing to change, even though they aren’t forced to.”
Gieselman capitalized on an invitation to speak to the annual convention of the Iowa Water Pollution Control Association in June in Waterloo to confront the problems he believes come from agriculture and to identify what farmers, governments and society can do to keep farmers in business and protect downstream neighbours.
“When we get standards in place, it’s going to be a rare Iowa waterway that is not (legally) impaired,” Gieselman said about regulations being developed to control nutrient pollution in water.
He called water quality “the most critical environmental issue of our time,” noting that current protections are not sufficient.
“We’re not getting to where we need to get with water quality.”
After his speech , which criticized agriculture for many of Iowa’s water quality problems, several water quality officers praised his courage.
“That’s what people need to hear, but no one else is willing to say it,” said one.
Gieselman challenges a fundamental criticism of hog barns, saying they are not the biggest source of water pollution in Iowa. Pigs, cattle and poultry cause only about one-quarter of nutrient pollution in Iowa waterways.
He also argues that small “family” farms are not more environmentally friendly Ð something often claimed by the opponents of large-scale agriculture. In fact, they probably cause the majority of the problems from livestock.
“To me, large scale agriculture is not a big environmental threat, because the bigger it is, the easier it is for me to find out who caused the problem and go out and get them to clean it up,” he said.
“I have a lot more problems with the guy that has 200 pigs in an outdoor shed and just waits for the rain to clean it off. There are lots of small cattle lots in the state that do the same thing. Their response is: ‘that’s just brown water.’ “
The big barns taking over the Iowa industry are easier to regulate and are forced to follow regulations, unlike smaller farms.
A regulated industry Ð with controls on barn siting, manure application rates and water use Ð will almost certainly be far less polluting than the industry of the unregulated past.
Though Gieselman is not worried by the development of large-scale livestock production, agriculture in general does pollute water.
“We’ve got to be honest,” he said, blaming farming for 92 percent of the nitrogen and 80 percent of the phosphorus in Iowa’s water. That’s not a surprise, he added, because farming dominates the state’s economy.
But while some small livestock operations are “chronically discharging … you could stop all the discharges and affect water quality very little.”
The real problem comes from crop farming.
Nitrogen and phosphorus in Iowa’s waterways primarily come from commercial fertilizers applied at high rates on adjacent land.
Gieselman blames federal policies and commercial practices, not farmers, for the problem.
“Top production, top efficiency is the worst thing that ever happened to us,” he said.
In the 1970s the federal government promoted “fence row to fence row” farming. The remaining hedgerows and grass strips at the edges of fields and near streams were removed. For a system designed for maximum production, it made sense.
“Farming was very profitable then and it was an excellent piece of advice if you wanted to make money. For the environment, in the long run, it was really bad,” Gieselman said.
Federal policies that until recently paid according to acres seeded or bushels produced also hurt the environment because it didn’t pay to leave land as filter strips or in bush. The policies also encouraged big farms and made small farms less viable because the bigger the production, the bigger the government paycheque.
Farm input suppliers also played a big role. He cited a plaque he received from a seed company congratulating him and his son for harvesting a 210.48 bushel per acre corn crop last summer.
While happy to produce such a bountiful crop, Gieselman said the award was used to promote overuse of fertilizers.
“This is exactly the wrong message,” he said.
“What you need to know is that to produce 210 bu. I only used 125 lb. of nitrogen, but the industry recommendation for 210 bu. is 280 lb. I did this with half the amount that is recommended.”
Suppliers should provide information on how to do more with less, he said.
The impact of fertilizer overuse and the stripping of natural controls is obvious: Iowa water quality analyses in the 1940s, before the mass use of commercial fertilizers, showed about two parts per million of nitrates in the water. Now it is closer to 10 ppm: five times as much.
Gieselman thinks farmers, if treated right, will protect the environment, even if there’s no net gain. But governments must ensure they are not subsidizing abuse of land.
He said set-aside programs that pay farmers for not growing crops on environmentally sensitive land, including riparian areas, are already successful. His farm has set aside 20 acres of stream-side land, for which he is paid $140 US per acre.
“It’s been an excellent program.”
If even a quarter of the money in the federal farm bill, which spends billions of dollars per year on crop production, was put into programs that paid farmers to protect their environment rather than overuse it, “just think of what we could achieve for water quality,” he said.
If more research was done on reasonable rates of fertilizer application, focused on applying less but achieving equivalent yields, farmers would rush to embrace it to save money.
He also thinks regulations could help, including banning fall application of nitrogen, which tends to cause runoff problems in the spring.
Livestock production methods have improved and the results will be in seen in coming years. Tough new livestock location regulations mean hog barns can’t go up in areas with too-sandy soil and shallow aquifers.
As well, hog producers won’t be able to saturate small land bases with applied manure, which commonly occurred in the unregulated past. Applied over a large enough area, manure should not be a problem, Gieselman said.
Agriculture may be the cause of most of Iowa’s water pollution problems, but the answers are already obvious, easy to implement and inexpensive.
Gieselman talks about water quality problems because that’s his job. But serious water pollution problems have now mostly been solved.
Cities such as Waterloo, with their factories and heavy industries, used to vomit dangerous waste into Iowa rivers. Inadequate sewage treatment allowed human waste to flow downstream. That no longer happens.
“Water quality is much better now,” he said.
“We don’t have the municipal wastes and the greases and the oils and those kinds of things anymore.” Agriculture may face a big challenge, but it’s one that other industries and communities have faced and overcome.
When Waterloo mayor Timothy Hurley welcomed the water pollution control officials to his city, he talked little about the city’s John Deere factories or the big hog slaughter plant. They aren’t a big issue any more now that regulations prevent the pollution of the bad old days.
The small city’s $27 million water treatment plant has also helped minimize the municipal waste issue.
He wanted the officials to think about the importance of good water quality to cities like his that rely on heavy industry for jobs but which also hope for tourism development.
“It’s one of the best (riverside bike trail systems) in the country and a well-kept secret,” said Hurley, pledging to promote Waterloo as a tourist destination for bike riders, fishers and those who enjoy the outdoors.
It’s a new image for a formerly gritty industrial town, but Hurley thinks there’s no reason industry and clean water can’t co-exist.
“I’m very proud to be in a city that is shaking off a negative image and realizing that we’ve got all the talents that everybody else does,’ he said.
Gieselman has a similar attitude about Iowa’s farmers, who may have had a negative image as polluters in the past, but who could combine environmental protection and profitable production in the future.
What Gieselman says about Iowa’s experience suggests that an area might be able to produce livestock for a long time and not only remain economically viable, but become more environmentally sustainable over time.
