Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Erosion, NRCS, andConservation Compliance

NYTimes has an article on erosion, focused on Iowa erosion rates.  Hits the highlights: the rates of erosion, the impact of high crop prices, land coming out of the Conservation Reserve Program, strip cropping and contour farming as incompatible with big equipment,  renters possibly sacrificing the long range health of the land for short range profit, NRCS enforcement of conservation compliance rules, etc. It even includes the hit to NRCS administrative budget in the new Continuing Resolution. The only thing it didn't mention was the similiarity of the current situtation with that in 1973 (and Earl Butz, when the economic situation

What's not clear to me is how much of Iowa is considered to be highly erodible.  I remember visiting Sherman County, KS for Infoshare in 1991 and farmers were still bitching about the classification of most of their land as HE.

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