Editorial: Destroying agriculture

Unexpectedly strong opposition to carbon dioxide pipelines in North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa has caused the cancellation of the Navigator project that would have run through Buena Vista County. The Summit project slated for Cherokee County is in trouble because regulators would not issue permits for their routes. This has made the ethanol industry nervous.

A statement from the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association:

“Over the last year, we have been disappointed with the amount of disinformation that has been spread among the public and the regulators across multiple states. That does not happen by accident. Rather, it is being pushed by groups who oppose modern agriculture and whose stated mission is to destroy farming as we know it.”

The Dakotas are not known for opposing “modern” agriculture. Hog confinements are sprouting up in South Dakota as corn planting rises. So that doesn’t add up.

North Dakota is hardly the land of environmental activists. They like their meat in Bismark.

And, most of the hold-up in Iowa is from farmers who are trying to preserve their property. They want a proper price for top-notch ground, maybe. Or they just don’t like intruders, whether they be wind turbine transmission lines or pipelines. These people are not out to “destroy farming as we know it.”

IRFA warns that without pipelines (and the unstated federal payments that would route to ethanol plants) we could revert to a 1990s-like era of corn surpluses. Pipelines will facilitate the development of biofuels for aviation.

We suffer from too much corn production, for sure. We also suffer from a lot of environmental problems associated with corn production. To suggest that “modern agriculture” has been kind to rural Iowa would be pollyannish. It could use some amendment. The corn-soy-ethanol-hog complex in Iowa has eliminated the independent livestock producer. It has fouled the drinking water sources for Des Moines. The ethanol-livestock complex is depleting the Jordan and Dakota aquifers. It suffocates the  Gulf of Mexico. We have so much corn that if we don’t burn it chaos will ensue.

The Middle East reminds us that ethanol is an important element in our immediate national security. It helps corn prices. Ethanol is not a long-term solution, and we cannot sustain the model of “modern agriculture” in its exact form, nor should we. It drives people off the land. It shrivels up small towns. It pollutes the air and water. Nobody is out to destroy farming. To suggest that carbon pipelines somehow are crucial to the future of Laurens or Albert City is absurd. They are conveyances for tax revenue to investors, ethanol plants and willing landowners. They are not solutions to our climate problems or our chronic over-production of corn. We could be producing biomass on marginal corn acres that produces hydrogen, if Iowa leaders got into that game instead. That would not involve anhydrous ammonia, Roundup or patented seed. It would involve grass. You could even forget about the hydrogen and graze half our corn acreage for benefit to independent farmers and the environment. That would be sustainable and productive, but it does not necessarily serve “modern agriculture.”