Ripping up CRP is a terrible signal for the planet

Awhile back it sounded and felt like things could really take a turn for the better: President Joe Biden named Tom Vilsack secretary of agriculture, a pragmatic Iowan who knew the ropes and could bring people along on climate change. Vilsack was talking about building a resilient agriculture and food regime centered around conservation and sustainability. He is a smart man, a town kid with a law degree who became a quick study in corn and hogs, and how agriculture plays politically. It appeared we might be taking that turn from all-out mining of Iowa’s soil to a sane approach to the most fertile land on Earth. Nearing the middle of the term, it is hard to see much progress on the ground. Almost no cover crops here, the ditches are giving way to soybeans, and you can plant up to the Raccoon River covered by crop insurance with corn sky high. Last week, Vilsack dropped a bomb in conservation quarters: He would allow landowners to opt out of their final contract year under the Conservation Reserve Program to plow it up and plant feed grains. That’s up to 4 million of the most marginal and highly erodible acres that are in CRP because they couldn’t grow wheat in the first place. But if you can insure it, what the hell? Remember that those CRP acres that could come out of protection a year early in Iowa will grow corn that will not be used to feed starving people in Africa. It will feed hogs and ethanol plants. Half of that pork will go to Asia, not to Guatemala where refugees are fleeing hunger and drought. It’s a step backwards. It lends credence to the argument that the Biden Administration really isn’t that serious about climate change. It gives the base of the Democratic Party and young people one less reason to get fired up about the mid-term elections. Republicans are well-positioned to take back the House and the Senate. If so, the GOP will write the next farm bill and it will not put conservation at the center of it (or food security). Biden and Vilsack promised bold action that would lessen agriculture’s significant contribution to the warming planet. What we have so far are maps for CO2 pipelines that will serve corn ethanol plants, and manure digesters in mega-dairies. And a pilot program for cover crops in BV County that might attract a couple thousand acres. Might. When you start shunning land from the CRP, the most basic conservation program, it’s a terrible signal that anything significant can happen to eliminate surface water pollution or nitrogen loss to the atmosphere. Government will not be the answer to our climate problems. Iowa’s agricultural pollution problems have only grown worse with time and much political talk — it’s been over a decade since voters amended the state constitution to protect our water, yet the legislature ignored it. Vilsack as much as threw in the towel.  It appears we will have to rely on markets and innovation to save the planet from frying. On that front, we might draw some hope. The Bay Area company Good Meat announced last week that it will build the world’s biggest bioreactor in the U.S. (location not announced) capable of producing 13,000 tons of cultured meat (chicken and beef) per year. The meat, grown from cells excised from animals, is produced through a fermentation process that has vastly less natural resource load than keeping 5 million chickens under one roof. If you want a steak, you can have one grown on the hoof. If you want a hamburger, you will never know the difference with lab-grown meat — plus it can be designed to be heart- and colon-healthy. Capital is flowing to a host of companies clambering in. Cost falls as capacity builds. Markets are telling a Europe at war that the future cannot be built on a foundation of fossil fuels from Russia and the Middle East. The government is not driving wind energy growth in Iowa — coal and natural gas costs are. As cars go electric on cost alone (electricity v. gasoline), corn ethanol loses its cachet. Less corn for meat, less corn for fuel. More acres in grass near the river. In the meantime, the politics of expediency — good Lord, we can’t have high corn prices because then farmers might be independent — dictates that we degrade what few protected acres we have, at the margins. It’s a chipping away that exposes how naïve we were to think that government could lead a rational effort to prevent the extinction of our species. Art Cullen is the publisher and editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot. He won the the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 2017 and is the author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper.” Cullen can be reached at times@stormlake.com.