Monday, November 24, 2014

"A Sustainable Solution for the Corn Belt" New York Times Op-Ed Mark Bittman

"It’s easy enough to argue that one of the most productive agricultural
regions in the world could be better used than to cover it with just two crops
— the two crops that contribute most to the sad state of our dietary affairs,
and that are used primarily for animal food, junk food and
thermodynamically questionable biofuels."

"In recent years, many Iowa farmers have believed that if they weren’t
100 percent “in” corn, they weren’t doing a good job. Because of the pressure
to plant, many of them have expanded their cultivated areas beyond where it
makes sense, creating erosion and runoff problems. Iowa is among the
major contributors to the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone,” a direct result of
fertilizer runoff into the Mississippi water system, and half of Iowa’s topsoil
has been lost."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/opinion/a-sustainable-solution-for-the-corn-belt.html



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