I don't usually get this deep into the manure, but.... This article on fertilizer in Iowa says, "extraordinary N [Nitrogen] loss per crop acre exceeding 50 pounds in each [watershed] and topping out at 78 pounds in the Yellow River watershed. We can see from the runoff numbers that this was the wettest part of Iowa; still 78 pounds is 78 pounds..." Iowa's corn production is well known, but recently it has also used some land to turn that corn into meat. So now in addition to fertilizer put on the crops, some of the CAFOs are also adding to the waste that is going down the river. "Corn yields can be very good here, but the environmental cost of row crop in this area of Iowa is very, very high. Yes, when they try really hard and suck everything in, agriculture can squeeze the intense corn/soy/CAFO production model into this area of Iowa. Kind of like an old guy trying to get into a pair of skinny jeans. In theory, maybe it can be done, but…"
Another article on farming in Iowa is on deck, this time talking about the lost topsoil. "The authors aren’t talking about reduced soil fertility or loss of mineral nutrients. They’re talking about the complete removal of the medium in which crops are grown — the utter bankruptcy of the organic richness that lay for centuries under the tallgrass prairie....Previous estimates of erosion, they write, 'may have greatly underestimated the extent of A-horizon loss, and therefore the thickness or mass of soil that has been eroded from hillslopes in the Corn Belt.'"
The article continues: "What drives the research behind this new study isn’t just geological or financial cost-accounting. It’s also carbon-accounting.... [And] as practiced now — with massive reliance on fossil fuels, on soils stripped of organic carbon — industrial farming is a major contributor to the global crisis of atmospheric carbon." Maybe Vandana Shiva's ideas of organics and opposition to monocropping make some sense after all?
