So, You Want Clean Water - Part 4

Here’s Part One (meatpackers), Part Two (the abundance of corn), and Part Three (nitrogen usage).

So, you want clean water?

The overproduction of corn and pork leads to worse water quality due to consolidation. While consolidation has been happening in most industries, agriculture is ground zero. This consolidation has led to the mindset of these consolidated companies avoiding responsibility due to the workings of the “free market.” The farmers get the blame while the companies are absolved of the issues. It is believed this is the way everything must go and the economy naturally works this way. This is not true.

Americans have reigned in these companies before by breaking them up or creating and maintaining competitive markets. Until the 1980s, the United States government enforced antitrust laws which helped kept markets competitive. Since this change during the Reagan administration, the lack of antitrust enforcement has led to highly consolidated industries. While this has happened throughout the economy, this also has produced the conditions for farmers to apply too much nitrogen, due to these consolidated middlemen taking more of the farmers’ revenue share, through corn and pork production which leads to worse water quality.

This has also led to the average age of the farmer increasing with rising land prices, making it harder for a younger farmer to break in the field and break the mold because of the meatpackers and grain processors hold on production. Older farmers also have less incentive to change due to the advantage of getting a head start on the consolidation. It makes financial sense.

Unfortunately, this consolidation has led to not ideal outcomes like more Iowa Democrats voting for the CO2 pipeline this year than last year on the same before they released their clean water plan. This logic makes zero sense. If the high nitrates in the water are part of the issue causing cancer or the want to improve clean water to create better economic opportunities, then voting for a CO2 pipeline, which furthers the overproduction of corn, is the antithesis of a clean water plan.

The recent push for year-round E-15 falls in the same category where the processors win and farmers, rural communities, and water quality advocates lose. At a time when cattle prices are at all-time highs and there are less cattle than ever in the United States, putting more ground into pasture would help benefit the cattle farmer and lead to better diversification of the landscape. While this is an oversimplistic view, Iowans should want more options for our land, whether agriculture or not.

Some of this marginal corn land could become restored prairies, wetlands, and other natural elements. Not all land needs to be fed to these consolidated industries. More nature in Iowa could create more tourism. A few years ago, I had a conversation with a non-native Iowan, and they were amazed by the endless skies Iowa produces. It is hard to argue that Iowa might have some of the most beautiful sunsets. Iowa can be beautiful. Let’s exploit it. Creating tourism opportunities and not having only corn or pigs be the only “prosperity” to rural Iowa.

The market is telling Iowans something needs to change. The bailouts are not a sign of prosperity. They are a sign of system on life support. Brazil is outcompeting us on growing soybeans. Brazilian agriculture benefits from an endless supply of pastureland to pull from to expand soybean acreage. With Brazil controlling the soybean market, this can lead to more corn-on-corn acres being grown in the United States due to better market opportunities (i.e., ethanol). When a farmer goes corn on corn, this leads to more nitrogen being put down to produce the same yield level and herbicide-resistant weeds replicating at even faster rate than a corn, soybean rotation.

With the overproduction of corn being a policy of the United States government through subsidies and bailouts, which passthrough the farmer to theses consolidated companies, land prices will stay high. The government is telling investors and bankers, the government has the back of these consolidated companies and not the farmers and rural communities trying to thrive. This leads to land prices always going up and never coming down.

The bailouts are the clearest sign of this issue. There is always the line of “they aren’t making any more land,” and this is true to an extent. It is also true the financialization of agriculture has led to land prices becoming unattainable for any regular person to purchase it. An actual free market would not allow these bailouts to happen. When the bailouts happen, then it does not change behavior because these companies and bankers expect the bailout to happen again. If a collapse were allowed, land prices would come down.

Investors, inheritors, and farmers need land values to go up for the same reason regular homeowners people need their home value to go up. The number must go up. If it does not, people are in a bind. This is what happens when the economy is made to increase capital and labor is devalued. It is the same issue when people talk about affordable housing as it is with land. People want it, but industry and people also do not want it because it means they will be worth less. Until agricultural land and our housing stock is not looked at as a financial asset, this problem will keep snowballing. People also being better paid for their labor instead of relying on an increasing their financial asset like their land or home would also help.

If you made it through all four parts, thank you very much. Getting clean water will not be simple, but breaking up these grain processors and meatpackers will be a start. By valuing labor and avoiding the financialization of everything would also help. Creating competitive markets and less consolidated industries, this will create better outcomes for farmers, rural communities, and better water quality.

Unfortunately, the constant bailouts, high nitrate flow in the water, less farmers on the land, hollowed out rural communities, indicate the system is not working. This system is not resilient. By empowering local and regional agriculture instead of a few unaccountable highly consolidated private companies like grain processors and meatpackers, more farmers can be on the land, producing a diversity of crops and livestock. This will lead to better practices for those on the land and those downstream.

If you want clean water, you better advocate and vote for politicians who support better antitrust enforcement and take on concentrated economic power, local food policies, and policies which lead to vibrant rural life. Farmers need antitrust. Iowans need antitrust. Our water needs antitrust.

So, this is how you get clean water.

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