A Sustainable Solution for the Corn Belt

Here’s a link to a NY Times piece about how farmers in Iowa are using plants, not chemicals, to replenish the soil, and grow the bottom line.

The piece points out that “If you convert 10 percent of a field of row crops to prairie, soil loss can be reduced by up to 95 percent, nutrient loss by 80 to 90 percent, and water runoff by 44 percent. Biodiversity nearly quadruples, and some of those species are pollinators, predators of pests, or both. And, unlike some ecological management techniques, the process is not expensive”.

I love this quote from Seth Watkins, a farmer who was interviewed in the piece:

“I’ve felt for years that environmentalists and farmers should be friends, and we are starting to see that in Iowa.”