Farm & Food File
A syndicated column by Alan Guebert
Archives
It’s a Big Country and It Floats on Less and Less Water
Posted on July 15, 2022
From 35,000 feet, the white ring that marks the high level of Lake Powell looks just like the ring of an emptying bathtub. The only difference is the chalky top mark on this big tub, once the second largest freshwater reservoir in the U.S., is an unscrubble 1,900 miles around.
And Lake Powell, the upper reservoir […]
Twenty-five hundred gallons of water per bushel of irrigated corn is ‘too much’
Posted on May 6, 2022
In a recent telephone conversation, a southwest Kansas farmer casually noted that he had stopped growing irrigated corn some years back because “it cost too much.” Curious, I asked what it cost to irrigate an acre of corn in his arid, cattle-feeding-and-corn-hungry corner of the state.
“It wasn’t the money,” he quickly explained, “it was the […]
How Rural America Can Avoid “Another Century of Degraded Water”
Posted on March 4, 2020
Despite the presidential caucus debacle Iowa hosted Monday, Feb. 3, the too old, too-white, and too-rural (at least to pundits who drop by every Leap Year) Hawkeye State still finished its awful week with an act of political courage rarely seen in U.S. agriculture today.
On Feb. 7, the Des Moines Register published a clear, sharp […]
Drainers versus Sustainers
Posted on November 7, 2019
Not two miles from my central Illinois home, a farmer’s next crop—a dozen rolls of eight-inch, black plastic drainage pipe—wait to be planted several feet deep in this year’s browning corn stubble.
It’s tiling season in much of the Midwest, that post-harvest period when earth-chewing machines fight weather, mud, and daylight to bury thousands […]
Corporations Have Rights; Why Not a Lake?
Posted on April 10, 2019
If the ballot box is the ultimate source of power in the United States, then voters in Toledo, Ohio, used that power Feb. 26 to create what’s now being called a “Bill of Rights” for their wide, blue neighbor, Lake Erie.
That vote, if it withstands court challenges (one was filed immediately after the referendum […]
Brother, Can You Spare a Cup of Water?
Posted on November 14, 2018
Humanity depends on three critical threes: Without oxygen, most humans will die within three minutes; without water, life expectancy is three days; without food, we’ve got three weeks.
Few Americans give three seconds of thought to any of these life-ensuring elements because, here, food is safe and plentiful, air quality laws are in place and enforced, […]
Going Against the Flow
Posted on August 12, 2015
As summer heats up so too will agriculture’s ongoing water quality problems.
On July 10, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that Lake Erie’s algal bloom will be “more severe in 2015” due to “historic rains in June.” On a scale of 1 to 10, forecasts NOAA, this year’s bloom will be 8.7, far […]
OK, When?
Posted on May 26, 2015
Spring is warmer days, blooming daffodils, and blue horizons. It’s also a good time to tap the season’s new energy and fresh hope to honestly discuss some of farming and food’s most pressing issues.
For example, global energy companies now spend more than $500 billion a year exploring for new oil, natural gas, and coal. At […]
Betting Against Climate Change
Posted on July 9, 2014
According to 2013 data compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, you and I owe our very existence to water. After all, 92 percent of our blood, 75 percent of our brains and muscles, 60 percent bodies and 22 percent of our bones is plain, simple old water.
Even more to the point, while most of […]