Farm Today: Corn boom lessens interest in sustainable farming

Philip Brasher  July 27, 2008

    

AMES, Iowa - Most farmers would be pleased with the yields Matt Liebman can get from his corn field - 200 bushels an acre or more.
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The average yield last year in Boone County, where Liebman's head-high corn is growing this summer, was 181 bushels per acre. The national average last year was 151 bushels.

Better yet, Liebman gets his strong yields with far less fertilizer and pesticide than conventional growers use. Applying less fertilizer saves money and reduces polluted runoff.

But Liebman, a Berkeley-trained professor of agronomy at nearby Iowa State University, knows few farmers are going to pay attention to his methods. Not when corn is selling for $6 to $7 a bushel, triple what it did just three years ago.

Farmers are planting more corn than they have in decades, raising concerns that the heavy use of chemicals needed to produce the crop will worsen pollution in rivers and streams.

Following Liebman's sustainable farming practices would mean a farmer could only plant corn every three or four years on the same ground. Other years, they'd have to plant soybeans and crops like alfalfa and red clover to replace the nitrogen the corn has sucked out of the soil.

"I don't tell people this is what they should do. I tell them this is something they can do," Liebman said. "We need to be cognizant of not just production but quality of life and quality of the environment."

In 2001, when Liebman started his federally funded experiments with crop rotations, farmers were recovering from the collapse of grain prices in the late 1990s.

But then the government mandated the use of grain-based ethanol in cars, and the price of corn and other commodities skyrocketed. U.S. farmers planted 24 percent more corn last year than in 2001. Even in Iowa, where corn was always king, corn acreage rose 21 percent.

"When commodity prices and land prices are creeping steadily upward, it doesn't increase the business of sustainable agriculture," said Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Tom Dobbs, an economist studying farm policy for the Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Mich., said income from corn is "so substantial right now I wouldn't see a big switch to sustainable systems."

Nationally, farmers are expected to net $556 an acre, not counting land expenses, on this year's corn crop, which is more than double the average net return just two years ago of $245 per acre, according to University of Missouri economists. The average net return on soybeans is expected to reach $416 this year, up from $176 in 2006.

But farmers have been through times like this before. In the 1970s, the government told them to plant fencerow to fencerow, and they did. Then prices collapsed in the 1980s, leading to the formation of groups like Hoefner's, which started in 1987, as farmers looked for ways to deal with the tough farm economy. Prices soared again in 1995 and 1996, only to plummet in 1998.

The cost of growing crops is soaring. A widely used fertilizer for corn, anhydrous ammonia, is likely to cost farmers $1,000 a ton next year, nearly double the price in 2007.

At the same time, livestock farmers struggling because of the high cost of grain for feed are lobbying the Bush administration to roll back incentives for ethanol production.

And the next Congress might change environmental regulations so farmers can get paid for practices that reduce tillage and keep more carbon in the soil.

None of this is likely to displace King Corn in Iowa. It's too lucrative and grows too well in this state. But if some farmers do have second thoughts, Liebman says he'll be ready to show them another way to farm.

"If history is any guide," Hoefner said, "when this particular bubble bursts, there will be a new level of interest in alternative systems."

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Good article, i like it.

But do you have your own articles or topics, i have read most of your topics that coming from other website.

Quoting from [levi]:

Good article, i like it.

But do you have your own articles or topics, i have read most of your topics that coming from other website.

Thank you.  I am trying to post different opinions of experts from around the world.  If I just post what I know very well first hand, there will be far fewer posts.  I don't think that posts that are long on opinion and short on facts are a good idea.  I also do not want to put that work of someone else out as my own by restating it in different words. 


Perhaps you have some subjects that you know well regarding agriculture that you would like to post?  Please do.