On the 23rd of May, we got a different piece of the agriculture story. We once again made the hour drive to Des Moines where we met with the Iowa Environmental Council (IEC). The IEC favors a regulatory approach to address Iowa’s water quality issues. High nitrates in drinking water is what it is causing Des Moines Water Works to incur high costs running its nitrate removal system. Iowa as a whole is contributing 88% of the nitrate pollution in the Mississippi River. This doesn’t account for the other industrial livestock based pollutants like hormones and antibiotics that could be that water. As of now our water treatment plants have no way of dealing with these substances. Tiling is what made Iowa farmable, yet, tiling transports nitrate laden water to public waters. These waters then have to cleaned for human consumption.

After this we went to Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge. Its mission is to try to restore the prairies by planting native prairie species. The prairies are more endangered than the rainforests. It’s sad that such an iconic landscape is disappearing. We also saw the work that is being done with the prairie strips project. Prairie Strips are planted in between rows of corn to help mitigate nitrate and phosphorous runoff. They also serve another important purpose: an ecosystem amidst the vast corn fields for birds and other species. As we walked the refuge’s experimental corn fields we saw the difference that the prairie strips make. On the field with the strip, there was little standing dirt or water in the collection flume. The field without the strips had a flume covered in field runoff. This is just one of the many solutions that people have been testing. Agriculture has the tools to reduce nitrate runoff, but the question is when and who will adopt them.