Tuesday, June 4th

Today was our last day of presentations for the Farm MayX. We headed to the University of Iowa to meet with Dr. Dave Cwiertny. Again the main topic was water quality. Iowa’s water quality has also been a concern to us since we have been drinking the water for 3 weeks. However, we eventually get to go home. What does this mean for those who call Iowa home?

From the little we have seen of Iowa, the state appears to be mostly rural. This means that a majority of citizens will be using a private well. Private wells fall outside of the government’s regulation domain. This places added responsibilities on homeowners to regularly have their water tested. How many of us regularly do this, if at all. I live on property that uses a private well and I cannot remember the last time we had our water tested. Dr. Cwiertny told us that there is a program in Iowa that will test private wells for free. However, it is underutilized and there is no remediation if pollutants are found. Dr. Cwiertny argues that voluntary testing rarely works and that we might make progress on water quality if we regulated non-point source pollution. There are thousands of chemicals on the market and also other pollutants like hormones and antibiotics that reach our water through many means other than agriculture. To me, it seems regulation is almost impossible unless we ban the use of all chemicals. Maybe we should take a cue from Europe and start practicing the precautionary principle.

Later in the day we met with Dr. Chris Jones. Being that he studies water quality I never would have expected the turn our conversation took. “Glyphosate is good when dealing with corn and soybeans.” Good for who? The applicators? Some have associated the close contact with glyphosate with cancers. The plants? Weeds targeted by glyphosate have started to become resistant to the chemical. Dicamba may become our weapon of choice after glyphosate becomes ineffective. And Dicamba is not “good.”