Water Quality

When I am sick, I do not take cold medicine. Why? I do not believe in fixing symptoms without fixing the problem. Cold medicine only makes me feel better, but it does not correct why I got a cold which is due to lack of sleep or not effectively washing my hands.

Another example is the spread of the avian bird flu. The symptom is high egg prices due to the killing of a large amount of egg laying hens. The problem is we put too many chickens in fewer and fewer CAFOs. This results in more hens being killed off than needed if these chickens were spread out between more farmers and geographic land.

When it comes to Iowa or America’s water quality issue, it has the same symptom, problem dynamic. The symptom is our terrible water quality. The problem is corporate agriculture consolidation. Chris Jones is an amazing writer on the topic of water quality, and he also gets the issue due to consolidation and the impacts on rural life.

Unfortunately, for others like legislators and other activists, connecting the dots between our terrible water quality and corporate agriculture consolidation is not there. We leave too much room to absolve these large corporations from the water quality issue.

It will never matter how many saturated buffers or cover crops we plant. Our water quality will still be struggling. I am not saying do not do these practices because they are beneficial, but we need to correct the problem, not the symptom.

By breaking up large grain processors and meatpackers, our water quality will improve. On the grain side, these large processors have geared the market to only produce certain grains. With their monopoly power through acquiring businesses and vertical integration, they have turned their commodity business into an ingredient business, so they are not price takers in a commodity market but price setters in an ingredients market according to Farm Action.

Farmers must play within this system and grow more grains like corn which contribute to water quality issues due to nitrate leaching. They grow more by applying more nitrogen and phosphorus than needed to hopefully drive down their production costs. More yield means more money in their mind. Input dealers want to sell as much as possible by promising only more inputs equals higher yields.

If you look around, there are ways to reduce inputs without higher yields. Unfortunately for most, this information is not emphasized by the input industry. More inputs equal higher yields becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy which is dirtying our water.

I’m guessing this is not in Iowa. Maybe the Driftless Area? Photo by Alexandru Trandafir on Unsplash

By breaking up these processors, there will be more opportunities to gain experience different crops and have more diverse crop rotations leading to better water quality. The processors will have to compete for commodities and be price takers, not price setters. This leads to more money for farmers and more wealth in rural communities. Unfortunately, these large companies want to nationalize the entire grain industry while we should build more regional, resilient food systems. Food deserts should not exist in places with the best soil in the world.

As for meatpackers, they push farmers to have more livestock like hogs in fewer and fewer buildings. They own everything but the land and buildings, leaving the farmers with all the risk. Farmers are incentivized to go big or go home. This means more poop in one place. Manure can only travel so far before it is not economically feasible. More than enough poop is spread on land at inopportune times leading to worse water quality.

These meatpackers push for specific standards which causes this to be one centralized system* resulting in a less resilient food chain and hollowed out rural America. This monopoly power they gain by this system forces farmers into unfair contracts which hurts them financially and their neighbors environmentally. Due to the consolidation, farmers often have little to no choice but to go with whoever the big meatpacker is in town. By breaking up the meatpackers, it will give farmers more opportunities to sell their hogs elsewhere. This will drive up the price for farmers, leading farmers to not have as many hogs located in one place. These pigs can be spread out across the landscape and their poop less consolidated in one location.

Consumers will not need to pay a higher price. The competition in these markets will force the meatpackers to compete for market share by offering stores lower prices instead of using their market power to demand the price they want.

While we can argue over the solutions for water quality from sunrise to sunset, it is time to correct the problem, not the symptoms. By enforcing antitrust laws to break up these large processors and meatpackers and pursuing other antimonopoly policies, we will do right by our environment and our pocketbooks.

*Isn’t it funny how we focused on not having too much power centralized in the government yet, we are willing to let only a few businesses across all industries try to set up a centralized system in each industry? Industry should be held to the same standards as the government. Democratizing government and the economy go hand in hand for the health of all citizens and society.