Farmers can do more than producing food and fiber. They can also produce clean air, clean water, and abundant habitat for wildlife. But farm policies are doing too little to reward good stewardship and too much to underwrite unsustainable crop and animal production by the largest and most successful farm businesses.
Conservation
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Across the nation, Americans are seeing the price of farm pollution firsthand in contaminated drinking water, toxic algal blooms and pesticide-laden foods.
What if your neighbor poured toxic chemicals into your drinking water but only agreed to pay for part of the cleanup? Well, that’s exactly what’s happening in northeastern Wisconsin.
From Florida beaches to Lake Erie to the California Delta , algal blooms threaten human health and aquatic ecosystems. Cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, produce toxins that can make people sick and even kill pets .
Low-tech, low-cost prairie strips on farms – buffers of grass, trees or other permanent vegetation planted along the banks of rivers, streams, lakes and other waterways – can reduce toxic farm pollution runoff, clean up drinking water and reduce water bills for consumers, according to a recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists .
A study released this week by the University of California, Davis, found that farming is the biggest source of nitrogen pollution in California , contributing harmful pollutants to the state’s air and water.
