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Across Farm Country, Fertilizer Pollution Impacts Not Just Health, but Water Costs, Too

Civil Eats

Tesdell explained that when his European ancestors settled in the Midwest, they plowed the prairie and switched from deeply rooted perennial plants to shallow-rooted annual crops like wheat, oats, and corn instead. Roughly 80 percent of the farmland in Iowa is owned by offsite landlords, who rent it out to farmers.

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Can Biden’s climate-smart agriculture program live up to the hype?

Food Environment and Reporting Network

For decades, efforts to cut fossil fuel emissions have focused on power plants, factories, and automobiles, not farmland. Agriculture has just not been at the table in a meaningful way,” says Thomas. Now, climate-smart agriculture aims to recapture some of that carbon. “It’s a greenwashing scheme. But it should be.