"Right now, the world is closer than ever before to ending global hunger, undernutrition, and extreme poverty, but significant challenges and opportunities remain, including urbanization, gender inequality, instability and conflict, the effects of a changing climate, and environmental degradation. Despite our collective progress in global food security and nutrition over recent years, a projected 702 million people still live in extreme poverty, nearly 800 million people around the world are chronically undernourished, and 159 million children under five are stunted. Food security is not just an economic and humanitarian issue; it is also a matter of security, as growing concentrations of poverty and hunger leave countries and communities vulnerable to increased instability, conflict, and violence." From the USAID Oct. 3 release.  

You can read more and download the pdf of the Global Food Security Strategy at the USAID website. 

Walter Falcon, the Helen Farnsworth Professor of International Agricultural Policy in Economics (emeritus), writes from an unusual perspective. During the academic year he serves as a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He spends the summers on his family farm near Marion, Iowa. He returns to campus each year with reflections on the challenges and rewards of faming life in his "Almanac Report." Falcon is former deputy director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment. 

It is now the end of summer for what has been a milestone year for my wife and me. This essay, itself a mini-milestone, is the fifth annual report from our farm. As readers of prior Almanac postings will know, my day job is as professor of international agricultural policy at Stanford University; however, we also own a medium-sized farm in east central Iowa that produces corn, soybeans, alfalfa and beef from a cow-calf herd. Our friends laughingly refer to our operation as a corn-California crop rotation. 

The 2016 crop year has been nothing short of phenomenal. Planting was early, the weather was warm – sometimes downright hot – and the rains were ideal. On average, our county receives nine inches of rain during the critical growing months of June and July. This year we received more than 12 inches, quite unlike the two inches I wrote about in 2012.

Both corn and soybeans are about two weeks ahead of their maturity schedules for what promises to be record production. Corn yields of 225 bushels per acre on our farm look probable. Soybeans are more uncertain; they are loaded with pods, but all of the rain has left them susceptible to a fungal disease known as sudden-death syndrome (SDS). This fungus, present in many Iowa soils, enters the roots and emits a toxin. Plants looking healthy one day can suddenly wither a few days later. The exact amount of bean loss is mainly a function of how close the plants are to being ripe. We are almost past that maturity barrier now, so even if SDS strikes, it should not lower our yields very much. Unfortunately, record yields do not equate to record incomes, an important point that I return to later.

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The perfect summer and record crops were complemented by two milestone events of a more personal nature. In June, my wife and I celebrated our 60^th wedding anniversary. Then in September, we both celebrated our 80^th birthdays. There has never been a day when I have not known my wife. We grew up on nearby farms and are fourth-generation caretakers of land that was settled in the late 1850’s. And, we have both seen the most extraordinary changes over our eight decades. Even with a 50-year hiatus while at Harvard and Stanford universities, Iowa has always been home. 

Anniversaries are the time for reminiscing and looking at old pictures. Not surprisingly, a major topic of conversation at our gathering was the change in farming practices. As the younger son in our family, I remember a long list of chores, even when I was small – gathering eggs, filling the watering tanks for pigs and “going after” the cows in the evening. But I really took notice of agriculture when I was about 10.

It was shortly after Word War II, and at that time we used a four-year crop rotation: corn, corn, oats, clover. We were in the transition from horses to tractors, with the corn still being planted with a two-row horse-drawn planter. This was a task reserved for my father (a.k.a. Buck), for no one else could get the rows sufficiently straight to suit him. On a really long day, when the horses were in good condition, father could plant 15 acres. He used 42-inch rows, wide enough for the horses, and planted about 18,000 kernels of seed per acre. The seed was “checked”, which meant that cornfields could be cultivated for weeds both via the length of the field and across it. 

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The contrast between then and now is stark. An 18-row planter, dispensing 36,000 seeds per acre in 20-inch rows, can now plant 40 acres per hour – almost three times what my father could do in an entire day. Unlike horses, the tractors do not get tired. And they have lights. Steering the tractor is no longer a problem, since the fields and tractors are now synchronized with global positioning systems. For the most part, farmers are just along for the ride, and to keep awake on mile-long rows, several have become Sudoku fanatics! The planting system is wonderful except for one large problem – a new 24-row planter costs upwards of $225,000, not including the tractor.

When I was 12 my father decided that he needed more help and that I was his newly designated “hired man.” To reinforce the point, he decided that I needed my own tractor. He purchased a new Farmall “C” for me, including a two-row cultivator for attacking weeds. The grand total cost of this equipment was $1600! (Perhaps what I remember most is driving myself around the block in my hometown on the day we took delivery.)

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For the next 10 years, I spent most of my summers on that damned tractor fighting morning glories (that would tangle and often require dismounting every 100 yards), thistles, button weeds and all manner of other species. Now, herbicides, Roundup-ready seeds and no-tillage farming are the norm. What took a summer for me to do is now completed easily in a day or two with a high-clearance sprayer with long booms that cover 48 rows at a time.  

What the future will bring is an interesting question. For 20 years or more, farmers have used and overused highly effective herbicides such as Roundup.  And predictably, there is increasing weed resistance to these herbicides. In our county, there has been a devastating spread of Palmer amaranth—a tall spiky plant that produces thousands of seeds. It is highly resistant to commonly used herbicides, and whether its control lies in yet another new herbicide remains to be seen. For the moment, however, it is a menace.

For years, our entire crop rotation was constrained by labor availability at harvest. The picking of ear corn by hand was time-consuming, and typically a cold, miserable task. I can still hear my father saying, “the mark of a man is whether he can pick 100 bushels of ear corn, and then shovel them into a crib before nightfall.

Several things happened almost simultaneously, however, that fundamentally changed rural Iowa life: the switch from horses to tractors; the availability of cheap commercial nitrogen fertilizer; and the large-scale introduction of soybeans.  The departure of the horses was a joyful occasion in itself – tractors neither kick nor need their sheds cleaned.

Moreover, much less land was now needed to provide hay, oats and straw for the horses. A new crop rotation evolved that took the form of corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans. Commercial nitrogen helped maintain the soil fertility; hybrid corn seeds offered new genetic potential as yields on our farm went from 70 bushels per acre in 1946 to more than 200 bushels per acre currently; herbicides more or less controlled the weeds; and perhaps most of all, the mechanical corn picker broke the critical labor bottleneck at harvest.

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To the extent that my family ever celebrated, we partied the night our first new Case corn picker was delivered in 1948. (Father may have even had one of his carefully hidden beers that evening!) It was a one-row snapper that was simple beyond belief – just rollers that stripped the corn ears from the stock and elevated them into a trailing wagon.

It was the start of a new era, however, and the one-row pull machine quickly gave way to two-row pickers that mounted directly on a tractor, which in turn gave way to self-propelled picker-combines that used multiple “heads” for harvesting either corn or soybeans.  These machines are huge – and are extraordinarily costly. A new 12-row combine fitted for corn harvest costs on the order of $600,000. Unlike picking by hand, when 100 bushels per day was the norm, the new behemoths can harvest 10 acres per hour – some 20,000 bushels per day – provided that the farmer has enough trucks and collector wagons to move the grain from the combine to market or to on-farm storage units. Many are the farm spouses who now drive massive grain trucks during the harvest season!

The coffee crowd is delighted that the traffic from presidential politicians across Iowa is down substantially from last summer, but the two remaining candidates seemingly have yet to say anything meaningful to my neighbors. Farmers are feeling economically trapped and politically abandoned. “None of the above” would certainly win the election if it were held today. While Iowa shows as a dead heat in the presidential polls, it is the most unenthusiastic 50/50 that I have ever seen on both sides.

Most farmers truly enjoy their work and lifestyle, but they are now hurting. It is easy to understand how the hurt arises. In the last 36 months, corn, soybean and fed-cattle prices have dropped about 50 percent, 33 percent and 25 percent, respectively. The $600,000 machines that (perhaps!) were feasible economically with $7 per bushel corn now look like a mechanical albatross with corn at $3.50 or less per bushel.

Even with low interest rates, many farmers find themselves overcapitalized and with heavy debt burdens. During the prior period of high prices, many borrowed against the equity they had in land, only to see local land prices go from about $9,200 to roughly $7,800 per acre. Solvency has become a serious question for some. Interestingly, the younger, most modern, and most aggressive young farmers seem in the most trouble, whereas some of the older, more conservative farmers using rebuilt machinery are coping better.

The morning coffee conversations are also punctuated by several environmental topics, especially nitrogen and water runoffs.  The state of Iowa is pressing hard for voluntary conservation approaches. But farmers are truly puzzled and worried about what they should do. For 100 years they have been urged to improve their land by tiling, that is, to lay clay or perforated plastic pipe three to four feet underground such that wet portions of fields could be drained to facilitate greater yields. Often these tiles have outlets into creeks or ditches.

But now there is a dilemma. The EPA is asserting that water from tiles is running water, and therefore subject to EPA regulation under the Clean Water Act. Given uncertainty about the regulations, farmers fear the worst. Moreover, much of the nitrogen runoff from cornfields is via drainage into those same tiles. While better placement and timing of fertilizer applications can help, it is hard to envisage major curtailment of nutrient runoff without also taking up the tile issue. 

Tiles are virtually in all fields, and the implications of potential new regulations are enormous. As a consequence, groups like the Farm Bureau are pushing new voluntary conservation measures very strongly. They are also going after EPA’s attempt to regulate farm waters in an all-out war. In the meantime, farmers wait uneasily and hope for the best.

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My final comment for the summer is not a “cock and bull” story, although it borders on one. (Definition: “an absurd, improbable story presented as the truth.”) It was partly motivated by “Desperado,” the 2,972-pound Angus bull that won the “Super Bull” contest at the Iowa State Fair. (Lest I be accused of being gender insensitive, I should also report that the life-sized cow, sculpted in butter, is still doing well and now stands beside a sculpturefrom “Star Trek”, also in butter.  Do not ask me why!)

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It is the end of summer and time for another Iowa report. My wife and I own a medium-sized farm in East Central Iowa that produces corn and soybeans, and beef from a cow/calf herd. My day job is as Professor of International Agricultural Policy at Stanford University, typically working on hunger problems in Asia. The summer keeps me in direct contact with rural life in the Midwest. 

My previous Iowa postings have been dominated by weather—severe drought in 2012, massive flooding in 2013, and tornados in 2014. In a different way, weather features again this year. We had 10 inches of rain and a hailstorm during the first 10 days following my June return from California. But after that episode, the weather has been nearly perfect for our locale. Things could still go wrong—a typical farmer comment—but at the moment, we are looking at near-record yields on our farm. My guess is 210 bushels per acre for corn, and 65 bushels per acre for soybeans, both about 10% higher than for recent years. 

Crops throughout the region look generally good, and the following couplet is a standard feature of local conversations: 

“Don’t the crops look great?”  
“Yeah, but they aren’t worth nothing.”  

A sharp run-up in corn prices the last two weeks of June—from $3.50 to $4.40 per bushel—left farmers hopeful with what would turn out to be faulty expectations. As many waited for further price increases before selling, the good weather and the economic slow down in China caused corn prices to tumble. By Sept 1, prices were back at $3.50. These low prices left many farmers with dashed expectations, substantial amounts of 2014 corn in farm storage, and the prospects of a large upcoming October harvest. Nor will crop insurance help very much. The combination of yields and prices this year will leave most farmers just outside the range that would qualify them for 75%-revenue-protection payments. 

Few outside the farming community realize that marketing decisions are often more important than production in defining a successful farm year. Few also appreciate the differential impact on Iowa’s general prosperity from the $7 corn that prevailed in 2012-13, versus the current $3.50. 
 

Gloom is not the only thing that has been rolling across the landscape. Two parades really had to be seen to be appreciated. Each year since 1973, the state has hosted a bike ride across Iowa called Ragbrai. It is a weeklong activity that starts at the Missouri River to the west, and ends 500 miles to the east at the Mississippi River. It has grown into a massive affair that attracts some 15,000 riders.  

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Photo Credit: C. Benz 

This year’s ride was special, at least for us. This mass of rolling humanity came within two miles of our farm, and it included a sizeable number of Stanford faculty and students (including my boss, pictured below) who, among others, made mini-detours to visit us. What were most interesting to my wife and me were the impressions expressed both by the bikers and the local hosts. 

The riders marveled at the rolling topography of Iowa; the vast expanses of corn and soybeans; the welcoming hospitality of Iowans; the infinite ways pork could be served on a stick; and the best sweet corn in the world! The locals were bemused that so many sane people of all shapes and sizes would voluntarily ride 500 miles in the heat and rain; amazed by the short-term chaos that 15,000 cyclists could cause in small rural communities that were attempting to move machinery and feed cattle; and pleased by the magnitude of the expenditures. The latter was deftly described by a neighbor as “our own economic stimulus package,” and more pointedly summarized by a local headline, “Circus, Economic Windfall, or Occupying Army?” 
 

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 Photo Credit: R. Naylor

Politicians formed the second parade (charade?) that has been rolling across the state. Iowa—with the dubious honor of having the first primary/caucus—is a genuinely purple state. It voted for President Barack Obama in 2012 and for Senator Joni Ernst in 2014. Iowans pride themselves on being able to pick winners and on being stubbornly independent. The prevailing general mood at the moment, however, is some combination of confusion and disgust. Donald Trump draws the most comments. And while he leads the polls, I have yet to hear anyone (literally) this summer say that he or she favored him. Time will tell what Iowans really believe.

Nowhere was the comedy and chaos more vivid than at the recently completed Iowa State Fair. Some 15 presidential candidates showed up. Most of them spoke at the fair’s “Soapbox Corner” before conspicuously casting their kernel-of-corn vote at the straw (corn?) ballot table. They also had the obligatory pictures taken with the life-sized cow sculpted in butter, the fair’s largest bull (there must be some symbolism here), and the fair’s heaviest pig. The latter was a 500-pound specimen named Mac. (I was disappointed that an earlier winner, my namesake “Wally”, was not in the competition.) And to no one’s surprise, all candidates thought that corn-based ethanol was a really good idea. Most of them even expressed favor with the fair’s latest cuisine contribution—the Bomb—brisket, wrapped in bacon, served on a stick! 
 

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Photo Credit: R. Naylor 

Readers of previous reports will be pleased to know that the 1868 Waubeek general store and restaurant still serves as the morning gathering place. It has changed hands, but continues its long tradition of watery coffee and stale pastry. (By request, I have included pictures; I am California hatless, plus a shot of the outside.) Besides prices, bikers, and politicians, three new topics of conversation have cropped up: water, cover crops, and weeds. All three are environmental issues that are distinctly operational. They also remind me of just how much information is exchanged around tables such as this one, though on any given morning that conclusion is not always obvious!

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By far the most controversial topic of the summer has been water. (And to be clear, the issue is about water quality and the nutrients carried in the water, not about water supplies or allocations.) Many farmers realize that nutrient runoff from livestock operations and from fertilizer applied to fields is a very serious problem; most of them are also loathsome about EPA efforts to redefine and regulate what constitutes water flows in the U. S. 

During the last week in August, the EPA announced new clean-water rules that would give the agency new jurisdiction over bodies of water (and land), including many in agriculture, which were previously unregulated. But it remains to be seen which bodies of waters would be covered, and which specific agricultural situations that would be exempted from the rules. Six states have sued the EPA, and the question of when or if the rules will be implemented is now caught up in the courts. The Farm Bureau has declared an all-out offensive against the rules, and farm publications have added further fuel to the fire. To complicate matters even more, the Des Moines Water Works has brought suit against three counties upstream of its water plant that would require farmers to change practices and/or make investments to reduce nutrient flows (particularly nitrates) into the Raccoon River. 

Most scientists and many farmers believe that nutrient runoff constitutes the largest remaining environmental problem facing agriculture. Thus the fight, in many ways, is less about the problem, and more about philosophy. Most farmers prefer voluntary solutions arranged with the state or the USDA. They typically dislike mandatory rules of any sort, and they are particularly concerned that regulations might be of the one-size-fits-all character. The discourse is inflamed by uncertainty: the EPA has yet to write all of the regulations, and farmers simply do not know what to expect. In the absence of information, they fear the worst. Everyone I talked with had a relevant question. Will we need to get a permit to spread manure? How will drainage tiles that empty into or near creeks be handled? Will we need to file a nitrogen plan for every farm that specifies amounts and timing of fertilizer applications? On our farm, for example, we have a flowing creek that traverses a large permanent pasture. The creek provides water for the cowherd, which has direct access to it. What, if anything, will need to be changed in that arrangement? All of us wonder about the flexibility in timing and scope that will be accorded farmers who may be faced with large corrective investments. Many also fear that the regulators will know little about agricultural practices. In short, what waters are to be regulated, for what purposes, and with what instruments are issues still to be resolved? At the moment, there is considerable heat, but very little light about the answers. 

Virtually all Iowa farmers have transitioned to minimum tillage systems; plowing has become a field operation of the past. This change in tillage also creates new cropping opportunities. 
 

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Photo Credit: USDA

Five years ago, there was virtually no talk about or use of “cover crops.” These crops are sown in residues immediately after corn or soybean harvest. Certain of them survive the winter, but others do not. Radishes (shades of the English agricultural revolution, circa 1700!) produce long roots that punch holes in clay layers of the soil, thereby assisting drainage. They can also be grazed. Small grains are also being seeded, which add to add organic matter and can sometimes be chopped as forage for dairy or beef operations. 
 

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Photo Credit: Mühlhausen/landpixel

Cover crops are clearly still a work in progress, but they provide an interesting example of active on-farm experimentation. Best solutions seem to vary from farm to farm—from no cover, to radishes, to triticale—and seem importantly dependent on particular crop-livestock combinations. Discussions about the use of triticale—a cross between rye and either bread wheat or durum—were of particular interest to me. I worked with Norman Borlaug at the International Wheat and Maize Improvement Center in Mexico during the 1980s to develop modern varieties of this crop, but it has been slow to find appropriate niches in cropping systems around the world. In the 1980s, I never even contemplated that Iowa might be such a place. 

Several forces drive the new concern about weeds. Falling crop prices have squeezed profit margins severely, causing farmers to look seriously at each cost component. For the first time, I have heard farmers question new seed varieties (virtually all GMOs), both because of their cost and their effectiveness. They increasingly wonder if the $200 seed-cost-per-acre for corn is justified. The current year, with its excellent growing season, meant there was less need for certain stacked traits such as drought resistance. Moreover, the year was equally good for weeds, whose resistance to major herbicides like Roundup seemed to be spreading. 

Water hemp, in particular, gave soybean farmers grief, and is causing them to rethink seed-weed strategies. They worry about the consequences from applying new combination-herbicides (some still under various reviews) that attack both grasses and broad-leafed weeds. They are particularly concerned that spraying some of the new products will also destroy the grasses in waterways left specifically to prevent water erosion. 

My conjecture is that most farmers will still use the specialized seeds next year. I predict, however, that they will also be searching more carefully for lower-cost ways—both via seeds and herbicides—to manage weeds. The growing weed resistance problem has begun to scare them—a recent Greenwire Poll indicates that 90% are worried—and has belatedly driven home the difficulties that arise from overuse of only one or two herbicides. 
 

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No Iowa report is complete without some cattle commentary. 

My father was a cattle feeder, and some of those “cattle genes” carried forward a generation. I grew up knowing a lot about purebreds, about corn and soybean-meal feed rations, and about 2-pound-per-day rates of gain that produced 1100-pound animals for sale. Fast forward to 2015. When I look around, virtually all cattle have been crossbred for size and vigor (though in the market they may still be advertised as Angus!). Soybean meal has dropped completely out of the rations being fed in our county, having been replaced by the high-protein distillers grain, the by-product of making corn sweeteners and ethanol. Rates of gain are now 3.25 pounds per day, and finished animals are sold at 1500 pounds. What has not changed, however, is the riskiness of the enterprise. Even with cheap corn, buying 700 pound feeders for $2.25 per pound, and selling 1500 pound steers at $1.45 per pound has not been a great way to get rich in 2015! 

My final impression of the summer is a memorable one: rolling down the Mississippi River on a paddle boat, celebrating my wife’s and my birthdays with good friends, viewing a glorious sunset, and eating world-class prime rib. Now that’s the way to get ready for a new year of Stanford classes.

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Photo credit: flickr/Lance and Erin

In a new study in the journal BioScience, a team of researchers including Stanford professor Roz Naylor links marijuana cultivation to widespread environmental damage in California and calls for greater regulation of the crop’s impact on natural ecosystems.

Recent debates about marijuana legalization have focused on the potential social, health and economic impacts, with little attention paid to environmental issues. The new study, spearheaded by the California chapter of The Nature Conservancy, brings environmental concerns to the forefront of the policy discussion. Between 60 and 70 percent of the marijuana consumed in the United States comes from California.
 

Water and wildlife

Marijuana plants require nearly twice as much water as do grapes or tomatoes, and the last five years have brought a 50 to 100 percent increase in the amount of northern California watershed lands used for marijuana production – figures that are causing growing concern among conservationists in the midst of a severe statewide drought.

The majority of California agriculture is subject to heavy water use regulations. Farmers of most irrigated crops help their plants through the dry summer months by filling water tanks in the winter, when streams and springs are full.

By contrast, many marijuana growers draw surface water during the plant’s summer growing season, when drought conditions are worst.

“Taking water directly from rivers and streams in the summer not only reduces the water available for agriculture but also threatens wildlife species, especially birds and fish, that depend on these wetland ecosystems for survival,” said Naylor.

Illegal marijuana plantations in California are associated with a wide range of other environmental impacts, including pollution, poaching, and pesticides that poison wildlife. Even legal outdoor cultivation can cause deforestation and soil erosion.
 

Policy options

The research team identified several opportunities to reduce the environmental impacts of marijuana cultivation in California. For example, states can:

• Offer incentives for growers to protect natural resources
• Enforce new or existing environmental laws,
• Use sales tax revenues to fund restoration projects
• Implement certification or labeling programs to encourage consumers to buy sustainably grown products.

“Regardless of the legal status of marijuana, the way we are currently managing its impacts on water and wildlife in California just doesn’t work,” said Naylor. “Bringing these impacts into future policy discussions about marijuana is critical for protecting California’s environmental resources given the high value and demand for the crop.”

Naylor is William Wrigley Professor of Earth Science at Stanford, director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She serves as a trustee of The Nature Conservancy California Chapter.

Media Contact

Laura Seaman, Communications Manager, Center on Food Security and the Environment: lseaman@stanford.edu 
Lisa Park, Media Relations, The Nature Conservancy: lpark@tnc.org.