21 April CRPHunters must not allow soil and water conservation issues to become a (paraphrased): "...why should non-hunters pay tax dollars for hunters to shoot quail in Kansas..." issue.
Wheat planted over where a grassed waterway should be. It rained two days earlier of when this picture was taken. The amount of erosion shown occurred since last September's planting of this winter wheat field until the picture was taken on April 19. Any water runoff last fall included fertilizer into our drinking water supply.
Both pictures were taken on April 19, 2008 on the same farm showing crop land where farm chemical runoff and soil conservation is being ignored for increased crop acreage. Every hunter has seen what these pictures show and understands the issue about the water we drink. The public at large, as the majority of the voting public does not walk farm ground, does not have first hand experience with rural soil and water quality issues that affect everyone regardless of residency.
A wheat field under rotation harvested around June/July this past summer, left fallow for spring 2008 planting into another crop showing summer through winter erosion.
"The time has come to end the Conservation Reserve Program..." Best use of farmland is growing crops for food, John J. Ciamaricone II, Newark, Letters To The Editor, Delaware online, The News Journal, April 20, 2008.
"...farming CRP land is necessary in order to lower food prices...The program [CRP] was doomed for something like this from the get go. Because the CRP relies on the idea that farming land and conserving it are mutually exclusive, it encourages a choice—when that choice has to be made, farmers are going to farm..." Conserving farmers, Farmer's Notebook, Plenty, The World In Green, Ragan Sutterfield on Apr 16, 2008.
Ag Secretary: 'We have never been less secure' about wheat, Associated Press, by Roxana Hegeman, Kansas City, Mo, Forbes.com, 04.16.08. "The world has "never been less secure" about the near-term future of wheat as crop failures and disease combine to threaten food supplies, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Edward Schafer told food aid groups Wednesday...global wheat stocks at their lowest point in 30 years and U.S. wheat stocks are at 60-year lows...Schafer said he has not decided whether to allow the early release without penalty of acres enrolled in the federal Conservation Reserve Program..." It is not about just Kansas, Missouri and Iowa"
[written for the non-hunters that seem to read this page] CRP's benefit to hunters is a secondary effect of the true reason for CRP, that is, soil and water quality to sustain future life. Consequences to lost CRP does include less hunting as any decrease in sustainable habitat, CRP or otherwise, kills off wildlife a lesson that we do not need to learn again:
"...Once billed the "Prairie Chicken Capital of the World," the Flint Hills [Kansas] now hold dwindling numbers of the birds. In three decades, the population has dropped almost 90 percent on the area's eastern edge..." Booming birds face bust times, by Michael Pearce and Beccy Tanner, The Wichita Eagle, Apr. 20, 2008.
CRP provides big benefits for many mixed-grass birds "...loss of CRP would have a drastic impact on regional bird populations...Conservation Effects Assessment Project study conducted by the Playa Lakes Joint Venture and U.S. Department of Agriculture... ' High Plains Mid-West Ag Journal, April 21, 2008.
Returning to the farm runoff issue is the local water supply testing [Jefferson County Rural Water District number 12] showing for 2007, examining just nitrate levels showed a range of test results from 0 through 3.8 ppm. At 10 ppm the water is considered unsafe for human consumption. The assumption for the variable nitrate results is believed to be agricultural runoff differences through the year.
18 April Last HuntA continuation of the picture series from a hunter's last hunt for the season this past January when the camera was more valued than the gun.
The update write-up was back on March 27. April 2008 page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 |
