Iowa Devastations: Acts of God or Man?

I am a proud native-born Iowan, even though I have been away from my state as a resident since 1969.

So it is with a sense of deep sorrow and helplessness that I witness the extreme floodings and other violent weather that is being reported around the world.  As a matter of fact, I found out on a BBC news program about the tornado in my home county in Iowa that killed the boy scouts.

A little insight about my state of Iowa:  

I am very proud of the beauty found only in my state, despite the fun many people make about its flatness and constant corn fields.  Yet such people have never lived where I did, in Western Iowa.  We would sit out in our front yard at night and watch the trains transport grain to and from Omaha.  We could see the bluffs off in the distance beyond the green fields.  There was no sight more peaceful and comforting!

But not all was beautiful in Iowa.  There was a sense of boredom there, perhaps a trait that many other residents of other states also feel.  I understand the boredom has increased in recent decades since I left. 

Farmers' routine was either very demanding or one of complete nothingness.  At planting and harvesting time, farmers and their entire families work around the clock to get crops in or get them harvested.  In between there are trips into the field to apply chemicals, but other than that, the full-time farmers work on fence lines or putter around the farm.  During these long periods of boredom, you will often see the taverns get busier.  As a matter of fact, Statemaster.com ranks Iowa is number 4 in the nation for binge drinking (having five or more drinks on one occasion).

Iowa's Department of Public Health says that in it's substance abuse program in 2007, they treated 47,252 persons, doubling the number the state helped just 15 years ago.  The department says that alcohol abuse is the number one substance abuse problem by far in the state.  Likewise, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention notes that one in five adult Iowans could be classified as binge drinkers.

So what does high consumption of alcohol have to do with recent Iowa violent weather and its 24 deaths, 40,000 evacuations and record high corn prices (Washingtonpost.com)?

I think that Iowans are in an identity crisis.  Many fourth and fifth generation farmers are doing what all good farmers should be doing, but still they feel that they have lost control of their professions and their lives.

Many don't stop to consider how many of their problems today result from greed in the past among those who wanted to get the most value for every acre of this rich land, and were willing to become God to do it.

These things included:

• installing underground pipes which helped eliminate some 90,000 acres of wetlands (which are land-savers during flooding periods),
  
• buliding and cultivating in flood plains,
• straightening creeks and rivers (Meandering waterways slow the rush of flood waters downstream.),
  
• due to higher use of ethanol, some 106,000 acres of land was taken out of the Conservation Reserve Program, which in itself helped keep more soil in place after heavy rains, and
• because of a lack of stewardship of their soil, that soil has eroded tremendously, and have filled most of Iowa's rivers will sediment and silt.
  

In addition, farmers in Iowa and surrounding agricultural states, followed along with the Monsantos and Cargill and other ag businesses in buying their talk on

• chemical farming,
  
• not using time honored practices of  natural fertilizers (manure), crop rotation and
  
• other ordinary activities that pioneer farmers knew were important, and which often kept farmers occupied year round, not just during planting and harvesting times.

I was in Iowa recently and wanted to find a farm where organic food was sold.  The closest I could find was some 75 or more miles away from my family's home in southwest Iowa.  In Western North Carolina, I can find an organic farm within 10 miles from my home here.

My Iowa relatives have bought the Big Farm Business model hook, line and sinker.  They have become specialized, concentrating on only corn and soy beans.  Their equipment is priced into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  They are now farming some 2,000 acres in their region.

Meanwhile, the cow milking, the chicken raising, the hogs, sheep and other livestock have been shifted to the industrial Confined Area Feeding Operations (CAFOs), where animals are treated like machines, and are often "harvested" in cruel inhumane manners.

Today when you drive down an Iowa highway during the time when chemicals are being applied to the crops, you can see that now the fields themselves are like chemical factories.  And to think that we eat this food or our future meat eats that food that is coated in chemicals on this day!   The air takes on a smoggy look just as though you were in a big metropolitan area.  Ozone must be high right out there in the Iowa cornfield, because of the sun interacting with the nitrogen oxides, amonia and other chemicals covering every inch of once black soil.

The Bread Basket of America has been broken, along with today's farmers who were proud of their profession and heritage.  My heart goes out to all the farmers and their families who have been hurt by these Acts of God, which on the basis of this being a 500 year flood, this should have never happened just 15 years after the 1993 floods.

But maybe what happened wasn't just an Act of God.  Maybe if we did our farming more as stewards rather than as masters or God ourselves, these huge rains wouldn't have been as devastating as they were.  We may never know.

But just as Man fiddled with the Mighty Mississippi near New Orleans, Man also fiddled with our rivers and wetlands in the Midwest.  Both were devastated by floods.  Can we see the big picture here, and maybe someday wisen up?

For our grandchildren's sakes, I certainly hope so.

Check out more of my opinions at http://peoplepowergranny.blogspot.com 

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