Seth Watkins, a #regenerative farmer in Iowa who raises livestock alongside hay and corn crops for feed, believes the crop insurance program incentivizes farmers to cultivate land as intensively as possible, including wetlands and highly erodible lands unsuited for farming. Indeed, as much as one-third of Iowan farmland that is used for corn and soybean is unprofitable, a recent study finds.
“We need to take a giant step back and ask ourselves, ‘why are we doing this?’” Watkins said. “Why are we trying to raise cops on these hills where the only profit comes from this federal crop revenue? Our grandparents wouldn’t have done it.” More broadly, in its resistance to a regulatory approach to fighting climate change, the American Farm Bureau Federation is ideologically aligned with the current administration, which actively suppresses climate change science in a number of ways.
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