The state pollution control agency in Minnesota spent nearly $125 million – half of its budget – to clean lakes and waterways contaminated by farming, says the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Agriculture plays an “increasingly prominent role as a source of water pollution,” and farm subsidies often are “linked to the intensive row-crop agriculture often implicated in rural water contamination.”
Far larger than that is the effect of global market forces. “We can’t spend our way out of this,” said the pollution control agency’s commissioner. “We don’t have an effective strategy to limit pollution. Government receipts are a tiny part of total receipts to Minnesota farmers but they still are “a huge driver to what’s happening on the landscape,” says a conservation official. From 2008-12, when commodity prices zoomed, cropland in Minnesota expanded by 300 square miles, “carved out of native grasslands, wetlands and forests,” says the Star-Tribune.
Critics said the cushion of federally subsidized crop insurance lessened the danger to farmers of expanding into marginal land. “The clash between environmental goals and farm subsidies is not lost on officials at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture,” says the newspaper. It quoted assistant agriculture commissioner Matt Wohlman as saying, “We want a stable, reliable, affordable food supply – with clean water. That’s been a constant agriculture policy rub for a long time.”