Agriculture and Environment: Corn (Maize)

Introduction

Given what is already known about reducing the environmental impacts of corn production, it should be possible for conservation strategies to reduce production impacts significantly as well as to increase long-term profits.

However, the strategies will have to be site-specific and tailored to different types of production.

What will work with capital-intensive, market-oriented producers will be quite different than what will work most effectively with subsistence producers and small farmers who sell surpluses into local markets. Since both types of producers can have significant impact and since both types of production could be improved, it would be wise to determine which type of production is most common in a biodiverse area before proceeding.

Understanding better management practices (BMPs) for corn cultivation should be the cornerstone of any strategy to reduce the impacts of production. Research on BMPs should identify not only the practices and their social and environmental impacts but also their financial implications. For example, integrated pest management generally improves profits while reducing pesticide applications.

Many if not most BMPs are being identified, adopted, and promoted primarily to solve a problem for produces or due to market-based incentives to lower producer costs. Reduced environmental impacts are added benefits. For example, the overall reductions in erosion in the United States were not accomplished by growing less or other crops. Rather, they came about through investments in a variety of BMPs that include a wide range of conservation measures (Runge and Stuart 1998).

For many producers, however, the critical constraint to the adoption of BMPs may well be that many farm implement are expensive and require up-front investments. Well-capitalized producers must first amortize their existing investments. By contrast, undercapitalized producers may neither be able to adopt new, better machinery or abandon older, obsolete technology for which they have not yet paid.

BMPs could also provide guidance for both what is important to measure and how one might measure nonpoint-source pollution, nutrient balances, ground and surface water contamination, as well as other specific measures such as nitrogen use and runoff. In addition, they could be the basis for identifying targets and policies aimed at changing incentives as well as producer practices. All too often, policies are changed after a problem has been discovered rather than implemented earlier in the process in order to prevent problems.

Ideally, BMPs could be the basis for a certification program. However, they would have to be evaluated with measurable targets and indicators to monitor progress in achieving them. Such practices and the measurable impacts could serve both as the target and the yardstick by which to develop and measure policies.

Government can encourage the adoption of BMPs whether the goal is to change the use of specific chemicals or to change land use patterns. The CRP program is a case in point. Taking some of the most highly erodible land in the United States out of production had 2 impacts: soil erosion was reduced immediately, and biodiversity increased almost immediately.

Government does not need to but land to ensure conservation. It s far cheaper to buy conservation easements. For example, a program in the state of Minnesota has purchased permanent conservation easements along threatened watersheds to protect critical wetland habitat (Larson et al. 1988).

Finally, it is conceivable that global markets could push for the development of perennial corn varieties that could produce multiple corn crops in tropical areas while at the same time reducing their overall environmental impacts. Given that there would be less private sector interest in such varieties, development would need to be supported by governments. Such developments would certainly not only reduce the overall impacts of corn production but also change what are presently understood to be the better practices.