April, 13 2011, 05:37pm EDT
Soil Erosion in Corn Belt Is Much Worse Than Official Estimates
Fencerow-to-fencerow cultivation erases gains in soil conservation
AMES, Iowa
Data based on tracking erosion after every storm over a period of years shows that Iowa farms are losing precious topsoil up to 12 times faster than government estimates, a disturbing discovery detailed in a new report by the Environmental Working Group. The report, titled Losing Ground, is based on research by scientists at Iowa State University whose methods provide an unprecedented degree of precision in monitoring soil erosion.
Moreover, aerial surveys by EWG and interviews with experts across the Corn Belt indicate that soil erosion and polluted runoff are likely far worse than even the disturbing ISU numbers suggest. The aerial photography showed that many Corn Belt fields are scarred by gullies that funnel soil and toxic farm chemicals into streams damage that is not accounted for in official or even ISU's estimates of soil erosion and runoff.
"What is happening on Iowa farm fields is shocking but goes largely unnoticed," said Craig Cox, who manages EWG's agriculture programs from its Ames, Iowa office. Cox is the lead author of Losing Ground.
"We've grown complacent thinking we have the soil erosion problem under control, but instead it looks as if we are losing ground in our decades-old fight against this most fundamental and damaging problem in agriculture," Cox said.
Go here for the full Losing Ground Report
Go here for a short video produced by Atlas Films showing EWG's aerial footage.
Go here for an analysis on the policy and political implications of Losing Ground
In April 2010, the US Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service estimated that the rate of soil erosion on agricultural land averaged only 5.2 tons per acre per year in Iowa and 3.9 tons per acre per year across the Corn Belt. On the surface, these data are reassuring, because they suggest erosion is less than the so-called "sustainable rate." But the more precise look provided through the ISU project's data shows that these statewide or regional estimates are masking the serious damage that occurs when larger storms hit.
"When a storm hits vulnerable or poorly protected soil, fields lose more soil in a single day than is supposed to sustainable for the whole year, or even decades," said Cox. "If we had the same kind of information for other intensive corn-growing states, the picture would be the same or worse. Alarm bells should be going off across the Corn Belt."
Farmers are planting fencerow-to-fencerow in response to high crop prices that are likely here to stay. Misguided mandates for corn ethanol production add fuel to the fire, and flawed government farm and insurance subsidies clear the way for all-out production with little regard for what happens to the soil, water and wildlife habitat.
Chronically underfunded and voluntary agricultural conservation programs cannot compete with the pressure these forces are putting on America's soil and water. Between 1997 and 2009, the government paid Corn Belt farmers $51.2 billion in subsidies to spur production, but just $7.0 billion to implement conservation practices. The $18.9 billion spent to subsidize expansion of the corn ethanol industry rubs salt in the wound.
USDA should resume full and aggressive enforcement of provisions in the 1985 farm bill that require farmers who accept subsidies to apply soil conservation measures on the most vulnerable cropland. Official reports and anecdotal evidence indicate that enforcement has waned, putting at risk the gains made in soil conservation between 1985 and 1995.
In addition, EWG believes Congress must act to strengthen the conservation compliance provisions when it reauthorizes the farm bill in 2012. Specifically, Congress should:
- Require all producers participating in existing or new crop and revenue insurance programs to meet conservation compliance standards.
- Reopen and revise all the legacy soil conservation compliance plans approved and applied before July 3, 1996, requiring that they reduce erosion to a truly "sustainable" level and prevent ephemeral gully erosion on highly erodible cropland.
- Require vegetative buffer zones at least 35 feet wide between row crops and all lakes, rivers and smaller streams.
- Adequately fund USDA's technical staff so it can plan and implement the required conservation practices and conduct annual inspections.
"This isn't rocket science," said Cox. "Simple, common-sense conservation practices that some farmers have used for years can bring soil erosion under control and protect our streams, lakes and rivers. It seems only fair to ask landowners to take these simple steps in return for the generous public support they receive each year."
Go here for the full Losing Ground Report
Go here for a short video produced by Atlas Films showing EWG's aerial footage.
Go here for an analysis on the policy and political implications of Losing Ground
The Environmental Working Group is a community 30 million strong, working to protect our environmental health by changing industry standards.
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'Damning' Independent Probe Finds Israel Has Yet to Provide Evidence Against UNRWA
The U.S. House on Saturday passed a bill including a prohibition on funding the agency, due to Israel's unsubstantiated claims that UNRWA employees have terrorism links.
Apr 22, 2024
Countries that have continued to suspend their funding of the United Nations' top relief agency in the occupied Palestinian territories were left with "no room" to justify their decision, said critics on Monday as an independent investigation into Israel's allegations against the organization revealed Israeli officials have ignored requests to provide evidence to support their claims.
Catherine Colonna, the former foreign minister of France, released her findings in a probe regarding Israel's claims that a significant number of employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were members of terrorist groups.
Nearly three months after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres commissioned the report, Colonna said Israel "has yet to provide supporting evidence" of its allegation that "a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations."
Colonna's findings were bolstered by an investigation led by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights, which separately sought evidence from Israel.
"Israeli authorities have to date not provided any supporting evidence nor responded to letters from UNRWA in March, and again in April, requesting the names and supporting evidence that would enable UNRWA to open an investigation," said the Nordic groups.
The reports come nearly three months after Israel made its initial allegation that 12 UNRWA employees took part in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, a claim that prompted the United States—the largest international funder of the agency, which subsists mainly on donations—to swiftly halt its funding. Israel also claimed that as many as 12% of UNRWA's employees were members of terrorist organizations.
As Common Dreamsreported at the time, Israel's announcement came hours after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a preliminary ruling that found Israel was "plausibly" committing genocide in Gaza by relentlessly striking the enclave and blocking almost all humanitarian aid to its 2.3 million people.
The Biden administration has dismissed the ICJ's finding.
The United States' suspension of UNRWA funding set off a domino effect, leading at least 15 countries to freeze their contributions, even though the U.N. had reported a month earlier that Israel's air, land, and sea blockade on Gaza was pushing hundreds of thousands of civilians into starvation.
Countries including Sweden, Japan, France, and Australia have reinstated their funding of the agency in recent weeks, citing concerns about the intensifying humanitarian crisis in Gaza—where more than two dozen children have died of starvation so far—and Israel's lack of evidence.
Lawmakers in the U.S., which provides nearly $344 million to UNRWA annually, included a prohibition on funding for the agency in its foreign aid bill that passed in the House of Representatives on Saturday, while the United Kingdom has said it would make a decision about resuming funding after the Colonna report was released.
"The report leaves no room for Britain to justify the continued suspension of funds," said the independent news group Declassified U.K.
Colonna's report, which was accepted by Guterres Monday, noted that UNRWA is more rigorous than other U.N. agencies in its internal oversight of its staff and their neutrality.
"The review revealed that UNRWA has established a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principles, with emphasis on the principle of neutrality, and that it possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar U.N. or NGO entities," reads the report.
Guterres called on donor countries to "fully cooperate in the implementation of the recommendations" of the report.
"Moving forward, the secretary-general appeals to all stakeholders to actively support UNRWA, as it is a lifeline for Palestine refugees in the region," said the U.N. chief's office in a statement.
Despite the U.K.'s claim that it would review Colonna's report to determine whether to resume funding, The Guardianreported the government was "unlikely" to make a prompt decision based on the findings, as Conservative lawmakers have urged Foreign Secretary David Cameron against doing so.
The continued suspension of donations, said U.K.-based researcher and activist Gary Spedding, "is unjustifiable and at total odds with the rest of our allies (except the USA) who resumed funding."
"Our government has so much to answer for regarding the decision to pause funding without any evidence whatsoever, then sustain that decision even while other allies resumed and Palestinians in Gaza starved and died from sickness and disease, and even now we still haven't resumed," said Spedding. "We must have accountability and answers. Why did the government pause funding to begin with despite no evidence being presented by Israel? Why have we joined in on damaging UNRWA as part of Israel's plan to dismantle it? Why are Palestinian lives and rights worth so little?"
Colonna's report, said Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft executive vice president Trita Parsi, is "not only damning for Israel."
"It is also damning for all the Western countries," he said, "that cut funding for UNRWA on mere (now debunked) accusations by Israel."
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Led by US, Global Military Spending Surged to Record $2.4 Trillion Last Year
"Can we get some healthcare please, or maybe feed some of the 40 million+ Americans who can't get enough food?" asked the watchdog group Public Citizen.
Apr 22, 2024
New research published Monday shows that global military spending increased in 2023 for the ninth consecutive year, surging to $2.4 trillion as Russia's assault on Ukraine and Israel's war on the Gaza Strip helped push war-related outlays to an all-time high.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recorded military spending increases in every geographical region it examined last year, from Europe to Oceania to the Middle East. Last year's global increase of 6.8% was the largest since 2009, SIPRI said.
The United States was by far the largest military spender at $916 billion in 2023, up 2.3% compared to the previous year. The next biggest spender was China, which poured an estimated $296 billion into its military last year—three times less than the U.S.
"Can we get some healthcare please, or maybe feed some of the 40 million+ Americans who can't get enough food?" asked the watchdog group Public Citizen in response to SIPRI's report, which found that the U.S. accounted for 37% of the world's total military spending last year.
A separate analysis of U.S. military spending in 2023 found that 62% of the country's federal discretionary budget went to militarized programs, leaving less than half of the budget for healthcare, housing, nutrition assistance, education, and other domestic priorities.
Together, SIPRI found, the top five biggest military spenders last year—the U.S., China, Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia—accounted for 61% of global military outlays.
"The unprecedented rise in military spending is a direct response to the global deterioration in peace and security," Nan Tian, senior researcher with SIPRI's Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program, said in a statement. "States are prioritizing military strength but they risk an action-reaction spiral in the increasingly volatile geopolitical and security landscape."
In the Middle East, military spending jumped by 9% last year—the highest annual growth rate in the past decade. Israel, which relies heavily on weapons imports from the U.S., spent 24% more on its military last year than in 2022, according to SIPRI, an increase fueled by the country's devastating assault on Gaza.
SIPRI found that NATO's 31 member countries dumped a combined $1.3 trillion into military expenditures in 2023, accounting for 55% of the global total.
U.S. military spending, which is poised to continue surging in the coming years, made up 68% of NATO's 2023 total.
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IDF Kills 18 Children in Rafah Hours After US House Approves Billions in Military Aid
"Members of Congress should understand that approving more military aid could subject them to personal liability for aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide in Gaza."
Apr 22, 2024
Hours after the U.S. House approved legislation that would send billions of dollars in additional military aid to Israel, the country's forces killed nearly two dozen people in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than half of the enclave's population is sheltering.
Gaza health officials said Sunday that the weekend strikes on Rafah—a former "safe zone" that Israel has been threatening to invade for weeks—killed 22 people, including 18 children. The Associated Pressreported that the first of the Israeli strikes "killed a man, his wife, and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies."
"The woman was pregnant and the doctors saved the baby, the hospital said," AP added. "The second strike killed 17 children and two women from an extended family."
Israeli forces have killed more than 14,000 children in Gaza since October, but the Biden administration and American lawmakers have refused to back growing international calls to cut off the supply of weaponry and other military equipment even as U.S. voters express support for an arms embargo.
The measure the House approved on Saturday includes $26 billion in funding for Israel, much of which is military assistance.
"Just a day after the House voted to send $14 billion in unconditional military funding to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's campaign of death and destruction, he bombed the safe zone of Rafah AGAIN, killing 22 Palestinians, of which 18 were CHILDREN!" U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), one of the 58 House lawmakers who voted against the legislation, wrote on social media late Sunday.
"History books will write about today and the past seven months, and how our nation's leaders lacked the courage and moral clarity to stand up to a tyrant," she added. "Shameful."
The military aid package for Israel now heads to the U.S. Senate, which is set to consider the bill early this week. U.S. President Joe Biden, who has continued to greenlight arms sales to Israel amid clear evidence of war crimes, is expected to sign the measure if it reaches his desk.
"Rather than sending more weapons to Israel, Congress should declare an immediate arms embargo on Israel."
U.S. law prohibits "arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law," according to a White House memo issued in February. The U.S. State Department has said repeatedly that it has not found Israel to be in violation of international law, a position that runs directly counter to the findings of leading humanitarian organizations and United Nations experts.
The investigative outlet ProPublicareported last week that a "special State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses" prior to the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
"But Blinken has failed to act on the proposal in the face of growing international criticism of the Israeli military's conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials," ProPublica noted.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said in a statement Sunday that senators "should reject sending additional weapons to Israel not only because our laws prohibit military aid to abusive regimes, but because it's extremely damaging to our national interests."
DAWN's advocacy director, Raed Jarrar, added that "at a time when Israel is bracing for International Criminal Court arrest warrants against its leaders, members of Congress should understand that approving more military aid could subject them to personal liability for aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide in Gaza."
"Rather than sending more weapons to Israel," said Jarrar, "Congress should declare an immediate arms embargo on Israel."
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