Guest column: Balance all three: Food, biofuels, conservation

Des Moines Register
Guest Column by Matt Liebman is the Henry A. Wallace Endowed Chair for Sustainable Agriculture and a professor of agronomy at Iowa State University. • May 23, 2008

The controversy erupting over food and biofuel production generally overlooks the critical need to conserve and protect soil, water and wildlife. When conservation is considered, the implicit message is often this: In a hungry world, or in a fuel-deficient world, we simply can't afford the luxury of forgoing crop production by idling land for conservation purposes.But can we really afford to abandon conservation? Human history is marked by numerous examples of the consequences of ignoring conservation and pushing crop production deep into fragile lands: Soil erodes, water and air fill with sediment and dust, wildlife disappears, productivity declines and farms fail.

How then can we satisfy the increasing and apparently conflicting demands for food, renewable energy and environmental quality? The answer requires targeted conservation practices and the use of emerging technologies to produce fuels and industrial chemicals from nonfood plants that also provide conservation benefits.

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