The nitrates in the water are bad but we don’t even fully understand the damage some of these chemicals are doing to our water quality.
When you plant corn 3’ from the water there’s going to be chemicals sprayed in that water. Anyone that says otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
While I haven't hunted this way in quite a few years now, I used to make a point of doing 1 or 2 float trips down a small or mid-sized river each fall. We were mainly interested in bagging ducks, geese, pheasants, etc, not deer, although we commonly saw deer and turkey, and plenty of other things on those trips. But, back to the topic here...two things that I saw, somewhat frequently, that concerned me regarding water quality even back then...
1. Crops planted so close to the river bank that literally there were roots of the corn plants growing horizontally out of the vertical dirt high banks and into space. It was apparent that the crop had had been planted in the Spring a few months earlier so close to the edge of the river that the bank sloughed off/eroded over the Summer to where the corn plant roots were now dangling in midair. What? The "buffer strip" employed by those farmers appeared to be measured in inches, not feed or yards!
2, Similarly, it was not uncommon to see a drain tile sticking out of those vertical, dirt banks running directly into the river. One time in particular, the tile was still running in what would be considered a drought...or at least very dry conditions.
My opinion, which I sense would make many farmers howl, is that why are we subsidizing, or even directly paying, them to not pollute our water? Why aren't they obligated to "keep" their pollutants on their own land? If I was running something harmful into the storm drain in front of my house, I should expect to be made to manage that runoff and/or pay the penalty for the damage it causes downstream, right?
Make it make sense. But how about we flip the script and hold farmers accountable for their runoff and over spray, etc, Yes, their costs will go up and we should consequently expect to pay a little more for the grains, produce, etc, that they supply, but it would be far less expensive IMO to "solve" the problem at the source and obligate the producer to manage his own self.
