Fw: New video: Where your food comes from

[Guest guest]

Subject: New video: Where your food comes fromTo: penas7ar@...Date: Wednesday, April 13, 2011, 8:53 PM

Dear Friend,

When you think of America's farmland, you probably picture waving fields of wheat and lush green stands of corn. But the reality is often quite different.

A just-released EWG study called Losing Ground shows that our nation's broken farm policy is harming the productive soils that are the foundation of healthy and sustainable food production.

Losing Ground, based on innovative new research by scientists at Iowa State University -- and featured in The New York Times -- shows what industrial-scale crop production is doing to the land we depend on for our food. As part of this eye-opening report, EWG filmed Iowa farmland losing soil after recent rainstorms and created a short video (with Atlas Films) that highlights how federal farm subsidies and ethanol mandates are threatening healthy and sustainable food production.

If you are concerned about the food that you and your family eat and the water you drink, this is a video that you cannot miss.

Click here to watch this startling new video from the nation's heartland -- and read Losing Ground.

But what does this mean for us and, more importantly, our food and water?

Sadly, across wide swaths of Iowa and other Corn Belt states, the rich, dark soil that made the region the nation's breadbasket is being swept away at rates many times higher than official estimates. This runoff carries with it a potent cargo of fertilizers, pesticides and manure that flows into local creeks and streams and eventually the water many people drink.

Misguided farm subsidies reward the largest and wealthiest growers of commodity crops -- corn, wheat, rice, cotton and soy –- and encourage all-out production with little regard for the health of our soil and water. Chronically underfunded programs that help farmers conserve soil and protect water can't stand up against the pressure to plant fencerow-to-fencerow.

The good news is that simple and traditional conservation practices work. As much as 97 percent of soil loss is preventable by simple measures like planting strips of grass or trees on the edge of crop fields, streams or along the contours of hills.

Learn more about erosion's startling impact at Losing Ground and watch our eye-opening new video.

Maintaining healthy soil is crucial to farming healthy food. Thank you for watching.

Sincerely,Ken CookPresident, Environmental Working Group

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