The 1940's to Mid-60's on My
Family Farm
By Mark Minger
Storm Lake , Iowa
The 1940's to mid-60's on my family farm in Dubuque
County , Iowa was not a time of particularly great environmental concern on any
public level. The USDA was beginning to make strides in erosion control with
such practices as crop rotation programs, but water quality issues were not a
subject of discussion among most farmers or the general public. The few limestone
sinkholes and the more numerous depressions from old lead mines in our Fayette
and Dubuque soils were more of a nuisance to farm around than they were a concern
for potential groundwater contamination. Although numbers of hogs and dairy cows
were minute by today's confinement system standards, the hog lot and dairy barn
with their piles of manure were often dangerously close to these sinkholes and
lead mines as well as close to the spring fed, limestone-based stream that dissected
the farm. No one deliberately polluted the ground water, but unfortunately out
of economics and ignorance we used those areas, as well as eroded ravines, as
receptacles for dead animals, household garbage, oil, etc. We have a tendency
to blame farmers for a great share of our water quality problems, but even back
then, with a lack of strict regulations on garbage disposal, these same types
of areas next to farm to market roads became sources for dumping by urbanites
as well.
Thankfully the birth of environmental concerns for water
quality in the late 60's brought a level of education and public awareness that
turned us around in our bad habits and put more of the public into a watch dog
mode to help control such pollution. The sinkholes and mine shafts are still
there across the farm ground, but with increased studies in archeology, soil
surveys and geologic studies we know where most of them are and what risk they
pose to water quality. We now can properly and quite easily dispose of environmentally
harmful materials, design and construct ag-waste systems around soils or landscapes
that are limiting in nature and direct surface drainage patterns away from the
sinkholes and mine shafts. The "good old days" weren't always so
good for all aspects of our lives but our future is brighter from things learned
from those days.