Three-quarters of all the water we use and 56 percent of our drinking water comes from lakes and rivers. Each year, 55 million Americans go fishing—that’s one out of six of us. And more than 20 million folks across the nation canoe or kayak in our lakes, rivers or estuaries.

But today, more than half of our waterways remain polluted. This is more than 50 years after Congress passed the Clean Water Act with a goal of making all of our waters swimmable and fishable again. The largest source of that pollution is water running off farms carrying fertilizer, pesticides, soil and manure. The pesticides and nitrates that run off into our waterways can cause numerous health problems.

Fortunately, there are solutions.

This year, Congress returns to its twice-per-decade consideration of the Farm Bill. Because of the sweeping scope of this legislation, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to restore and protect rivers and lakes that all of us depend on and enjoy. The League’s priorities for Congress in 2023 include a major increase in funds for federal programs that invest in better conservation systems on farmland that reduce polluted runoff into nearby streams.

We know the roots of the problem and solutions

Fact is, we know exactly what drives runoff—and how to substantially reduce it. Water runs off the land following rain or snowmelt when most of that water cannot be absorbed into the ground. And that water carries much of what’s in its path. All of us have seen this in our back yards and communities.

Now, scale this up by hundreds of millions of acres and you can begin to appreciate the magnitude of the problem in agriculture. Tens of millions of acres of fields lack adequate water absorbance and are a major source of soil erosion. The absence of cover crops on the vast majority of fields today exacerbates erosion.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to restore and protect rivers and lakes that all of us depend on and enjoy.

Your community may encourage dog owners to clean up after their pets because this waste pollutes local waters. A single farm with thousands of cows and pigs or millions of chickens produces exponentially more manure. This is applied over and over to the land as fertilizer. Then, after a heavy rain, some of it washes into the nearest water body, carrying E. coli, bacteria and excess nitrogen pollution with it.

Seeking to solve these problems, the League is calling on Congress to put soil health at the center of this next Farm Bill. Healthy soils absorb water like a sponge, eliminating or sharply reducing runoff that carries soil, chemicals and often manure into nearby streams and other waters.

Polluted runoff from their farms shrinks as farmers rebuild the health of their soil. How? By eliminating or reducing harmful tillage, planting cover crops between cash crops, diversifying their crop rotation and reducing and then eliminating chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Also, as livestock producers move more of their cattle, sheep and other livestock out of giant barns and feedlots and back out onto grassland, the manure is less concentrated. With rotational grazing systems that move the animals every day or so, mimicking mother nature, their grasslands grow stronger, soil health improves and runoff from the land drops dramatically.

A greater investment is essential

These practices work best when used together. They often require an investment in knowledge, equipment and supplies and they can take time to deliver results.

USDA conservation programs offer the largest single source of funds to help farmers and ranchers understand and adopt these critically important conservation programs. Yet only one-third of applicants seeking help putting conservation on the ground through the agency’s working lands programs receive it; the rest are turned away for lack of funding.

Factories or sewage treatment plants can be required to reduce pollution. But reducing equally harmful runoff of manure, pesticides and other chemicals from farms depends on voluntary conservation incentives, funded by taxpayers, and other indirect methods.

The League now asks Congress to boost funding for these critically important conservation programs so many more farmers can put conservation practices on millions more acres of land. The League asks for other changes that would focus dollars on practices that deliver the most conservation benefits and would spread the funds among more farmers.

The League is pressing for these changes because they will ultimately benefit the American people—and because voluntary conservation is our primary option to address this issue on farms. When Congress passed the Clean Water Act, it focused on reducing, treating and regulating pollution discharged from a pipe—deciding not to also regulate water pollution running off the land. Moreover, it also exempted nearly all common farming and ranching activities from provisions in the Act designed to protect wetlands from being filled or drained without a permit.

Factories or sewage treatment plants can be required to reduce pollution. But reducing equally harmful runoff of manure, pesticides and other chemicals from farms depends on voluntary conservation incentives, funded by taxpayers, and other indirect methods.

USDA conservation programs will never be the “silver bullet” that will solve all our water quality problems. These programs only reach the farmers and ranchers who are willing to change how they farm to better protect our natural resources. Even then, the chronic shortage of funds in these programs leaves out many farmers and ranchers who want to participate.

The League’s agenda for the 2023 Farm Bill would substantially increase the impact of USDA conservation programs by putting soil health at the center of our agriculture policy and boosting funding for those programs.

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Top photo: Practices that enhance soil health reduce polluted runoff and improve water quality. Credit: David Mark, Pixabay.