What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Confession: I didn’t watch any speeches at the Iowa Agriculture Summit. I followed some through many people’s tweets and caught up on the rest through Pat Rynard’s liveblog at Iowa Starting Line. As expected, given the background of moderator and organizer Bruce Rastetter, the event was no non-partisan issue forum. The audience for this “informercial for agribusiness” was overwhelmingly Republican, and some Democrats who wanted to attend were turned away at the door.

I enjoyed one person’s comment on the “twilight zone trifecta”: watching a parade of Republicans profess their love for government mandates (the Renewable Fuels Standard), subsidies, and science. The same person observed that the summit was “a textbook course on cognitive dissonance as hatred for @EPA clashes w/ begging them for #RFS mandates.” Speaking of cognitive dissonance, how about former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckbee (an ordained Christian minister) criticizing immigrants who come to this country for free “goodies” and “a bowl of food.”

Former Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge was the only Democrat to accept Rastetter’s invitation to speak at the event. Rynard saw that as a “missed opportunity” for other Democrats, but I believe there is little upside to validating Rastetter as some kind of neutral authority or referee. He isn’t, and he never will be. Judge was reportedly well-received, probably because she’s not running for any political office again.

Some important problems facing Iowa farmers didn’t come up much, if at all, in Rastetter’s Q&A format. Soil erosion is not only a major factor in water pollution but also a costly trend for the agricultural sector. Rick Cruse of Iowa State University has researched the economic costs of soil loss and the associated impact on crop yields. Iowans who wanted to learn about those issues were better off attending a different event in Des Moines on March 7: the Raccoon River Watershed Association’s ninth annual Iowa Water Quality conference. Excerpts from Ben Rodgers’ report for the Des Moines Register are after the jump.

Final related note: on Friday, Sena Christian profiled four women farmers who are “stepping up to sustain the land.” One of them is LaVon Griffieon of Ankeny, a superstar whom I’m proud to call a friend. Click through to read Christian’s post at Civil Eats.

From Ben Rodgers’ story for the Sunday Des Moines Register: “Panel covers issue of nutrient loss in Iowa soil.”

One question that drove discussion amongst the panel was the amount of farmer participation in the Conservation Reserve Program, a federal program where farmers convert farmland to natural prairie in return for government subsidies.

Raccoon River Watershed Association member Steve Witmer asked the panel whether recent reductions in farm income will spur more farmers to participate in the CRP. […]

The INHF’s [Duane] Sand added that when CRP was first implemented, the government allowed 35 million to 40 million acres of farmland to be converted to CRP, where the most recent farm bill has cut it to 24 million acres. […]

In a previous interview with the Register, Iowa State biosystems engineer Matt Helmer said that if farmers converted 10 percent of their crop field into prairie, they could reduce 95 percent of the soil and sediment leaving fields and entering waterways.

With prairie strips farmers also saw their phosphorus loss decrease by 90 percent, and nitrogen loss by 85 percent.

Another question from the gallery addressed what mandates policymakers can be setting to help prevent nutrient loss and help keep waterways cleaner.

The answer from numerous panelists was reducing the amount of nitrogen farmers introduce to their fields.

Caligiuri, of the National Agriculture Committee, pointed to a Farm Bureau study done in Germany that showed German farmers are only allowed to input 45 pounds of nitrogen into their fields if they receive government subsidies. In Iowa, the standard of nitrogen is 150 pounds statewide, which all farmers on the panel said would suffice in their fields.