This afternoon, a quoted tweet from Outdoor News editor Rob Drieslein crossed our feed:
If anyone has a link to this speech, I'd like to see this for myself. https://t.co/5iT65lPd7P
— Rob Drieslein (@ODN_Editor) January 14, 2019
As Trump spoke to the American Farm Bureau Federation Convention today in New Orleans, we assumed that's where the remarks to "a bunch of farmers" were made.
Sure enough, we found a CBS Youtube in which the statement is included in a discussion of the Obama-era Water of the United States (WOTUS) rule:
The statement drew the attention of Alan Rappeport of the New York Times, as well as Drieslein and Bluestem. Rappeport concluded his report from the convention, Trump Defends Trade Policies to Farmers Feeling the Pinch, with the President's words:
Even though Mr. Trump professed his love for farmers, his urban roots were at times hard to conceal. The president acknowledged his ignorance about wheat policy when explaining that Canada would soon grade American wheat the same way it grades its own.
“Which to me doesn’t mean much,” he said, “but to farmers it means a lot.”
At another point, Mr. Trump celebrated his efforts to ease the regulatory burden that farmers face, noting that he rolled back a rule that penalized farmers for having prairie potholes on their land.
“Do you all know what prairie potholes are?” he asked a laughing audience. “I don’t, but it sounds bad.”
The Prairie Pothole Region: America's Wild Duck Factory
Most people who grew up enjoying the Minnesota value of sitting in a duck blind with a swamp-water stinky bird dog (mine was named Michael) probably have a pretty good working understanding of what prairie potholes are. Bluestem's editor's grandfather Jens Hugh Sorensen was a Danish immigrant field tiler, so we also learned about ag drainage as a child.
As he aged, the grandfather regretted the potholes and small lakes he drained--and for good reason.
In What Are Prairie Potholes?, the American Rivers website notes:
Prairie Potholes Help Keep Your Water Clean
Prairie potholes are depressional wetlands (primarily freshwater marshes) found most often in the Upper Midwest, especially North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
Sometimes called the “duck factory” of the Midwest, the prairie pothole region supports more than 50 percent of our nation’s migratory waterfowl. Most prairie potholes themselves are less than an acre in size, little more than depressions in the landscape that fill up with snowmelt and rainfall. Some of these depressional wetlands are present all year long, while others form only after rainfall. Threatened by increased agricultural protection and development, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that today only 40 or 50 percent of the original number of prairie potholes that covered the region remain.
Why Are Prairie Potholes Important
Prairie potholes aren’t just important for ducks. Prairie potholes recharge groundwater supplies, slowly allowing water to infiltrate into the earth over time. They also help to slow and store floodwaters, reducing the impacts of downstream flooding. In fact, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that each acre of these small wetlands reduces flood damage to roads by $6.11 every year and provides $29.23 worth of flood protection to agricultural lands. ...
There's more at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service here and the EPA here, though we can't tell how up-to-date the information is because of the federal government shutdown.
Ducks Unlimited's website calls the Prairie Pothole Region Level I Ducks Unlimited conservation priority area, the most important and threatened waterfowl habitat in North America.
If this caption sounds bad, it is:
The Prairie Pothole Region is the core of what was once the largest expanse of grassland in the world, the Great Plains of North America. Its name comes from a geological phenomenon that left its mark beginning 10,000 years ago. When the glaciers from the last ice age receded, they left behind millions of shallow depressions that are now wetlands, known as prairie potholes. The potholes are rich in plant and aquatic life, and support globally significant populations of breeding waterfowl. Agricultural development caused considerable wetland drainage in the area. The Great Plains and Prairie Pothole Region are No. 1 on the 25 most important and threatened waterfowl habitats on the continent.
Importance to waterfowl
- Millions of ducks and geese pass through the PPR each spring, nesting in the grasslands.
- Nest success and hen mortality during breeding are the most important factors responsible for change in mid-continent mallard populations.
- The PPR provides important breeding habitat for pintails, mallards, gadwall, blue-winged teal, shovelers, canvasbacks and redheads.
- The PPR is also important migrations habitat for waterfowl breeding in the Boreal Forest and Arctic such as lesser scaup, wigeon, green-winged teal, Canada geese and snow geese.
The National Wildlife Federation's Prairie Potholes webpage notes these Threats and Conservation to Prairie Potholes:
Agricultural Development
The Great Plains are known as America's breadbasket. But before the farmers arrived, the Great Plains were the most extensive grassland in the world, with about 100,000 acres of prairie pothole wetlands. Today only a small fraction of the grasslands remain in small, disconnected fragments. The wetlands that remain are surrounded by agricultural lands and impacted by agricultural chemicals and excess sediments and nutrients that run off agricultural lands and into the potholes.
Conserving the remaining prairie potholes is important not only to maintain waterfowl populations, but also to improve both surface and groundwater availability for agricultural purposes, including grazing and crop irrigation.
For many years, ranchers and farmers have been given incentives through programs, such as the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) and the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), to set aside lands for conservation and to adopt new management practices that reduce their impacts on natural areas. However, in recent years, high prices have encouraged farmers to return CRP lands to agricultural use, such as growing crops for biofuels, putting the prairie potholes at increased risk.
Climate Change
Left unaddressed, climate change may dramatically reduce the suitability of prairie potholes for waterfowl. As open water and soil moisture decrease with rising temperatures and more severe droughts, many prairie potholes are expected to dry up more frequently or sooner in the spring, thereby eliminating or reducing their suitability for breeding waterfowl. Drought conditions brought on by climate change could dry up as much as 90 percent of the region's remaining wetlands, leading to a decline in breeding waterfowl in the region, and declines in other wetlands species as well.
Compounding the impact of climate change is the fact that the prairie pothole region has already much of its original wetlands, mostly to agriculture, and the losses continue. Thus, conserving the remaining prairie potholes is all the more important to maintain waterfowl populations, but also to maintain both surface and groundwater availability for agricultural purposes, including grazing and crop irrigation.
Minimizing impacts of climate change will require programs to secure conservation easements and discourage further draining or plowing of the remaining pothole wetlands. This is important to ensure that during times of severe droughts from climate change, a sufficient number of potholes with water are left to sustain minimal waterfowl populations.
Further protection from climate change can be achieved by undertaking efforts to restore degraded, drained, and destroyed prairie potholes across a broad expanse of this historic region. Studies have shown that the most suitable areas for waterfowl production vary from year to year within the prairie pothole region due to local climatic conditions.
Thus, conserving and restoring wetlands across a broad range is necessary so that as the region becomes dryer overall due to climate change, there will still always be some areas for waterfowl to breed.
Sources
Prairie Pothole Joint Venture
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Wetlands of the Prairie Pothole Region: Invertebrate Species Composition, Ecology, and Management, United States Geological Survey
Even before the WOTUS rule, conserving prairie potholes was a source of friction between agribusiness and outdoor enthusiasts, as the 1989 Washington Post article A Farm Belt Fight Over Protected "Potholes" attests; the protection came from "Swampbuster" language in the Farm Bill. In an undated article, the Isaak Walton League noted NRCS Allowed Prairie Pothole Drainage in North Dakota.
E & E News reported in 2015 Weather, farm bill programs turn North Dakotans against Obama rule.
Some context for the Trump shout-out
Forum News Service reporter Jenny Schlecht wrote Monday in Monango, N.D., farmer gets a shout out from President Trump:
About a month ago, Val Wagner submitted some comments regarding trade, tariffs and the farm bill for the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 100th anniversary convention. Her comments centered on how the fines, fees and permits that come with overregulation don’t just affect a farm for today but also matter for its future profitability.
Wagner got a call on Friday, Jan. 11, from the White House and learned she may have the opportunity to meet President Donald Trump and that he might base part of his speech at the convention on what she had to say.
On Monday, Jan. 14, “I was able to go backstage and meet with him and shake his hand,” Wagner said.
A bigger shock came during the speech itself. Trump was speaking about regulatory reform and the Waters of the U.S. rule.
“In the audience today is Val Wagner from Monango, N.D. Val ... (the crowd cheered and Trump stopped and laughed). It’s a good place. You have a great new senator, by the way. … Val and her husband would love to expand their farm for their four boys, but under the Waters of the United States rule they would have had to pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines because of the prairie potholes on their land. …”
Wagner, voice still shaking nearly half an hour after the president’s speech, said she was “shell shocked.” What she found to be the most shocking was that Trump mentioned her tiny, North Dakota town, which is about 146 miles southwest of Fargo.
“The president actually even said Monango, N.D.,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s ever happened in the history of the world.”
Now, the casual reader might conclude from that copy that Wagner is some naif pulled from the snow fields near Monango,-- just a couple of counties west of the North Dakota part of our beloved Lake Traverse Reservation--but that's certainly not the case. Wagner is in fact a seasoned ag communicator. A 2018 event flier for Women in Agriculture event on the North Dakota State University extension site notes: "Val coordinates Common Ground North Dakota, volunteers for several local, state and national organizations . . ."
The CommonGround website describes the organization:
At CommonGround, we are a group of farmers having conversations about the food we grow and how we produce it. We share our personal experiences, as well as science and research, to help consumers like you sort through the myths and misinformation surrounding food and farming.
CommonGround was developed by farmers through two of our national checkoffs, the United Soybean Board (USB) and the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA). We welcome you to join the conversation – and to enjoy your food without fear.
Check it out and form your own opinion. The North Dakota page is here.
On her LinkedIn page, Wagner notes that she's a freelance contributor:
What started as a small blog, turned into several freelance opportunities, as well as a pretty large blog following. I write about whatever is in my head...which can be frightening at times. Mostly dealing with agriculture, family and how your food gets to your plate.
She's posted articles at HuffPost and Say Anything. She's also a cancer survivor who is concerned about health care coverage for farm families. In 2012, the Grand Forks Herald reported that the Wagners lived with other health issues in DELICATE DIET: Ranching family adopts vegan lifestyle for son, a moving if ironic tale and in 2009, Forum Communications distributed a story about her tweeting in A cow's life goes aTwitter: North Dakota rancher uses social networking site. One can get an idea about the farm operation here at the EWG Farm Subsidy Database.
A visit to her personal blog reveals she's been wowed before by being at a convention where Trump spoke. Just over a year ago, she wrote in A new road:
While I’m typing this, I’m sitting in a room in Nashville, TN, where the events of the last 24 hours still amaze me.
I was privileged to be seated five rows back from an address by not only the US Secretary of Ag, Sonny Perdue, but also by President Donald Trump. Now, I get that not everyone agrees with his policies, but we should all admit that being able to personally witness an address by a sitting President is an honor.
And I followed that with a live interview on Fox and Friends…that’s right, national TV. Seriously.
Sometimes the events that unfold in my life just take my breath away.
The post is tagged AFBF Annual Meeting.
Image: The Prairie Pothole Region in the United States. Growing up in rural Minnesota, we learned it's not bad.
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