ABSTRACT
Now, even more than in the past, American agricultural policy must balance national interests in agricultural production with fundamental interests in environmental health. Rapidly emerging opportunities for biofuels production and pressing demands by America's global trading partners, along with increasing societal attention to both the taxpayer costs and environmental effects of American agricultural policy, create momentum for policy change. In this book, integrated assessments at two scales, the Mississippi River Basin (MRB; Chapter 15) and second-order Iowa agricultural watersheds within the MRB (Chapter 14), suggest that improved policies could alleviate hypoxia of the Gulf of Mexico, as well as a wide range of environmental and societal impacts of agriculture in the Corn Belt. In addition, federal agricultural support that aims to achieve environmental benefits complements world trade objectives (Chapter 3). In this chapter, we discuss how federal agricultural policy could respond to these demands and opportunities for change.
