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Drainers versus sustainers: researchers debate drainage

Why tile drainage? asks Christopher Jones and Silvia Secchi, two University of Iowa professors, in a stinging Oct. 14 essay, titled Drain Brain.

Jones, a research engineer specializing in water quality and agriculture, and Secchi, a natural resource economist, ask it in reply to Iowa State University’s recent paper that “proposed a new solution to our nutrient problem: Put in more drainage tile.”

That prescription caused Jones and Secchi to respond to the tiling advocates — who they labeled “Drainers” — because in Jones and Secchi’s view, it will only add to Iowa’s enormous farm water run-off problem. What’s needed, they urge, are new and better ideas, not new and better tile. | READ MORE