Reclaiming Marshland

Check out this NY Times article on reclaiming marshland along with Mississippi River. Given the enormous decline in America's wetlands over the last 200 years, and especially over the last 50 years, any kind of project like this can only be seen as a positive. What the nation and the world really needs is a more rational use of land resources. The Midwest produces such an enormous amount of corn that they have had to come up with new and non-traditional ways to use the product since World War II. The most widespread of these byproducts, high fructose corn syrup, has helped make Americans some of the most overweight people in the world thanks to that product's ubiquity in American food.

So in addition to the obvious environmental good that reclaiming river bottom farms in the Midwest such as providing wildlife habitat and reducing pollution into the rivers, reducing the insane amount of corn produced in this nation should be lauded.