�Alan Bjerga

lentils. That’s partly because legumes require higher maintenance when it comes to controlling insects and weeds, so massive acreage becomes laborintensive. Still, with corn and soy at less than half their peak prices, the economics of growing pulses is becoming more attractive. “The more demand we have, the more consistent the market becomes, the easier it is to convince farmers to grow them,” Anderson says.

With its cool and relatively dry climate, North Dakota is America’s top producer of legumes. The state, which became the No. 2 U.S. oil producer during the shale boom, has seen its fortunes fall dramatically in the energy bust, making pulses a tiny piece of good news for its struggling economy. 35%

In neighboring Montana, pulse acreage has almost tripled over the past decade, as farmers seek crops that cost less to grow and are easier on soil than the staples that carried U.S. farm profits to a record $121 billion in 2013. “Over 57 percent of our pulses went to India in 2014,” says Chris Westergard, a wheat farmer in Dagmar, Mont., who devotes about a third of his 5,000 acres to peas and lentils. “I always knew they were a big buyer, but I didn’t realize they’d become that important.”

It’s difficult to overstate how dramatic a change India’s ascendancy represents for global agriculture. China has fed a farm boom since the turn of the century, when it began relying heavily on soybean imports to feed livestock for its emerging middle class. Today, almost two-thirds of the oilseed shipped worldwide goes to China, which is also buying more corn globally.

Even though China’s import growth has kept pace with India’s, the average Chinese now eats as many calories as the global norm, so barring a U.s.-style obesity epidemic, appetites won’t expand much further. China’s population is no longer growing, either. Estimated at 1.38 billion in 2015, it will dip to 1.35 billion by 2050, the United Nations says.

A glut in world crop production has helped drive global food costs to their lowest level since 2009. It’s also making it hard for American farmers, who rely on higher-yielding seeds from Monsanto and Dupont, to find a way out of a price plunge. U.S. farm income in 2016 could fall to its lowest level since 2002. “China is cloudy,” says Pat Westhoff, an agricultural economist at the University of Missouri. “It’s hard to see much that will significantly increase profits going forward.”

On paper, India resembles the China of a couple of decades ago, with a populace that is growing and becoming more prosperous, and an inability to grow enough food domestically to feed itself. Now at 1.31 billion, India’s population is set to surpass China’s in the early 2020s, reaching 1.71 billion by midcentury. India’s agricultural needs are different from China’s, though. The Chinese eat pork from pigs reared on corn and soybeans. India has by far the most vegetarians of any country on earth: As many as 40 percent of its people avoid meat, compared with 5 percent in China and less than 2 percent in the U. S. That means U.S. farmers can’t count on a China-size bump in demand for livestock feed.

The U.S. is still a relatively small player in the pulse world, and it has competition from other nations. Russia and East Africa have seen exports increase, and Canada’s shipments reached almost $4.2 billion in 2015.

For U.S. pulses to go mainstream, Americans will have to start eating more of them. That’s been a bit of a tough sell. Among their less desirable attributes, dried legumes take a long time to cook and give a lot of people gas, says Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University. “If there is a stable export market, farmers will grow pulses, but it will take a huge education campaign for the public and for chefs to start using them here.”

Anderson, the North Dakota grower, says health-conscious Americans will eventually embrace the cheap and abundant source of protein. “Food companies are looking for more of them,” he says. “Build the right international relationships, and this could go through the roof.”

Increase in U.S. dried pea and lentil acreage from

2014 to 2015

$702m

U.S. pulse exports in 2015 Big Ag tiptoes into Africa

The biggest U.S. farm co-op navigates the commodity slump The bottom line Exports of U.S. pulse crops have more than doubled in the past decade, led by India, where legumes are a culinary staple.

through fertilizer or animal manure. Too much nitrate in drinking water can cause health problems, including a potentially fatal blood disorder in infants called blue-baby syndrome.

In March 2015 the Water Works filed a federal lawsuit against the boards of county supervisors in three upstream counties—buena Vista, Calhoun, and Sac—accusing them of polluting the water supply. The suit seeks to regulate some farm drainage and to recoup the millions the utility has spent filtering nitrate from its water.

Iowa is the nation’s second-largest producer of agricultural commodities after California. So it’s no surprise that the water utility’s lawsuit has unleashed a furious backlash from farm groups and their political supporters, all the way up to Governor Terry Branstad, who’s criticized Des Moines for declaring “war on rural Iowa.” William Stowe, the silvermaned, Harley-davidson- driving chief executive officer and general manager of the Water Works, says he’s been the target of death threats as well as television ads that blast him for wasting taxpayers’ money on a frivolous lawsuit. “We were accused of being everything but al-qaeda members by politicians in the state,” Stowe says. “I’m the black beast, the bête noire.”

Nutrient pollution of waterways is a problem that extends well beyond Iowa. In Lake Erie in 2014, a toxic algal bloom— caused by runoff from farms and septic systems plus warmer temperatures, among other factors— contaminated Toledo’s water supply. In an area of the Gulf of Mexico adjacent to the Mississippi River, scientists have identified an approximately 6,500-square-mile dead zone where oxygen levels are too low to support marine life. The federal government says agricultural sources are the main culprit.

In 1991 the Des Moines Water Works sank about $4 million into an ion exchange facility to remove nitrate from the drinking water supply, the lawsuit says. The plant is designed to operate on an as-needed basis, at a cost of up to $7,000 per day. From 1995 to 2014, nitrate loads in the Raccoon River, near the Des Moines Water Works’ intake, exceeded 10 milligrams per liter—the maximum level the federal government allows— 24 percent of the time. The problem has gotten worse in the past few years. In 2015, for instance, the nitrate removal plant operated a record 177 days. The Water Works plans to spend roughly $80 million to upgrade and expand the facility.

The utility’s lawsuit attacks a type of farmland embedded with “tiles,” which provide artificial drainage for soggy soils that normally wouldn’t be good for cultivation. About a quarter of Iowa is drained, and those former wetlands are among the most productive agricultural areas in the world. The suit alleges that drainage tiles accelerate the migration of groundwater—and nitrate—into streams and rivers. Therefore, it alleges, 10 so- called drainage districts, state- created bodies that fund the construction and maintenance of drainage infrastructure by levying assessments on property owners, should be held accountable. The Water Works demands that the districts, which are overseen by county boards of supervisors, should be subject to the same kind of regulation as factories and sewage treatment plants.

In their response to the complaint, defense lawyers argue that drainage districts don’t control what runs through drainage tiles, nor can they be sued for damages given their limited functions. “All we are is a facilitator to take that water and get it off the ground,” says Colin Mccullough, who represents the supervisors in Sac County. He argues that nitrate from Sac County is almost entirely diluted by the time it reaches Des Moines. The trial is set for August, and U.S. District Court Judge Mark Bennett has asked the Iowa Supreme Court to rule on whether drainage districts are immune from legal claims seeking damages.

Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey says voluntary efforts to curb nitrate contamination are in the beginning stages and will ultimately work. “I just think we are going to solve this by working together,” he says, adding that more regulation could open a Pandora’s box. “It’s hard for me to see where the regulation and the lawsuits stop.”

Regardless of the outcome, the lawsuit has had the positive effect of pushing the debate over water quality onto the state’s agenda, says Neil Hamilton, director of the Agricultural Law Center at Drake University in Des Moines: “It’s really changed the trajectory on this issue.” In January, Governor Branstad proposed using sales tax revenue to vastly increase spending on water quality.

For his part, Stowe says he hasn’t enjoyed the negative attention. But then again, he claims as one of his greatest influences a legendary rebel: the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who placed the sun rather than the earth at the center of the universe. “Industrial ag is hoping