Democrat David Osterberg faces an uphill battle in his race for the U.S. Senate, but he is floating down the Des Moines River this week to advocate the protection of Iowa’s surface water.

“Iowans have let water quality slide,” the former state representative said as he paddled his canoe Sunday afternoon just south of Highway 30 near Boone.

The five-mile trip from Boone to Ledges State Park followed a six-mile journey from Fort Dodge to Coalville on Sunday morning.

Monday, Osterberg toured stretches of the river around Saylorville Lake, and Tuesday and Wednesday he visits river cities Indianola, Knoxville, Ottumwa, Keosauqua and Bentonsport.

The Des Moines River expedition is the second of four excursions on Iowa waterways for Osterberg, who is challenging incumbent Republican Charles Grassley.

Earlier this month, he toured the Big Sioux and Missouri Rivers in northwest Iowa, and he plans to canoe the Iowa-Cedar river system and the Mississippi River before November’s general election.

Osterberg, an Iowa House member from 1983-94, criticized Grassley for supporting the 1996 farm bill, commonly called the Freedom-to-Farm Act. This legislation was designed to relieve American farmers of regulations imposed from Washington, but Osterberg said it is more aptly named the “Freedom-to-Fail” program.

“It certainly has not helped these low prices,” Osterberg said, referring to the per-bushel price of corn, which in central Iowa is at a 12-year low, according to a survey published in Saturday’s Des Moines Register.

Proponents said “Freedom-to-Farm” would allow farmers to plant more crops and make more money on a freer market.

With corn prices scraping the bottom of the barrel, Osterberg said, those advocates have been proved wrong.

“The market has not been helping out small farmers,” he said. “You never know when you are going to have a decade like the ’30s — or the ’90s.”

Osterberg proposes that the government return to helping farmers by reviving farm subsidies, but with a twist. This time, he says, the focus should be on conservation, rather than supply and demand — an approach Osterberg admits is drastic.

“You need to do something that’s a major change to get these rivers running clean,” he said.

His point needed no supporting statistics: the evidence was inches away in the water, as his fingers became invisible when lowered less than a foot below the surface.

Osterberg, a University of Iowa professor, cited two examples of conservation programs that have produced ecological benefits while saving farmers money.

In Wisconsin’s Pippin County, he said, farmers who maintain buffer zones near rivers and who cut nitrate and pesticide applications are given a $9.50-per-acre tax break, almost a 50-percent cut.

“That’s something that gets somebody’s attention,” he said. “You reward those farmers who are the best stewards of the land.”

The other initiative, a statewide program in Iowa from 1985-1991, included farms in each of the 99 counties.

Osterberg said farmers who used different tillage methods and less fertilizer spent almost $40 million less on nitrogen during the life of the Agriculture Energy Management program, with no drop in their harvest.

“No loss in yields, simply saving money for farmers,” he said. “Here’s a program that puts conservation first and small farmers first.”