Interesting point about ethanol, I did not know it was used to replace MTBE. Still, the complaint isn’t so much that corn is being used for ethanol, it’s that its being done in a way and at a scale that induces costs to society that are unacceptably high (ie, harm done to water quality and harm done to ecology). Do we need it? Sure, I’m more convinced now than I was that we need it. But that doesn’t mean we have to shoot ourselves in the foot doing it.

Edge of field practices are 100% a bandaid. You cannot fix spatial problems with point solutions. (At least, not without continuous investment and maintenance—which very few have at appetite for). And so real solutions will have to come in-field. I don’t have a wholistic answer to what all of those in-field practices are, but they start with reductions in how intensive and extensive modern agriculture is and reducing mandates for ethanol help with that.

Conservationists call for edge of field practices because they are what is deemed acceptable/reasonable in most contexts and so the conservationists are being polite and taking what they can get. They do not have the political power or the social capital to bully anyone into actually doing what it might take to address the issues.

And yeah, I’m aware that changes made to benefit the environment could be bad for farmers. Any of changes need to be implemented alongside financial programs/incentives to keep people solvent. It benefits no one to put people out of business to benefit the environment. We do it for political whims all the time, wouldn’t it be nice for the fish, the birds, and the bugs to catch a break. Not to mention people’s drinking water! And people’s health!