Sep 27, 2013
Understanding why our Earth system is warming - YouTube
Published on Sep 27, 2013
Dr Steve Rintoul, Dr John Church and Dr Pep Canadell of CSIRO discuss our climate science research to understand how and why the Earth system is warming.
Understanding why our Earth system is warming - YouTube
Sep 25, 2013
What Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert Told Me About the Politics of Health (Guest Blog) - TheWrap
By Laurene Williams on September 20, 2013
Seifert’s new documentary “GMO OMG,” is a layman’s look at the world of industrial agriculture and genetically modified foods
Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert’s new documentary “GMO OMG,” which opens in Los Angeles on Friday, is a layman’s look at the world of industrial agriculture — GMOs being “genetically modified organisms.” Or, as we think of them, foods.
By design, the industry is irreproachable and impenetrable, run by corporate behemoths. And to question their scientific methods or authority is to be ill-informed, unsophisticated — or stupid.
But Seifert (pictured below) is unperturbed. He moves beyond the industry’s FDA approval of genetically modified foods to tap the wall of corporate concealment. Like Peter Joseph’s “Zeitgeist: Moving Forward,” Robert Kenner’s “Food, Inc.,” Dylan Mohan Gray’s “Fire In the Blood” and Maryam Henein’s and George Langworthy’s “Vanishing of the Bees,” he describes how corporate motives spawn systemic problems that put our health on the line.
Seifert’s new documentary “GMO OMG,” is a layman’s look at the world of industrial agriculture and genetically modified foods
Trailer
Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert’s new documentary “GMO OMG,” which opens in Los Angeles on Friday, is a layman’s look at the world of industrial agriculture — GMOs being “genetically modified organisms.” Or, as we think of them, foods.
By design, the industry is irreproachable and impenetrable, run by corporate behemoths. And to question their scientific methods or authority is to be ill-informed, unsophisticated — or stupid.
But Seifert (pictured below) is unperturbed. He moves beyond the industry’s FDA approval of genetically modified foods to tap the wall of corporate concealment. Like Peter Joseph’s “Zeitgeist: Moving Forward,” Robert Kenner’s “Food, Inc.,” Dylan Mohan Gray’s “Fire In the Blood” and Maryam Henein’s and George Langworthy’s “Vanishing of the Bees,” he describes how corporate motives spawn systemic problems that put our health on the line.
In his efforts to revitalize common sense about what is happening to the seeds of our food supply, he crafts a powerful film about our massive social contract with the biotech food producers who don’t want us to know what we’re eating.
Like any filmmaker on the circuit, he’s been traveling from coast to coast to promote it. “I’m exhausted,” he told me before a screening of the film, “but really excited and a bit nervous.”
Then there’s the issue of somehow convincing everyday people that the film — lacking biotech experts — has merit. After all, this is complex stuff that simple folks shouldn’t try to process without the appropriate filters. Indeed we’ve looked the other way. As Seifert said, “The vast majority of people don’t know about GMOs.”
And our global community of scientists doesn’t know about the side effects. Or at least they don’t agree.
“It remains to be fully seen,” Seifert said. “The pro-GM scientists, professors and industries say they are completely safe. They say genetically modified foods have been through more testing than any food in the world. But 99 percent of that testing is to make the GMOs — to create them. It’s R&D. They’re not testing them for the impact on our health or safety in the world. So the question I keep asking is: If they’re so safe then why not make us confident and release the raw data? Why not do more studies?”
Studies have been done. But it was Gilles-Eric Séralini, a researcher at Caen University in France, who led the study that burned a hole in the biotech companies’ veneer. After feeding lab rats a steady diet of GM corn over the course of two years, Séralini’s team watched tumors grow and then swell.
They looked like something out of a Ridley Scott movie. Grotesque photos and videos went viral on the net, while Séralini was blasted and discredited for shoddy science. In a less publicized move, the scientists who defended his findings signed an open letter.
“If Séralini’s study is so flawed,” Seifert pointed out, “the only way to disprove it is to repeat it.” But in the politics of food and control over knowledge, that isn’t happening.
“Monsanto just dumped $4.5 million to block I-522, the Washington State GMO-labeling initiative. And they threw a lot of money to stop Prop 37, the GMO-labeling initiative that failed in California. If only they threw a fraction of that money into repeating Séralini’s study,” Seifert said.
In Russia, Peru, Switzerland, France, Germany and countries throughout the European Union, restrictions or nationwide GMO bans are in place. Their verdict: These engineered high-yield crops that can withstand a chemical downpour of glyphosate, neonicotinoids and other miticides, fungicides and pesticides are presumed dangerous and poisonous.
But is it possible, I asked him, that GMOs are a natural extension of science and technology, and that there’s something good to be said for them?
He didn’t pause. “GMOs are a natural extension of the corporate mind and they’re asking questions about profits, the bottom line, and their shareholders. They’re not asking questions about our health.
“Can there be a good GMO? Maybe. But most of the GMOs that we see are an industry answer to an industry question. Usually they don’t look at the deeper issue of the deeper question of a broken system. We haven’t even talked about colony collapse disorder or the honeybees.”
Covered extensively on healthy living websites like HoneyColony.com that track toxic and systemic agricultural practices affecting our food supply, honeybees join a host of other threatened organisms.
“And these companies never mention the 30-year Rodale study which shows that organic farming is more effective, more profitable, and more sustainable,” said Seifert. “They’re caught in this toxic, broken system. RoundUp resistance breeds superbugs and superweeds. They think, Let’s keep upping the toxicity and changing the GMO.”
But biotech foods, we are told, have in fact earned government sanctions because of sound science. Although some of us prefer meat or coffee, while others consume more vegetables than grains, we’re evenly raised on a diet of expertise. We trust our scholars and accept that clinical trials and studies are rooted in empirical data. In other words, we believe they serve up the truth.
Seifert paused. “The science question is endless,” he said. “Science is really based on the context you’re in and the questions you’re asking. It’s total legitimate science that says it’s fine to kill insects and then there’s science that tries to control it in a holistic way. I just like that science better. I think humility and a humble approach is the better approach. But that’s not what a great corporation does. And the problem with GMOs is that they cross-pollinate.”
Indeed, the list of farmers who’ve had their crops decimated by lawsuits for patent infringement or wiped out by the farmer’s own hand is long. “Chris Hardy of Village Farm in Ashland, Ore., had to destroy his crop because Syngenta planted sugar beet seeds right next to him. And he didn’t have the funds to see if his got contaminated,” Seifert said.
Contamination against what? Technological progress, biological improvement, corporate influence?
I asked Seifert if he thought the movement to ban GM foods is really a movement about faith. Proponents of GMOs readily claim that those against biotech are being persuaded by junk science or simply ignoring quality scientific data in an inane quest “to keep food pure.”
So could the controversy surrounding GMOs really be about philosophy and not science at all? Should one have the right as an individual to say, “You know what, maybe it’s true that the transgenic foods you’re creating in the lab are essentially the same, but I still prefer to eat foods that haven’t been tampered with.”
“Yes, you should have that right,” he told me. “And science is not homogenous. There are so many scientists, and science is so many things. When science sets itself up to be God, that is a form of arrogance that has gotten us into so much trouble, like the scientists on the toxic-chemical side who say, ‘You don’t appreciate what I’m doing, and if I don’t do what I need to do with these chemicals, then you won’t have your plums.’
“When science is at the behest of corporations then there will be bad applications and the questions that scientists ask will be limited. You can have good scientists operating in a corporate bubble with results that aren’t good for the earth.”
And, despite vital scientific research, man’s science may not be the ultimate arbiter on what’s best for us. “If we don’t account for any non-scientific factors,” I add, “we renounce some part of our humanity and we certainly deny reality — which is that we don’t know everything and we’re still learning.”
“I love how you’re acknowledging mystery,” Seifert said. “There is something beyond us. We haven’t understood life and how the world grows and breathes and works together. Just look at a shovel full of soil. So much biodiversity, so many bacteria in such a small amount — and we’re willing to douse it with chemicals to kill it. We don’t even understand it or how it interacts with the food we grow or how it interacts with our RNA and DNA. So I think humility should be a part of this conversation — and it hasn’t been.”
Then Seifert had to run. He had another appearance to make and a flight to catch. “Last question,” I try. “What do we do? What’s the answer to GMO concerns?”
“I think we need GMO-free zones like in Marin and Mendocino counties. We don’t want to live under threat of contamination as we grow our alfalfa or corn. We should also have Roundup-free and chemical-free zones. We have the power to do that as a society and make that decision.
“I think it’s simplistic to think we can shop our way into a sustainable future by buying organic foods. We have to shape our future. We have to wake up to the Farm Bill and stand up. Voting for labeling is a great first step. The question is: Do we have a right to know that GMOs are in our food? And the answer is: Damn right. I think the average person understands we have the right to know.”
What Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert Told Me About the Politics of Health (Guest Blog) - TheWrap
Like any filmmaker on the circuit, he’s been traveling from coast to coast to promote it. “I’m exhausted,” he told me before a screening of the film, “but really excited and a bit nervous.”
Then there’s the issue of somehow convincing everyday people that the film — lacking biotech experts — has merit. After all, this is complex stuff that simple folks shouldn’t try to process without the appropriate filters. Indeed we’ve looked the other way. As Seifert said, “The vast majority of people don’t know about GMOs.”
And our global community of scientists doesn’t know about the side effects. Or at least they don’t agree.
“It remains to be fully seen,” Seifert said. “The pro-GM scientists, professors and industries say they are completely safe. They say genetically modified foods have been through more testing than any food in the world. But 99 percent of that testing is to make the GMOs — to create them. It’s R&D. They’re not testing them for the impact on our health or safety in the world. So the question I keep asking is: If they’re so safe then why not make us confident and release the raw data? Why not do more studies?”
Studies have been done. But it was Gilles-Eric Séralini, a researcher at Caen University in France, who led the study that burned a hole in the biotech companies’ veneer. After feeding lab rats a steady diet of GM corn over the course of two years, Séralini’s team watched tumors grow and then swell.
They looked like something out of a Ridley Scott movie. Grotesque photos and videos went viral on the net, while Séralini was blasted and discredited for shoddy science. In a less publicized move, the scientists who defended his findings signed an open letter.
“If Séralini’s study is so flawed,” Seifert pointed out, “the only way to disprove it is to repeat it.” But in the politics of food and control over knowledge, that isn’t happening.
“Monsanto just dumped $4.5 million to block I-522, the Washington State GMO-labeling initiative. And they threw a lot of money to stop Prop 37, the GMO-labeling initiative that failed in California. If only they threw a fraction of that money into repeating Séralini’s study,” Seifert said.
In Russia, Peru, Switzerland, France, Germany and countries throughout the European Union, restrictions or nationwide GMO bans are in place. Their verdict: These engineered high-yield crops that can withstand a chemical downpour of glyphosate, neonicotinoids and other miticides, fungicides and pesticides are presumed dangerous and poisonous.
But is it possible, I asked him, that GMOs are a natural extension of science and technology, and that there’s something good to be said for them?
He didn’t pause. “GMOs are a natural extension of the corporate mind and they’re asking questions about profits, the bottom line, and their shareholders. They’re not asking questions about our health.
“Can there be a good GMO? Maybe. But most of the GMOs that we see are an industry answer to an industry question. Usually they don’t look at the deeper issue of the deeper question of a broken system. We haven’t even talked about colony collapse disorder or the honeybees.”
Covered extensively on healthy living websites like HoneyColony.com that track toxic and systemic agricultural practices affecting our food supply, honeybees join a host of other threatened organisms.
“And these companies never mention the 30-year Rodale study which shows that organic farming is more effective, more profitable, and more sustainable,” said Seifert. “They’re caught in this toxic, broken system. RoundUp resistance breeds superbugs and superweeds. They think, Let’s keep upping the toxicity and changing the GMO.”
But biotech foods, we are told, have in fact earned government sanctions because of sound science. Although some of us prefer meat or coffee, while others consume more vegetables than grains, we’re evenly raised on a diet of expertise. We trust our scholars and accept that clinical trials and studies are rooted in empirical data. In other words, we believe they serve up the truth.
Seifert paused. “The science question is endless,” he said. “Science is really based on the context you’re in and the questions you’re asking. It’s total legitimate science that says it’s fine to kill insects and then there’s science that tries to control it in a holistic way. I just like that science better. I think humility and a humble approach is the better approach. But that’s not what a great corporation does. And the problem with GMOs is that they cross-pollinate.”
Indeed, the list of farmers who’ve had their crops decimated by lawsuits for patent infringement or wiped out by the farmer’s own hand is long. “Chris Hardy of Village Farm in Ashland, Ore., had to destroy his crop because Syngenta planted sugar beet seeds right next to him. And he didn’t have the funds to see if his got contaminated,” Seifert said.
Contamination against what? Technological progress, biological improvement, corporate influence?
I asked Seifert if he thought the movement to ban GM foods is really a movement about faith. Proponents of GMOs readily claim that those against biotech are being persuaded by junk science or simply ignoring quality scientific data in an inane quest “to keep food pure.”
So could the controversy surrounding GMOs really be about philosophy and not science at all? Should one have the right as an individual to say, “You know what, maybe it’s true that the transgenic foods you’re creating in the lab are essentially the same, but I still prefer to eat foods that haven’t been tampered with.”
“Yes, you should have that right,” he told me. “And science is not homogenous. There are so many scientists, and science is so many things. When science sets itself up to be God, that is a form of arrogance that has gotten us into so much trouble, like the scientists on the toxic-chemical side who say, ‘You don’t appreciate what I’m doing, and if I don’t do what I need to do with these chemicals, then you won’t have your plums.’
“When science is at the behest of corporations then there will be bad applications and the questions that scientists ask will be limited. You can have good scientists operating in a corporate bubble with results that aren’t good for the earth.”
And, despite vital scientific research, man’s science may not be the ultimate arbiter on what’s best for us. “If we don’t account for any non-scientific factors,” I add, “we renounce some part of our humanity and we certainly deny reality — which is that we don’t know everything and we’re still learning.”
“I love how you’re acknowledging mystery,” Seifert said. “There is something beyond us. We haven’t understood life and how the world grows and breathes and works together. Just look at a shovel full of soil. So much biodiversity, so many bacteria in such a small amount — and we’re willing to douse it with chemicals to kill it. We don’t even understand it or how it interacts with the food we grow or how it interacts with our RNA and DNA. So I think humility should be a part of this conversation — and it hasn’t been.”
Then Seifert had to run. He had another appearance to make and a flight to catch. “Last question,” I try. “What do we do? What’s the answer to GMO concerns?”
“I think we need GMO-free zones like in Marin and Mendocino counties. We don’t want to live under threat of contamination as we grow our alfalfa or corn. We should also have Roundup-free and chemical-free zones. We have the power to do that as a society and make that decision.
“I think it’s simplistic to think we can shop our way into a sustainable future by buying organic foods. We have to shape our future. We have to wake up to the Farm Bill and stand up. Voting for labeling is a great first step. The question is: Do we have a right to know that GMOs are in our food? And the answer is: Damn right. I think the average person understands we have the right to know.”
What Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert Told Me About the Politics of Health (Guest Blog) - TheWrap
Does "Corporate Farming" Exist? Barely. | Mother Jones
By Tom Philpott
Wed Sep. 25, 2013
Wed Sep. 25, 2013
Google Art Project/Wikimedia Commons; Shutterstock. Photoillustration by Matt Connolly.
Goaded on by small-is-good gospel, plenty of people have adopted a Manichean view of modern US farming: large, soulless corporate enterprises on one side, human-scale, artisanal operations on the other.
Want to know what's missing from Chipotle's green-tinted ads?
Take, for example, Chipotle's much-discussed new web ad, which tugs at the heartstrings by painting a haunting picture of a small-time farmer who finds himself working for—and then competing against—a fictional industrial-farming behemoth.
Reality is a lot more complicated. While there are plenty of mega-corporations in the food industry, they rarely do the actual farming themselves.
A USDA study released in August found that 96.4 percent of US crop farms are "family farms," or "ones in which the principal operator, and people related to the principal operator by blood or marriage, own more than half." That number doesn't leave a lot of room for corporate farmers, does it?
The story is a bit—but not that much—different in meat production. Pork, and pork only, actually has corporations raising significant numbers of livestock. Here are the largest hog producers in the United States, lifted from an interesting 2010 paper by Tufts researchers Tim Wise and Sarah Trist:
Wise and Trist, 2010
Smithfield, recently bought by the Chinese conglomerate Shuanghui International (in a dealjust approved by Smithfield's shareholders), is obviously a massive, globe-spanning corporation. Not only does it raise about one of every five American hogs, it also has a 31 percent share of the hog-processing market, Wise and Trist show. When Smithfield directly raises 1.2 million hogs per year, that's corporate farming.
But after Smithfield, things change quickly. As the above chart shows, the nation's fourth-largest hog producer, Iowa Select Farms, has a 2.5 percent market share. Yes, that's a lot of hogs—150,000 per year, to be exact—but the vast majority of America's other 70,000 pig farms tend to be family-owned operations. It's true that they usually operate under contract with mega-processors like Smithfield and peers like Tyson and JBS. But these aren't corporate-owned farms.
In beef, the last stage of conventional cow production—fattening them for slaughter—islargely dominated by big players. Here (from a 2010 paper by Texas Tech University ag scientist M. L. Galyean) are the biggest operators of feedlots—those massive, infamous pens where cows spend their last days chomping on corn and soy-based feed, laced with dodgy additives:
Galyean, 2011
And here are the dominant processors, the corporations that slaughter the fattened cows and cut them into beef (note how Cargill and JBS appear on both lists):
But again, the farms that supply the feedlots—that raise the calves until they are ready to be fattened in those corporate-run confined finishing operations—are almost exclusively family-owned businesses, as this 2011 USDA paper shows. And there are more than 700,000 of them.
As for chicken, the USDA counts more than 17,000 operations producing "broilers," or meat chickens. Very few of them are owned by companies like Tyson, Pilgrim's Pride (a JBS subsidiary), or Perdue—the mega-processors that slaughter and package most birds. According to the USDA, farms directly owned by those giants account for just 1 percent of total broiler production. The bulk of the rest are family-owned, albeit working under contract to a big processor:
Goaded on by small-is-good gospel, plenty of people have adopted a Manichean view of modern US farming: large, soulless corporate enterprises on one side, human-scale, artisanal operations on the other.
Want to know what's missing from Chipotle's green-tinted ads?
Take, for example, Chipotle's much-discussed new web ad, which tugs at the heartstrings by painting a haunting picture of a small-time farmer who finds himself working for—and then competing against—a fictional industrial-farming behemoth.
Reality is a lot more complicated. While there are plenty of mega-corporations in the food industry, they rarely do the actual farming themselves.
A USDA study released in August found that 96.4 percent of US crop farms are "family farms," or "ones in which the principal operator, and people related to the principal operator by blood or marriage, own more than half." That number doesn't leave a lot of room for corporate farmers, does it?
The story is a bit—but not that much—different in meat production. Pork, and pork only, actually has corporations raising significant numbers of livestock. Here are the largest hog producers in the United States, lifted from an interesting 2010 paper by Tufts researchers Tim Wise and Sarah Trist:
Wise and Trist, 2010
Smithfield, recently bought by the Chinese conglomerate Shuanghui International (in a dealjust approved by Smithfield's shareholders), is obviously a massive, globe-spanning corporation. Not only does it raise about one of every five American hogs, it also has a 31 percent share of the hog-processing market, Wise and Trist show. When Smithfield directly raises 1.2 million hogs per year, that's corporate farming.
But after Smithfield, things change quickly. As the above chart shows, the nation's fourth-largest hog producer, Iowa Select Farms, has a 2.5 percent market share. Yes, that's a lot of hogs—150,000 per year, to be exact—but the vast majority of America's other 70,000 pig farms tend to be family-owned operations. It's true that they usually operate under contract with mega-processors like Smithfield and peers like Tyson and JBS. But these aren't corporate-owned farms.
In beef, the last stage of conventional cow production—fattening them for slaughter—islargely dominated by big players. Here (from a 2010 paper by Texas Tech University ag scientist M. L. Galyean) are the biggest operators of feedlots—those massive, infamous pens where cows spend their last days chomping on corn and soy-based feed, laced with dodgy additives:
Galyean, 2011
And here are the dominant processors, the corporations that slaughter the fattened cows and cut them into beef (note how Cargill and JBS appear on both lists):
But again, the farms that supply the feedlots—that raise the calves until they are ready to be fattened in those corporate-run confined finishing operations—are almost exclusively family-owned businesses, as this 2011 USDA paper shows. And there are more than 700,000 of them.
As for chicken, the USDA counts more than 17,000 operations producing "broilers," or meat chickens. Very few of them are owned by companies like Tyson, Pilgrim's Pride (a JBS subsidiary), or Perdue—the mega-processors that slaughter and package most birds. According to the USDA, farms directly owned by those giants account for just 1 percent of total broiler production. The bulk of the rest are family-owned, albeit working under contract to a big processor:
Chart: USDA
So what's going on here—why is the perception of "corporate farming" so widespread when actually almost all of the country's food is being grown or raised by family-owned operations?
It might have something to do with the fact that corporate agribusiness is indeed very real—it's just that it has carved out the most profitable parts of food production for itself, while leaving the dirty, uncertain work of farming for others.
The reality is that farming itself is generally a terrible business. There's much more—and much easier—money to be made by selling farmers the raw materials of their trade—like seeds, fertilizer, or livestock feed. And there's also plenty of money in buying farmers' output cheap (say, corn or hogs) and selling it dear (as, say, pork chops or high-fructose corn syrup). In his excellent 2004 book Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization, Richard Manning pungently describes the situation:
A farm scholar once asked an agribusiness executive when his corporation would simply take over the farms. The exec said that it would be dumb for the corporation to do so, in that it is not free to exploit its employees to the degree that farmers are willing to exploit themselves.
Tomorrow, I'll lay out, with charts, just how tough it is for farmers caught between the huge corporate suppliers and the huge corporate buyers.
Does "Corporate Farming" Exist? Barely. | Mother Jones
So what's going on here—why is the perception of "corporate farming" so widespread when actually almost all of the country's food is being grown or raised by family-owned operations?
It might have something to do with the fact that corporate agribusiness is indeed very real—it's just that it has carved out the most profitable parts of food production for itself, while leaving the dirty, uncertain work of farming for others.
The reality is that farming itself is generally a terrible business. There's much more—and much easier—money to be made by selling farmers the raw materials of their trade—like seeds, fertilizer, or livestock feed. And there's also plenty of money in buying farmers' output cheap (say, corn or hogs) and selling it dear (as, say, pork chops or high-fructose corn syrup). In his excellent 2004 book Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization, Richard Manning pungently describes the situation:
A farm scholar once asked an agribusiness executive when his corporation would simply take over the farms. The exec said that it would be dumb for the corporation to do so, in that it is not free to exploit its employees to the degree that farmers are willing to exploit themselves.
Tomorrow, I'll lay out, with charts, just how tough it is for farmers caught between the huge corporate suppliers and the huge corporate buyers.
Does "Corporate Farming" Exist? Barely. | Mother Jones
Sep 21, 2013
SOIL not DIRT - Dr Elaine Ingham talks Soil Microbiology
Dr. Elaine Ingham talks about soil fertility and the role of soil microbial life.
Dr. Ingham is a world-renowned soil biologist who pioneered many of the currently used biological soil amendment techniques and pioneered the testing of soil microbial life as an indicator of soil and plant health. Dr. Ingham is the Chief Scientist at the Rodale Institute. She is the founder of the Sustainable Studies Institute and the Soil Foodweb Inc. soil testing labs. Dr. Ingham is the key author of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's Soil Biology Primer. She has been the mentor of numerous soil scientists and practitioners of ecologically balanced landscape design, and has helped farmers all over the world to grow more resilient crops by understanding and improving their soil life.
SOIL not DIRT - Dr Elaine Ingham talks Soil Microbiology
Sep 20, 2013
2013 Sustainable Ag Colloquium: Dirt - The Erosion of Civilizations | Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
September 10, 2013
AMES, Iowa – This fall, take part in a presentation and discussion of solutions to global soil erosion with geologist David R. Montgomery, who will present the 2013 Pesek Colloquium on Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University on September 23.
Montgomery, the author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, will demonstrate how soil use and abuse has shaped societies from Mesopotamia to China to the American West. “There’s still time to live up to our name,” says Montgomery of human beings, the thinking ape, “if only we stop treating our soil like dirt.”
A MacArthur Genius Award recipient and professor at the University of Washington, Montgomery is the author of several books, including King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon and The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood. He studies the evolution of the earth’s topography and how this influences ecological systems and human societies.
This event is free and open to the public. It will be held at ISU’s Memorial Union in the Great Hall on September 23 at 8 p.m. Event details may be found at: www.lectures.iastate.edu/lecture/30320.
The Pesek Colloquium is coordinated by the Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture with a number of sponsors, including the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture; Agronomy, Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, and Geological and Atmospheric Sciences at ISU; Practical Farmers of Iowa, the Plant Sciences Institute, and the Committee on Lectures funded by the Government of the Student Body.
The colloquium has been presented since 2001 in honor of ISU Emeritus Professor of Agronomy John Pesek.
Listen to Montgomery discuss his book, The Rocks Don’t Lie, in a National Public Radio On Being interview with Krista Tippett: origin-www.onbeing.org/program/reading-the-rocks/5851.
- See more at: http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/news/09-10-2013/2013-dirt-erosion-civilizations#sthash.PTdaPr6e.dpuf
Links:
Podcast ---> http://realserver.ait.iastate.edu:8080/ITS/Podcasts/Montgomery_9.23.2013.mp3
http://hines.blogspot.com/2012/12/dirt-erosion-of-civilizations-david-r.html
2013 Sustainable Ag Colloquium: Dirt - The Erosion of Civilizations | Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
AMES, Iowa – This fall, take part in a presentation and discussion of solutions to global soil erosion with geologist David R. Montgomery, who will present the 2013 Pesek Colloquium on Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University on September 23.
Montgomery, the author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, will demonstrate how soil use and abuse has shaped societies from Mesopotamia to China to the American West. “There’s still time to live up to our name,” says Montgomery of human beings, the thinking ape, “if only we stop treating our soil like dirt.”
A MacArthur Genius Award recipient and professor at the University of Washington, Montgomery is the author of several books, including King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon and The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood. He studies the evolution of the earth’s topography and how this influences ecological systems and human societies.
This event is free and open to the public. It will be held at ISU’s Memorial Union in the Great Hall on September 23 at 8 p.m. Event details may be found at: www.lectures.iastate.edu/lecture/30320.
The Pesek Colloquium is coordinated by the Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture with a number of sponsors, including the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture; Agronomy, Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, and Geological and Atmospheric Sciences at ISU; Practical Farmers of Iowa, the Plant Sciences Institute, and the Committee on Lectures funded by the Government of the Student Body.
The colloquium has been presented since 2001 in honor of ISU Emeritus Professor of Agronomy John Pesek.
Listen to Montgomery discuss his book, The Rocks Don’t Lie, in a National Public Radio On Being interview with Krista Tippett: origin-www.onbeing.org/program/reading-the-rocks/5851.
- See more at: http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/news/09-10-2013/2013-dirt-erosion-civilizations#sthash.PTdaPr6e.dpuf
Links:
Podcast ---> http://realserver.ait.iastate.edu:8080/ITS/Podcasts/Montgomery_9.23.2013.mp3
http://hines.blogspot.com/2012/12/dirt-erosion-of-civilizations-david-r.html
2013 Sustainable Ag Colloquium: Dirt - The Erosion of Civilizations | Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
Sep 18, 2013
Michael Forsberg: America's Great Plains - FORA.tv
Michael Forsberg: America's Great Plains from California Academy of Sciences on FORA.tv
Summary
A nature photographer and Nebraska native, Michael Forsberg shares his work documenting this vast landscape, its lakes, prairies along with its plants and animals. The Great Plains are a dynamic but often forgotten landscape -- overlooked, undervalued, misunderstood, and in desperate need of conservation. Forsberg's book helps lead the way forward, informing and inspiring readers to recognize the wild spirit and splendor of this irreplaceable part of the planet.
BIO
Michael Forsberg Michael Forsberg is a Nebraska native and has focused much of his work in North America's Great Plains, once one of the greatest grassland ecosystems on Earth. His goal has been to try to capture the wild spirit that still survives in these wide-open spaces and put a face to the often overlooked native creatures and landscapes found there. His hope is that the images can build appreciation and go to work to inspire conservation efforts on the land far into the future. Forsberg received a degree in geography with an emphasis in environmental studies from the University of Nebraska, and worked briefly as a seasonal ranger in the National Park Service before accepting a job as a staff photographer and writer producing natural history stories for NEBRASKAland Magazine, the state's conservation publication. He worked at the magazine for six years before starting his own photography business and gallery. Forsberg's work has appeared in publications including Audubon, National Geographic, National Wildlife, and Natural History, and recognized in the Pictures of the Year and Wildlife Photographer of the Year competitions. In 2001, his image of a Nebraska tallgrass prairie was selected for an International Postage Stamp. In 2004, he was awarded a Conservation Education Award from The Wildlife Society. Recently, he was featured in the PBS documentary "Crane Song," and was the 2009 recipient of the North American Nature Photographer's Association Mission Award.
Martha Kauffman Martha Kauffman is the Managing Director of the World Wildlife Fund's Great Plains Program.
Sep 16, 2013
America warming up to new hydropower | Grist
By John Upton
A 46-megawatt hydroelectric facility is being built at Red Rock Lake in Iowa.
Flooding an area with a new reservoir to produce hydropower would seldom, if ever, be a popular idea with environmentalists. But what about the thousands of existing reservoirs that serve other purposes in America — the ones that control floods, entertain boaters, and store drinking water?
Funneling water from those reservoirs over newly installed turbines could be a relatively benign way of boosting zero-carbon hydroelectric power supplies.
That’s the logic that the Obama Administration has adopted as it’s worked with agencies and private utilities to tap underutilized hydropower generation potential, part of its “all of the above” approach to energy policy.
And it seems to be working.
The AP reports that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued 25 hydropower operating permits last year — the most since 2005. And it issued 125 preliminary permits last year, up from 95 the year before. There are 60,000 megawatts worth of preliminary permits and projects awaiting approval nationwide.
“I’ve never seen those kinds of numbers before,” said Linda Church Ciocci, executive director of the National Hydropower Association. “We’re seeing a significant change in attitude.” From the AP article:
The Department of Energy concluded last year that the U.S. could boost its hydropower capability by 15 percent by fitting nearly 600 existing dams with generators.
Most of the potential is concentrated in 100 dams largely owned by the federal government and operated by the Army Corps of Engineers. Many are navigation locks on the Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas rivers or their major tributaries.
The state with the most hydropower potential is Illinois, followed by Kentucky, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania. Rounding out the top 10 are Texas, Missouri, Indiana, and Iowa, the study concluded.
The AP reports that it costs more to build a hydropower plant than a natural gas-fired facility, but unlike natural gas, the kinetic energy in the flowing water that fuels a hydropower plant is basically free.
Source: Hydroelectric Power Makes Big Comeback at US Dams, The Associated Press
America warming up to new hydropower | Grist
Sep 15, 2013
Monsanto A Documentary on GMO a must watch
Published on Nov 6, 2012
This doco shows the power of Monsanto and how they treat farmers, how GMO seeds can destroy our food supply.,not what Monsanto promised from there GMO seed. The world needs to reject the use of GMO food for our own good.
http://www.ogtr.gov.au/internet/ogtr/...
http://www.pir.sa.gov.au/gmc/crop_sites
Monsanto A Documentary on GMO a must watch - YouTube
Cool Planet Biochar Team Research and Development - YouTube
Published on Sep 13, 2013
And inside look at the Cool Planet Biochar Research and Development Team sharing advancements in agriculture using biochar in field trials they have done.
Cool Planet Biochar Team Research and Development - YouTube
Sep 13, 2013
Doomed Crops, Record Profits - How Farmers Harvest U.S. Taxpayer Dollars
How Farmers Harvest U.S. Taxpayer Dollars
U.S. taxpayers in fiscal year 2012 spent about $14 billion protecting farmers against crop losses....
Fraud Stealing $100 Million Shows Flaws in U.S. Crop Insurance
Crop Insurance: Anatomy of a Fraud
Crop Insurers’ $14 Billion Some See as Money Laundering
Crop Insurance: Covering Companies’ Costs
Taxpayers Turn U.S. Farmers Into Fat Cats With Subsidies
Crop Insurance: How the Taxpayer Loses
Farmers and Insurers Reap Crop Insurance Bucks
Crop Insurance Critics Make Push to Curb U.S. Subsidies
$100M Scam to Defraud Federal Crop Insurance System
Cash for Doomed Crops Means U.S. Farmers Avoid Disaster Cost
Farm law Rejection Another Embarrassment for Boehner
Sushi Aid in $1 Trillion U.S. Agriculture Bill Irks Watchdogs
U.S. Crop-Insurance Rates Set Above Average for Corn, Soy, Wheat
U.S. Farm Income Seen Rising as Drought Spurs Higher Prices
Doomed Crops, Record Profits
U.S. taxpayers in fiscal year 2012 spent about $14 billion protecting farmers against crop losses....
About This Report
A Dust Bowl-era program intended to save the nation's farmers from ruin has grown into a 21st-century crutch for affluent growers and financial institutions that is expected to cost U.S. taxpayers almost $90 billion over the next ten years. This report examines how the program works, outlines the way private insurance companies benefit from public assistance, reveals the ways fraudsters in North Carolina stole $100 million through false claims, and shows the potentially harmful impact the system has on the environment.
A Dust Bowl-era program intended to save the nation's farmers from ruin has grown into a 21st-century crutch for affluent growers and financial institutions that is expected to cost U.S. taxpayers almost $90 billion over the next ten years. This report examines how the program works, outlines the way private insurance companies benefit from public assistance, reveals the ways fraudsters in North Carolina stole $100 million through false claims, and shows the potentially harmful impact the system has on the environment.
Fraud Stealing $100 Million Shows Flaws in U.S. Crop Insurance
Crop Insurance: Anatomy of a Fraud
Crop Insurers’ $14 Billion Some See as Money Laundering
Crop Insurance: Covering Companies’ Costs
Taxpayers Turn U.S. Farmers Into Fat Cats With Subsidies
Crop Insurance: How the Taxpayer Loses
Farmers and Insurers Reap Crop Insurance Bucks
Crop Insurance Critics Make Push to Curb U.S. Subsidies
$100M Scam to Defraud Federal Crop Insurance System
Cash for Doomed Crops Means U.S. Farmers Avoid Disaster Cost
Farm law Rejection Another Embarrassment for Boehner
Sushi Aid in $1 Trillion U.S. Agriculture Bill Irks Watchdogs
U.S. Crop-Insurance Rates Set Above Average for Corn, Soy, Wheat
U.S. Farm Income Seen Rising as Drought Spurs Higher Prices
Doomed Crops, Record Profits
Sep 12, 2013
Is This "Healthy" Plant Wrecking Your Health? | Rodale News
Doctors explain exactly how modern wheat could be making you ill.
BY LEAH ZERBE
Ditching wheat could improve your health, some doctors say.
Is wheat bad for you? You wouldn't think so, given the advice you hear to load up on whole grains. In today's world, whole-wheat spaghetti is heralded as a healthy alternative to white pasta, with organic, sprouted wheat bread the choice for health-conscious sandwiches. But the truth is, modern wheat—all of it—could be eating away at your health, according to a growing number of doctors.
In a recent opinion piece in the Integrative Medicine: A Clinician's Journal, the editor-in-chief of the publication, Joseph Pizzorno, ND, outlines some of the groundbreaking research on the detrimental health effects of wheat. Much of this research is a credit to an award-winning doctor, pioneering wheat and celiac disease researcher Alessio Fasano, MD, clinical professor of medicine and founder of the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Research.
Through his work, Dr. Fasano has demonstrated that most—perhaps all—people develop increased intestinal permeability when exposed to the gliadin protein of wheat, explains cardiologist William Davis, MD, author of the New York Times best seller Wheat Belly. "This is the first step towards experiencing autoimmune diseases, the 75 conditions unique to humans, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, polymyalgia rheumatica, and many others—many, perhaps all, getting their start with wheat consumption," Dr. Davis says. "Consumption of wheat underlies an astounding amount of autoimmune disease."
Humans have been eating wheat for about 10,000 years. But the situation became much worse in the 1980s when the new high-yield, semi-dwarf strains created by geneticists were introduced into the food supply, says Dr. Davis. (They aren't genetically modified, just intensely crossbred using methods that wouldn't normally occur in nature.) That, Dr. Davis says, is when we saw an increase in calorie intake due to the appetite-stimulating effects of the new forms of gliadin protein in wheat, increased intestinal permeability due to this same gliadin protein, along with increases in autoimmune conditions, increased intestinal toxicity from changed forms of the wheat germ agglutinin protein, and increased allergies due to new proteins changed by these genetics efforts. "This highlights a fundamental problem in agribusiness: A crop can be changed—dramatically, even using extreme or bizarre techniques—but questions regarding continued safety for human consumption are never raised," Dr. Davis notes. "These crops are just sold, no questions asked."
And wheat is everywhere—hiding out in the majority of processed foods, including taco seasoning, frozen dinners, salad dressings, roasted nuts, sauces, and even licorice. Today, many Americans consume wheat as the source for 50, 60, or even 70 percent of their calories, an extremely "unnatural and perverse situation," Dr. Davis notes. "I would argue that the incorporation of wheat in virtually all processed foods is no mistake," Dr. Davis says. "I believe that smart food scientists figured this out years ago, understanding that the new gliadin proteins of wheat stimulated appetite. Rather than warn us, they put it in everything. You eat more, they sell more."
More Than a Gluten Thing
Asked if he could bust one wheat myth, Dr. Davis says he wants people to know that even if they are not gluten sensitive or living with celiac disease, consuming wheat is still not a health-conscious move. Why? Even people living free of these conditions are still susceptible to the gliadin-induced effects on intestinal permeability, the increased appetite gliadin sparks, the bowel toxicity from wheat germ agglutinin, and the sky-high blood sugars from the amylopectin A of wheat, among other issues. "It is misleading to view wheat as nothing more than a vehicle for gluten; as you can see, wheat is much more than just gluten.
Eating Wheat: A Modern Experiment
When you look at the time humans spent on Earth and break it into percentages, it's pretty easy to see we're in uncharted waters when it comes to eating wheat. "Wheat was not part of the diet for the first 99.6 percent of the time we have inhabited this earth; in terms of evolutionary time, wheat was added only 0.4 percent of the time ago," Dr. Davis explains. "And it was bad enough when we first added it, as humans developed rampant tooth decay, facial deformities, iron deficiency, and other health problems. The situation was simply magnified with the modern habit of allowing wheat to dominate the diet and the changes introduced into the wheat plant by geneticists who thought they were doing the world some good."
For more reasons to ditch your wheat habit, read The Dark Side of "Healthy" Wheat.
Is This "Healthy" Plant Wrecking Your Health? | Rodale News
BY LEAH ZERBE
Ditching wheat could improve your health, some doctors say.
Is wheat bad for you? You wouldn't think so, given the advice you hear to load up on whole grains. In today's world, whole-wheat spaghetti is heralded as a healthy alternative to white pasta, with organic, sprouted wheat bread the choice for health-conscious sandwiches. But the truth is, modern wheat—all of it—could be eating away at your health, according to a growing number of doctors.
In a recent opinion piece in the Integrative Medicine: A Clinician's Journal, the editor-in-chief of the publication, Joseph Pizzorno, ND, outlines some of the groundbreaking research on the detrimental health effects of wheat. Much of this research is a credit to an award-winning doctor, pioneering wheat and celiac disease researcher Alessio Fasano, MD, clinical professor of medicine and founder of the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Research.
Through his work, Dr. Fasano has demonstrated that most—perhaps all—people develop increased intestinal permeability when exposed to the gliadin protein of wheat, explains cardiologist William Davis, MD, author of the New York Times best seller Wheat Belly. "This is the first step towards experiencing autoimmune diseases, the 75 conditions unique to humans, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, polymyalgia rheumatica, and many others—many, perhaps all, getting their start with wheat consumption," Dr. Davis says. "Consumption of wheat underlies an astounding amount of autoimmune disease."
Humans have been eating wheat for about 10,000 years. But the situation became much worse in the 1980s when the new high-yield, semi-dwarf strains created by geneticists were introduced into the food supply, says Dr. Davis. (They aren't genetically modified, just intensely crossbred using methods that wouldn't normally occur in nature.) That, Dr. Davis says, is when we saw an increase in calorie intake due to the appetite-stimulating effects of the new forms of gliadin protein in wheat, increased intestinal permeability due to this same gliadin protein, along with increases in autoimmune conditions, increased intestinal toxicity from changed forms of the wheat germ agglutinin protein, and increased allergies due to new proteins changed by these genetics efforts. "This highlights a fundamental problem in agribusiness: A crop can be changed—dramatically, even using extreme or bizarre techniques—but questions regarding continued safety for human consumption are never raised," Dr. Davis notes. "These crops are just sold, no questions asked."
And wheat is everywhere—hiding out in the majority of processed foods, including taco seasoning, frozen dinners, salad dressings, roasted nuts, sauces, and even licorice. Today, many Americans consume wheat as the source for 50, 60, or even 70 percent of their calories, an extremely "unnatural and perverse situation," Dr. Davis notes. "I would argue that the incorporation of wheat in virtually all processed foods is no mistake," Dr. Davis says. "I believe that smart food scientists figured this out years ago, understanding that the new gliadin proteins of wheat stimulated appetite. Rather than warn us, they put it in everything. You eat more, they sell more."
More Than a Gluten Thing
Asked if he could bust one wheat myth, Dr. Davis says he wants people to know that even if they are not gluten sensitive or living with celiac disease, consuming wheat is still not a health-conscious move. Why? Even people living free of these conditions are still susceptible to the gliadin-induced effects on intestinal permeability, the increased appetite gliadin sparks, the bowel toxicity from wheat germ agglutinin, and the sky-high blood sugars from the amylopectin A of wheat, among other issues. "It is misleading to view wheat as nothing more than a vehicle for gluten; as you can see, wheat is much more than just gluten.
Eating Wheat: A Modern Experiment
When you look at the time humans spent on Earth and break it into percentages, it's pretty easy to see we're in uncharted waters when it comes to eating wheat. "Wheat was not part of the diet for the first 99.6 percent of the time we have inhabited this earth; in terms of evolutionary time, wheat was added only 0.4 percent of the time ago," Dr. Davis explains. "And it was bad enough when we first added it, as humans developed rampant tooth decay, facial deformities, iron deficiency, and other health problems. The situation was simply magnified with the modern habit of allowing wheat to dominate the diet and the changes introduced into the wheat plant by geneticists who thought they were doing the world some good."
For more reasons to ditch your wheat habit, read The Dark Side of "Healthy" Wheat.
Is This "Healthy" Plant Wrecking Your Health? | Rodale News
Extinct Gods:How Science Forces Religion to Evolve - YouTube
Published on Sep 11, 2013
Full video available at: http://fora.tv/2007/10/12/Juan_Enriqu...
Juan Enriquez, CEO of Biotechonomy, describes how organized religion and worship has evolved over time and the questions science is better at answering.
Extinct Gods:How Science Forces Religion to Evolve - YouTube
How the Green Revolution Caused Pesticide Chaos - YouTube
Published on Sep 11, 2013
Full video available at: http://fora.tv/2006/02/13/J__Stephen_...
Anthropologist J. Stephen Lansing describes how the green revolution, which brought pesticides, agrochemicals, and modern farming tech, interfered with rice planting in Bali.
How the Green Revolution Caused Pesticide Chaos - YouTube
Sep 11, 2013
A New Future for Nature - George Monbiot
Published on Sep 11, 2013
George Monbiot explores a new positive environmentalism, which shows how damaged ecosystems can be restored, and how this restoration can revitalise and enrich our lives.
To find out more about this talk, visit the event page on the RSA website: http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-an...
Listen to the podcast of the full event including audience Q&A:http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/f...
A New Future for Nature - George Monbiot - YouTube
Sep 10, 2013
One weird trick to fix farms forever | Grist
By Tom Philpott
As I watch, I imagine the earnest agents fanning out across the Midwest to bring the good news about cover cropping and continuous no-till. And I wonder: Why aren’t these ways spreading like prairie fire, turning farmers into producers of not just crops but also rich, carbon-trapping soil resilient to floods and drought?
I put the question to Brandt. His own neighbors aren’t exactly rushing out to sell their tillers or invest in seeds, he admits – they see him not as a beacon but rather as an “odd individual in the area,” he says, his level voice betraying a hint of irritation. Sure, his yields are impressive, but federal crop payouts and subsidized crop insurance buffer their losses, giving them little short-term incentive to change. (For his part, Brandt refuses to carry crop insurance, saying it compels farmers “not to make good management decisions.”) Plus the old way is easier: Using diverse cover crops to control weeds and maintain fertility requires much more management, and more person-hours, than relying on chemicals. And the truth is, most farmers don’t see themselves as climate villains: Iowa State sociologists found that while 66 percent of farmers polled believed climate change was occurring, just 41 percent believed that humans had a hand in causing it.
Longer-term, though, Brandt does see hope. Over the next 20 years, he envisions a “large movement of producers” adopting cover crops and no-till in response to rising energy costs, which could make fertilizer and pesticides (synthesized from petroleum and natural gas), as well as tractor fuel, prohibitively expensive.
The NRCS’s Scarpitti concurs. He acknowledges that in Brandt’s corner of Ohio, the old saw that the “prophet isn’t recognized in his own hometown” largely holds, though a “handful” of farmers are catching on. Nationwide, he adds, “word’s getting out” as farmers like Brandt slowly show their neighbors that biodiversity, not chemicals, is their best strategy.
Sure enough, during the NRCS meeting, another local farmer stops by to pick up some cover-crop seeds. Keith Dennis, who farms around 1,500 acres of corn and soy in Brandt’s county, and who started using cover crops in 2011, says there are quite a few folks in the county watching what Brandt’s doing, “some of ‘em picking up on it.” Dennis has known about Brandt’s work with cover crops since he started in the 1970s. I have to ask: If he saw Brandt’s techniques working then, what took him so long to follow suit? “I had blinders on,” he answers, adding that he saw no reason to plant anything but corn and soybeans. “Now I’m able to see that my soil had been suffering severe compaction,” he says. “Because it wasn’t alive.”
One weird trick to fix farms forever | Grist
Tristan Spinski
Those are big promises, but standing in the shade of Brandt’s barn this June morning, I hear a commotion in the nearby warehouse where he stores his cover-crop seeds. Turns out that I’m not the only one visiting Brandt’s farm. The Natural Resources Conservation Service – a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that grew from Dust Bowl-era efforts to preserve soil – is holding a training for its agents on how to talk to farmers about cover crops and their relationship to soil.
Inside the warehouse, where 50-pound bags of cover-crop seeds line one wall, three dozen NRCS managers and agents, from as far away as Maine and Hawaii, are gathered along tables facing a projection screen. Brandt takes his place in front of the crowd. Presenting slides of fields flush with a combination of cover crops including hairy vetch, rye, and radishes, he becomes animated. We listen raptly and nod approvingly. It feels like a revival meeting.
“We want diversity,” Brandt thunders. “We want colonization!” – that is, to plant the cover in such a way that little to no ground remains exposed. While the cash crop brings in money and feeds people, he tells the agents, the off-season cover crops feed the soil and the hidden universe of microbes within it, doing much of the work done by chemicals on conventional farms. And the more diverse the mix of cover crops, the better the whole system works. Brandt points to the heavy, mechanically operated door at the back of the warehouse, and then motions to us in the crowd. “If we decide to lift that big door out there, we could do it,” he says. “If I try, it’s going to smash me.”
For the agency, whose mission is building soil health, Brandt has emerged as a kind of rock star. He’s a “step ahead of the game,” says Mark Scarpitti, the NRCS state agronomist for Ohio, who helped organize the training. “He’s a combination researcher, cheerleader, and promoter. He’s a good old boy, and producers relate to him.” Later, I find that the agency’s website has recently dubbed Brandt the “Obi-Wan Kenobi of soil.“
Soon, we all file outside and walk past the Brandt family’s four-acre garden. Chickens are pecking about freely, bawk-bawk-bawking and getting underfoot. In an open barn nearby, a few cows munch lackadaisically. I see pigs rooting around in another open barn 30 or so yards away and start to wonder if I haven’t stumbled into a time warp, to the place where they shot the farm scenes in The Wizard of Oz. As if to confirm it, a cow emits a plaintive moo. Brandt’s livestock are something of a hobby, “freezer meat” for his family and neighbors, but as we peer around the barns we see the edges of his real operation: a pastiche of fields stretching to the horizon.
Before we can get our hands in the dirt, Brandt wants to show us his farm equipment: the rolling contraption he drags behind his tractor to kill cover crops ahead of the spring and the shiny, fire-engine-red device he uses to drill corn and soy seeds through the dead cover crops directly into the soil. As some NRCS gearheads pepper him with questions about the tools, he beams with pride.
Finally, we all file onto an old bus for a drive around the fields. An ag nerd among professional soil geeks, I feel like I’m back in elementary school on the coolest field trip ever. An almost giddy mood pervades the bus as Brandt steers us to the side of a rural road that divides two cornfields: one of his and one of his neighbor’s.
We start in Brandt’s field, where we encounter waist-high, deep-green corn plants basking in the afternoon heat. A mat of old leaves and stems covers the soil — remnants of the winter cover crops that have kept the field devoid of weeds. At Brandt’s urging, we scour the ground for what he calls “haystacks” – little clusters of dead, strawlike plant residue bunched up by earthworms. Sure enough, the stacks are everywhere. Brandt scoops one up, along with a fistful of black dirt. “Look there – and there,” he says, pointing into the dirt at pinkie-size wriggling earthworms. “And there go some babies,” he adds, indicating a few so tiny they could curl up on your fingernail.
Then he directs our gaze onto the ground where he just scooped the sample. He points out a pencil-size hole going deep into the soil – a kind of worm thruway that invites water to stream down. I don’t think I’m the only one gaping in awe, thinking of the thousands of miniature haystacks around me, each with its cadre of worms and its hole into the earth. I look around to find several NRCS people holding their own little clump of dirt, oohing and ahhing at the sight.
Then we cross the street to the neighbor’s field. Here, the corn plants look similar to Brandt’s, if a little more scraggly, but the soil couldn’t be more different. The ground, unmarked by haystacks and mostly bare of plant residue altogether, seems seized up into a moist, muddy crust, but the dirt just below the surface is almost dry. Brandt points to a pattern of ruts in the ground, cut by water that failed to absorb and gushed away. Brandt’s land managed to trap the previous night’s rain for whatever the summer brings. His neighbor’s lost not just the precious water, but untold chemical inputs that it carried away.
Aside from his fondness for worms, there are three things that set Brandt’s practices apart from those of his neighbors – and of most American farmers. The first is his dedication to off-season cover crops, which are used on just 1 percent of U.S. farmland each year.
The second involves his hostility to tilling – he sold his tillage equipment in 1971. That has become somewhat more common with the rise of corn and soy varieties genetically engineered for herbicide resistance, which has allowed farmers to use chemicals instead of the plow to control weeds. But most, the NRCS’s Scarpitti says, use “rotational tillage” – they till in some years but not others, thus losing any long-term soil-building benefit.
Finally, and most simply, Brandt adds wheat to the ubiquitous corn-soy rotation favored by his peers throughout the Corn Belt. Bringing in a third crop disrupts weed and pest patterns, and a 2012 Iowa State University study found that by doing so, farmers can dramatically cut down on herbicide and other agrichemical use.
The downsides of the kind of agriculture that holds sway in the heartland – devoting large swaths of land to monocultures of just two crops, regularly tilling the soil, and leaving the ground fallow over winter – are by now well known: ever-increasing loads of pesticides and titanic annual additions of synthetic and mined fertilizers, much of which ends up fouling drinking water and feeding algae-smothered aquatic “dead zones” from Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico [PDF].
But perhaps the most ominous long-term trend in the Corn Belt is what’s known as peak soil: The Midwest still boasts one of the greatest stores of topsoil on Earth. Left mostly unfarmed for millennia, it was enriched by interactions between carbon-sucking prairie grasses and mobs of grass-chomping ruminants. But since settlers first started working the land [PDF] in the 1800s, we’ve been squandering that treasure. Iowa, for example, has lost fully one-half – and counting – of its topsoil, on average, since the prairie came under the plow. According to University of Washington soil scientist David Montgomery, author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, it takesbetween 700 and 1,500 years to generate an inch of topsoil under natural conditions. Cornell agricultural scientist David Pimentel reckons that “90 percent of U.S. cropland now is losing soil faster than its sustainable replacement rate.” Soil, as Americans learned in the Dust Bowl, is not a renewable resource, at least on the scale of human lifetimes.
Then there’s climate change itself. Under natural conditions – think forests or grasslands – soil acts as a sponge for carbon dioxide, sucking it in through plant respiration and storing a little more each year than is lost to oxidation in the process of rotting. But under current farming practices, U.S. farmland only acts as what the USDA has deemed a “modest carbon sink” – sequestering 4 million metric tons of carbon annually, a tiny fraction of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
The good news, says eminent soil scientist Rattan Lal of Ohio State University, is that if all U.S. farms adopted Brandt-style agriculture, they could suck down as much as 25 times more carbon than they currently are – equivalent to taking nearly 10 percent of the U.S. car fleet off the road. (Lal, a member of the Nobel-winning International Panel on Climate Change, is so impressed with Brandt’s methods that he brought a group of 20 Australian farmers on a pilgrimage to Carroll two years ago, he tells me.)
In the middle of his cornfield, holding a handful of loamy, black soil, Brandt explains that he habitually tests his dirt for organic matter. When he began renting this particular field two seasons before, its organic content stood at 0.25 percent – a pathetic reading in an area where, even in fields farmed conventionally, the level typically hovers between 1 and 2 percent. In just two years of intensive cover cropping, this field has risen to 1.25 percent. Within 10 years of his management style, he adds, his fields typically reach as high as 4 percent, and with more time can exceed 5 percent.
Building up organic matter is critical to keeping the heartland humming as the climate heats up. The severe drought that parched the Corn Belt last year – as well as the floods that have roared through in recent years – are a harbinger of what the 2013 National Climate Assessment calls a “rising incidence of weather extremes” that will have “increasingly negative impacts” on crop yields in the coming decades.
As Ohio State soil scientist Rafiq Islam explains, Brandt’s legume cover crops, which trap nitrogen from the air and store it in nodules at their roots, allow him to grow nitrogen right on his farm, rather than importing it in the form of synthetic fertilizer. And the “complex biological systems” created by cover crops marginalize crop-chomping bugs and disease-causing organisms like molds – meaning fewer insecticides and fungicides.
Nor is Brandt any less productive than his chemical-intensive peers, Islam says. Quite the opposite. Brandt’s farm regularly achieves crop yields that exceed the county average, and during last year’s brutal drought, his yields were near the normal season average while other farmers saw yields drop 50 percent – or lost their crop entirely.
The morning after our field trip, we reconvene in Brandt’s barn to take in a series of simple soil demonstrations. I don’t say “we” lightly – by now, I’ve been more or less accepted into the NRCS crew’s soil geek club. At a table at the front of the room, an NRCS man dressed in country casual – faded jeans, striped polo shirt, baseball cap – drops five clumps of soil into water-filled beakers: three from farms managed like Brandt’s, with cover crops and without tillage, the others from conventional operations. The Brandt-style samples hold together, barely discoloring the water. The fourth one holds together too, but for a different reason: Unlike the no-till/cover-crop samples, which the water had penetrated, this one was so compacted from tillage that no water could get in at all. The fifth one disintegrates before our eyes, turning the water into a cloudy mess that the NRCS presenter compares to “last night’s beer.”
Other demos are equally graphic – including one that shows how water runs through Brandt’s gold-standard dirt as if through a sieve, picking up little color. In the conventional soil, it pools on top in a cloudy mess, demonstrating that the soil’s density, or compaction, can cause runoff. The presenter recalls a recent Des Moines Register articleabout how a wet spring caused a torrent of nitrogen runoff into the city’s drinking-water sources, prompting health concerns and expensive filtration efforts.
Those are big promises, but standing in the shade of Brandt’s barn this June morning, I hear a commotion in the nearby warehouse where he stores his cover-crop seeds. Turns out that I’m not the only one visiting Brandt’s farm. The Natural Resources Conservation Service – a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that grew from Dust Bowl-era efforts to preserve soil – is holding a training for its agents on how to talk to farmers about cover crops and their relationship to soil.
Inside the warehouse, where 50-pound bags of cover-crop seeds line one wall, three dozen NRCS managers and agents, from as far away as Maine and Hawaii, are gathered along tables facing a projection screen. Brandt takes his place in front of the crowd. Presenting slides of fields flush with a combination of cover crops including hairy vetch, rye, and radishes, he becomes animated. We listen raptly and nod approvingly. It feels like a revival meeting.
“We want diversity,” Brandt thunders. “We want colonization!” – that is, to plant the cover in such a way that little to no ground remains exposed. While the cash crop brings in money and feeds people, he tells the agents, the off-season cover crops feed the soil and the hidden universe of microbes within it, doing much of the work done by chemicals on conventional farms. And the more diverse the mix of cover crops, the better the whole system works. Brandt points to the heavy, mechanically operated door at the back of the warehouse, and then motions to us in the crowd. “If we decide to lift that big door out there, we could do it,” he says. “If I try, it’s going to smash me.”
For the agency, whose mission is building soil health, Brandt has emerged as a kind of rock star. He’s a “step ahead of the game,” says Mark Scarpitti, the NRCS state agronomist for Ohio, who helped organize the training. “He’s a combination researcher, cheerleader, and promoter. He’s a good old boy, and producers relate to him.” Later, I find that the agency’s website has recently dubbed Brandt the “Obi-Wan Kenobi of soil.“
Soon, we all file outside and walk past the Brandt family’s four-acre garden. Chickens are pecking about freely, bawk-bawk-bawking and getting underfoot. In an open barn nearby, a few cows munch lackadaisically. I see pigs rooting around in another open barn 30 or so yards away and start to wonder if I haven’t stumbled into a time warp, to the place where they shot the farm scenes in The Wizard of Oz. As if to confirm it, a cow emits a plaintive moo. Brandt’s livestock are something of a hobby, “freezer meat” for his family and neighbors, but as we peer around the barns we see the edges of his real operation: a pastiche of fields stretching to the horizon.
Before we can get our hands in the dirt, Brandt wants to show us his farm equipment: the rolling contraption he drags behind his tractor to kill cover crops ahead of the spring and the shiny, fire-engine-red device he uses to drill corn and soy seeds through the dead cover crops directly into the soil. As some NRCS gearheads pepper him with questions about the tools, he beams with pride.
Finally, we all file onto an old bus for a drive around the fields. An ag nerd among professional soil geeks, I feel like I’m back in elementary school on the coolest field trip ever. An almost giddy mood pervades the bus as Brandt steers us to the side of a rural road that divides two cornfields: one of his and one of his neighbor’s.
We start in Brandt’s field, where we encounter waist-high, deep-green corn plants basking in the afternoon heat. A mat of old leaves and stems covers the soil — remnants of the winter cover crops that have kept the field devoid of weeds. At Brandt’s urging, we scour the ground for what he calls “haystacks” – little clusters of dead, strawlike plant residue bunched up by earthworms. Sure enough, the stacks are everywhere. Brandt scoops one up, along with a fistful of black dirt. “Look there – and there,” he says, pointing into the dirt at pinkie-size wriggling earthworms. “And there go some babies,” he adds, indicating a few so tiny they could curl up on your fingernail.
Then he directs our gaze onto the ground where he just scooped the sample. He points out a pencil-size hole going deep into the soil – a kind of worm thruway that invites water to stream down. I don’t think I’m the only one gaping in awe, thinking of the thousands of miniature haystacks around me, each with its cadre of worms and its hole into the earth. I look around to find several NRCS people holding their own little clump of dirt, oohing and ahhing at the sight.
Then we cross the street to the neighbor’s field. Here, the corn plants look similar to Brandt’s, if a little more scraggly, but the soil couldn’t be more different. The ground, unmarked by haystacks and mostly bare of plant residue altogether, seems seized up into a moist, muddy crust, but the dirt just below the surface is almost dry. Brandt points to a pattern of ruts in the ground, cut by water that failed to absorb and gushed away. Brandt’s land managed to trap the previous night’s rain for whatever the summer brings. His neighbor’s lost not just the precious water, but untold chemical inputs that it carried away.
Aside from his fondness for worms, there are three things that set Brandt’s practices apart from those of his neighbors – and of most American farmers. The first is his dedication to off-season cover crops, which are used on just 1 percent of U.S. farmland each year.
The second involves his hostility to tilling – he sold his tillage equipment in 1971. That has become somewhat more common with the rise of corn and soy varieties genetically engineered for herbicide resistance, which has allowed farmers to use chemicals instead of the plow to control weeds. But most, the NRCS’s Scarpitti says, use “rotational tillage” – they till in some years but not others, thus losing any long-term soil-building benefit.
Finally, and most simply, Brandt adds wheat to the ubiquitous corn-soy rotation favored by his peers throughout the Corn Belt. Bringing in a third crop disrupts weed and pest patterns, and a 2012 Iowa State University study found that by doing so, farmers can dramatically cut down on herbicide and other agrichemical use.
The downsides of the kind of agriculture that holds sway in the heartland – devoting large swaths of land to monocultures of just two crops, regularly tilling the soil, and leaving the ground fallow over winter – are by now well known: ever-increasing loads of pesticides and titanic annual additions of synthetic and mined fertilizers, much of which ends up fouling drinking water and feeding algae-smothered aquatic “dead zones” from Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico [PDF].
But perhaps the most ominous long-term trend in the Corn Belt is what’s known as peak soil: The Midwest still boasts one of the greatest stores of topsoil on Earth. Left mostly unfarmed for millennia, it was enriched by interactions between carbon-sucking prairie grasses and mobs of grass-chomping ruminants. But since settlers first started working the land [PDF] in the 1800s, we’ve been squandering that treasure. Iowa, for example, has lost fully one-half – and counting – of its topsoil, on average, since the prairie came under the plow. According to University of Washington soil scientist David Montgomery, author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, it takesbetween 700 and 1,500 years to generate an inch of topsoil under natural conditions. Cornell agricultural scientist David Pimentel reckons that “90 percent of U.S. cropland now is losing soil faster than its sustainable replacement rate.” Soil, as Americans learned in the Dust Bowl, is not a renewable resource, at least on the scale of human lifetimes.
Then there’s climate change itself. Under natural conditions – think forests or grasslands – soil acts as a sponge for carbon dioxide, sucking it in through plant respiration and storing a little more each year than is lost to oxidation in the process of rotting. But under current farming practices, U.S. farmland only acts as what the USDA has deemed a “modest carbon sink” – sequestering 4 million metric tons of carbon annually, a tiny fraction of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
The good news, says eminent soil scientist Rattan Lal of Ohio State University, is that if all U.S. farms adopted Brandt-style agriculture, they could suck down as much as 25 times more carbon than they currently are – equivalent to taking nearly 10 percent of the U.S. car fleet off the road. (Lal, a member of the Nobel-winning International Panel on Climate Change, is so impressed with Brandt’s methods that he brought a group of 20 Australian farmers on a pilgrimage to Carroll two years ago, he tells me.)
In the middle of his cornfield, holding a handful of loamy, black soil, Brandt explains that he habitually tests his dirt for organic matter. When he began renting this particular field two seasons before, its organic content stood at 0.25 percent – a pathetic reading in an area where, even in fields farmed conventionally, the level typically hovers between 1 and 2 percent. In just two years of intensive cover cropping, this field has risen to 1.25 percent. Within 10 years of his management style, he adds, his fields typically reach as high as 4 percent, and with more time can exceed 5 percent.
Building up organic matter is critical to keeping the heartland humming as the climate heats up. The severe drought that parched the Corn Belt last year – as well as the floods that have roared through in recent years – are a harbinger of what the 2013 National Climate Assessment calls a “rising incidence of weather extremes” that will have “increasingly negative impacts” on crop yields in the coming decades.
As Ohio State soil scientist Rafiq Islam explains, Brandt’s legume cover crops, which trap nitrogen from the air and store it in nodules at their roots, allow him to grow nitrogen right on his farm, rather than importing it in the form of synthetic fertilizer. And the “complex biological systems” created by cover crops marginalize crop-chomping bugs and disease-causing organisms like molds – meaning fewer insecticides and fungicides.
Nor is Brandt any less productive than his chemical-intensive peers, Islam says. Quite the opposite. Brandt’s farm regularly achieves crop yields that exceed the county average, and during last year’s brutal drought, his yields were near the normal season average while other farmers saw yields drop 50 percent – or lost their crop entirely.
The morning after our field trip, we reconvene in Brandt’s barn to take in a series of simple soil demonstrations. I don’t say “we” lightly – by now, I’ve been more or less accepted into the NRCS crew’s soil geek club. At a table at the front of the room, an NRCS man dressed in country casual – faded jeans, striped polo shirt, baseball cap – drops five clumps of soil into water-filled beakers: three from farms managed like Brandt’s, with cover crops and without tillage, the others from conventional operations. The Brandt-style samples hold together, barely discoloring the water. The fourth one holds together too, but for a different reason: Unlike the no-till/cover-crop samples, which the water had penetrated, this one was so compacted from tillage that no water could get in at all. The fifth one disintegrates before our eyes, turning the water into a cloudy mess that the NRCS presenter compares to “last night’s beer.”
Other demos are equally graphic – including one that shows how water runs through Brandt’s gold-standard dirt as if through a sieve, picking up little color. In the conventional soil, it pools on top in a cloudy mess, demonstrating that the soil’s density, or compaction, can cause runoff. The presenter recalls a recent Des Moines Register articleabout how a wet spring caused a torrent of nitrogen runoff into the city’s drinking-water sources, prompting health concerns and expensive filtration efforts.
As I watch, I imagine the earnest agents fanning out across the Midwest to bring the good news about cover cropping and continuous no-till. And I wonder: Why aren’t these ways spreading like prairie fire, turning farmers into producers of not just crops but also rich, carbon-trapping soil resilient to floods and drought?
I put the question to Brandt. His own neighbors aren’t exactly rushing out to sell their tillers or invest in seeds, he admits – they see him not as a beacon but rather as an “odd individual in the area,” he says, his level voice betraying a hint of irritation. Sure, his yields are impressive, but federal crop payouts and subsidized crop insurance buffer their losses, giving them little short-term incentive to change. (For his part, Brandt refuses to carry crop insurance, saying it compels farmers “not to make good management decisions.”) Plus the old way is easier: Using diverse cover crops to control weeds and maintain fertility requires much more management, and more person-hours, than relying on chemicals. And the truth is, most farmers don’t see themselves as climate villains: Iowa State sociologists found that while 66 percent of farmers polled believed climate change was occurring, just 41 percent believed that humans had a hand in causing it.
Longer-term, though, Brandt does see hope. Over the next 20 years, he envisions a “large movement of producers” adopting cover crops and no-till in response to rising energy costs, which could make fertilizer and pesticides (synthesized from petroleum and natural gas), as well as tractor fuel, prohibitively expensive.
The NRCS’s Scarpitti concurs. He acknowledges that in Brandt’s corner of Ohio, the old saw that the “prophet isn’t recognized in his own hometown” largely holds, though a “handful” of farmers are catching on. Nationwide, he adds, “word’s getting out” as farmers like Brandt slowly show their neighbors that biodiversity, not chemicals, is their best strategy.
Sure enough, during the NRCS meeting, another local farmer stops by to pick up some cover-crop seeds. Keith Dennis, who farms around 1,500 acres of corn and soy in Brandt’s county, and who started using cover crops in 2011, says there are quite a few folks in the county watching what Brandt’s doing, “some of ‘em picking up on it.” Dennis has known about Brandt’s work with cover crops since he started in the 1970s. I have to ask: If he saw Brandt’s techniques working then, what took him so long to follow suit? “I had blinders on,” he answers, adding that he saw no reason to plant anything but corn and soybeans. “Now I’m able to see that my soil had been suffering severe compaction,” he says. “Because it wasn’t alive.”
One weird trick to fix farms forever | Grist
Sep 9, 2013
Changing Lands, Changing Hands | Harvest Public Media
The Aging of the American Farmer
Farmers are getting older.
They’re working longer, staying on the land later and continuing to do what they’ve done for decades: heading out day after day after day to work their land.
In 1978, the average age of the American farmer was just over 50. In 2007, it’s creeping toward 60, at just over 57-years-old. What does that mean for the agriculture industry? We want to answer that question by focusing on this massive demographic shift that affects not just rural America but the power and potential of an entire industry.
Television Documentary: Changing Lands, Changing Hands
Harvest reporter Grant Gerlock and his colleagues at NET Nebraska produced this television documentary that is airing on Public Television Stations across the region.
Changing Lands, Changing Hands | Harvest Public Media
Changing Lands, Changing Hands | Harvest Public Media
Sep 4, 2013
An Expert Explains the Maps of the Ogallala Aquifer on the Texas High Plains - YouTube
Published on Sep 4, 2013
This is an extended version of a 2010 interview we did with Lucia Barbato of the Texas Tech University Center for Geospatial Technology while filming a documentary about the courageous efforts of area producers (farmers), academic researchers, and local government agencies to extend the life of the Ogallala Aquifer. Lucia Barbato explains the various maps of the Texas High Plains region; the Ogallala Aquifer formed millions of years ago, and no longer has an effective recharge capacity. This finite, fossil water resource will one-day run dry.
Read the full post: http://cookingupastory.com/an-expert-...
An Expert Explains the Maps of the Ogallala Aquifer on the Texas High Plains - YouTube
How Cooking Can Change Your Life - Michael Pollan
Published on Sep 4, 2013
Renowned activist and author Michael Pollan argues that cooking is one of the simplest and most important steps people can take to improve their family's health, build communities, fix our broken food system, and break our growing dependence on corporations. The event was chaired by Tim Lang, professor of Food Policy at City University London.
To find out more about this talk, visit the event page on the RSA website: http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-an...
Listen to the podcast of the full event including audience Q&A:http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/f...
How Cooking Can Change Your Life - Michael Pollan - YouTube
Oak Wilt - U of IL Extension
Published on Sep 4, 2013
University of Illinois Extension Diagnostic Specialist, Stephanie Porter, examines/diagnoses an oak tree sample afflicted with wilt.
Links:
Oak Wilt - YouTube
Nectria Canker of Hardwoods
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