Environmental scientist Rachael Pierce and her team travel on airboats into the marshes around Lake Okeechobee. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Rachael Pierce has to shuffle her feet when she checks her snail traps... just to be sure she doesn’t surprise any alligators. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Pierce measuring an apple snail. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
We’ve spent billions of dollars
just trying to partially restore
the Everglades in Florida. Now,
there’s a struggle to save a bird
there that’s close to extinction.
It’s a raptor called the snail kite.
It’s becoming one of the symbols
for saving the Everglades. Rebecca
Williams has more:
Transcript
We’ve spent billions of dollars
just trying to partially restore
the Everglades in Florida. Now,
there’s a struggle to save a bird
there that’s close to extinction.
It’s a raptor called the snail kite.
It’s becoming one of the symbols
for saving the Everglades. Rebecca
Williams has more:
The snail kite eats pretty much only one thing – a snail called the apple snail.
The apple snail’s been disappearing – partly because of people messing with water levels in the Everglades for farming and cities.
Scientist Rachael Pierce and her team have raised apple snails in the lab and let them go in a marsh at the edge of Lake Okeechobee. Now they need them to stick around and have babies.
“It’s unlikely the snail kites will come back here to this marsh because we haven’t released that many snails. But in the future when we scale this up we do hope to start seeing snail kites.”
The survival of the snail kite depends on this working. And, some people say, if the snail kite goes extinct, things won’t look good for the restoration of the Everglades.
Foraging for fruit from people’s yards is one thing. Foraging for fruit in people’s alleys, another. Woody Sandberg says he avoids foraging in alleys where people conduct business. (Photo by Louise Baker)
The foragers don’t stop with fruit. They forage and dumpster dive and scavenge so habitually that during the short mapping ride they also found (and took) a clipboard, a pair of gloves, and a bread pan laying on the side of the road. (Photo by Louise Baker)
Woody Sandberg stares into a tree with fruit he does not recognize. He sampled the fruit and still wasn’t sure, so he took a picture of the tree, then rode off. (Photo by Louise Baker)
Woody Sandberg squeezes a foraged lemon into his water bottle. (Photo by Louise Baker)
With everybody looking for ways to save money, free food has never looked better. Devin Browne followed around a group of people who forage for fruit in the city. They look for fruit trees on private and public property to see what they can grab:
Transcript
With everybody looking for ways to save money, free food has never looked better. Devin Browne followed around a group of people who forage for fruit in the city. They look for fruit trees on private and public property to see what they can grab:
It’s perfectly legal here in Los Angeles to pick fruit from trees that are planted on private property as long as the fruit drops into a public space — like a sidewalk or an alley.
There are rules, though, to proper, legal urban foraging and the group Fallen Fruit knows them well. Woody Sandberg is with the group.
“You’re not allowed to reach across someone’s fence. You’re not allowed to reach into someone’s yard. You’re not allowed to crawl up people’s fences or lean ladders on their fences.”
Most of the people in Fallen Fruit ride bikes, sometimes mopeds. A lot of them carry fruit pickers on their back like you might carry a bow and arrow. There’s something almost primal in the way they all look together, fanning out into the street like a band of hunter/gatherers in search of fresh food.
(sound of street and birds)
“We’re looking for trees or any thing that produces food that hangs over the fence so we can pick it and eat it.”
Sandberg’s not actually picking fruit today – he’s just finding the best places to forage.
Later, they’ll go on a harvest ride. Then they’ll make jam and juice and beer with the fruit they’ve found. Today, the mission is just to make maps of where the trees are.
“Over here we got nopalitos and a lime and some nasturiums.”
People sitting on their porches seem not to mind at all when the group stops outside their house. No one in Fallen Fruit can remember a time when a fruit tree owner yelled or screamed or tried to kick ‘em off the sidewalk.
(sound of foragers giving directions to each other)
Which none of the foragers seem surprised by. Fallen Fruit is highly convinced of their mission. Part of this sense of legitimacy comes from the fact that the group originally conceived of itself in biblical terms.
The name Fallen Fruit even comes from a verse in Leviticus: “You shall not pick your vineyard bare or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.”
The founders also thought that cities should start planting fruit trees in public spaces, instead of thirsty, frivolous plants.
But fruit trees are oddly political. And city officials say there are reasons why they do not and will not plant them in public space.
The first reason LA’s Chief Forrester, George Gonzalez, gave had to do with people tripping and falling on fruit & then suing the city.
“One of the main reasons is a potential liability from fruit—fruit drop.”
He also said that trends in tree-planting have changed and they like to plant hearty , drought-resistant trees now.
“Also, fruit trees require more water.”
And then, there are the rats.
“Rodents love fruit trees… yes.”
Still, the City regularly gives away fruit trees to people who want to plant them in their yards.
It’s part of the mayor’s Million Trees LA pledge. Like Sandberg, Gonzalez sees fruit trees on private space as a way to benefit the public good.
“Cause when they look at a map and see it dotted everywhere with fruit trees hanging over the fence I think its going to blow people’s minds about how much food is out there. Because the current mindset is that food is in the grocery store.”
It’s a mindset not even the most dedicated of fruit foragers can escape.
After the mapping mission, Woody Sandberg left on his bike for the supermarket, because, he says, unfortunately chocolate soymilk doesn’t grow on trees.
Follow the 'turn it off' advice and save, on average, $75 a year.
(Source: Julo at Wikimedia Commons)
The average personal computer is a real energy guzzler. Only about half of the power it
uses makes videogames run, or music play, or run office software. The other half goes
up in wasted heat. Shawn Allee found out there are energy-saving PCs, but maybe using
the computer correctly can save the most power and money:
Transcript
The average personal computer is a real energy guzzler. Only about half of the power it
uses makes videogames run, or music play, or run office software. The other half goes
up in wasted heat. Shawn Allee found out there are energy-saving PCs, but maybe using
the computer correctly can save the most power and money:
I want a peek at some energy-saving PCs, so I head to a Best Buy electronics store.
“We’re heading to the computers.”
“Yes.”
I’m with a store manager. He wants me to use his first name, Tim.
Shawn: “When people come to the store, what’s usually the thing they’re asking
about or looking for in their PC?”
Tim: “First thing they look for is memory and hard drive space, that’s pretty much
it, and price.”
Shawn: “So it’s like, what can this thing do, and how much is this gonna cost me?”
Tim: “Exactly.”
Shawn: “How often is it the case someone comes in and says, Tim, which one saves
the most energy?”
Tim: “I have never heard that question asked.”
Shawn: “How long you been doing this?”
Tim: “I’ve been with Best Buy for five years.”
And you know, when I ask shoppers about energy consumption and computers, I just get
blank stares.
Well, Tim’s got several computers that have thumb-sized Energy Star labels.
Energy Star rated computers cut energy use by a third, and they usually cost the same as
comparable models.
This can save an average user maybe $25 a year in energy costs.
There are people who say that’s not enough.
You can actually save three times that by using PCs right.
One guy making this case is Pat Tiernan. He directs the Climate Savers Computing
Initiative, a computer industry group.
Tiernan says no matter how you get a PC – new or hand-me down …
“Make sure power management settings are aggressively set.”
Those are in the computer’s control panel settings.
Tiernan wants people to give power-settings the once-over, just to make certain the
computer can detect when you’re not using it.
“It puts it into a lower energy state like sleep mode.”
That’s if you don’t use the computer for fifteen minutes.
That’s the biggest energy saver.
Tiernan’s next tip is to simply turn off the machine when you’re not using it.
“It’s funny to me, people don’t just leave their cars on when they’re done with them,
right? They don’t leave them running in the garage or on the street. Yet, most
people in the U.S. leave their devices on in one form or another.”
Now, Tiernan says, there’s turning off a machine and there’s really turning off a machine.
“Even though you’ve turned many devices off on your household doesn’t mean
they’re not using power.”
Tiernan says computers always sip a little electricity out of your wall socket.
Printers, computer speakers and monitors can, too.
“Put your devices on a power strip. Flip that switch off and you’ll be doing yourself
and the environment a benefit.”
Now, there are critics of turning off your PC.
Shawn: “I have heard in the past that turning your desktop on and off again is hard
on your hard drive, though.”
Tiernan: “Well, a hard drive is and spinning up and spinning down throughout its
entire use. Does it put added wear on your hard drive? It really depends. Depending
on what you have loaded on it, your disk may be spinning up and down anyway, so
there’s a good argument to be made that turning it shutting it down for 8 hours that
you sleep may be better.”
So, what’s the bottom line if you follow Tiernan’s ‘turn it off’ advice for your PC?
On average, you could save $75 a year.
You can save even more if you use an Energy Star model.
But Tiernan says cutting power doesn’t just help your bottom line.
He says there’re more than a billion PCs on the market.
Cutting their power use can take a bite out of climate change.
If you find a wooden apple like this one in a Vermont orchard, you can turn it in for a free iPod (Photo courtesy of the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing)
An apple tree at the Shelburne Orchards in Vermont (Photo by Megan J. Humphrey)
Fall is in full swing, and in the
northern states, what better way to appreciate
the time of year than to go apple picking?
It’s the fall thing to do, right? Well, not
for everyone. Lulu Miller reports:
Transcript
Fall is in full swing, and in the
northern states, what better way to appreciate
the time of year than to go apple picking?
It’s the fall thing to do, right? Well, not
for everyone. Lulu Miller reports:
“Ooh that’s perfect! Perfect fall day. Little Chill in the air.”
That’s orchard owner Nick Cowles and we’re here with him at his orchard.
“Beautiful apple!”
Shelburne Orchards. Near Burlington Vermont.
“Looks out over Lake Champlain.”
And to hear him to tell it, an afternoon spent apple picking is pretty much as
good as it gets.
“Yeah. There’s something about gathering food with your family that’s primal
almost. I see people show up in their cars. The dad, the face is a little pinched. He
had to get the kids in the car. They didn’t really wanna come. His whole life is
stress. And then by the time, the difference in the face when he’s leavin’, it’s just
a whole different face.”
Everyone’s dream weekend, right?
Well. Not exactly. There is one group of people who just aren’t all that thrilled
about fall leaves and apple picking.
“Well yeah. The demographics of Vermont are a little scary right now. We have
the least number of folks in there 20s in the country.”
That’s Bruce Hyde, Commissioner of Tourism for the state of Vermont. He says
the 20-somethings are missing.
“I can understand after going to one of the great colleges we have in a rural state,
that a lot of folks wanna go and experience the big cities and sow their oats.”
And so, as the guy in charge of tourism, Bruce has a mission.
“We’re really trying to attract more young people to the state of Vermont.”
And here’s what he’s up against.
Lulu Miller: “Just wondering if you guys have any plans to go apple picking this
season?”
Student: “Not really. I’m not really into apples.”
Miller: “No?”
Student: “My age? It’s kind of about the debauchery. Sleeping in on Saturdays.
Not going apple picking with the folks. You know?”
I’m talking to college students in a park near New York University.
Student: “It’s not something that I would hear my friends being like, ‘can’t hang
out on Saturday! Going apple picking!’ I just can’t imagine that coming out of
their mouths.”
So what’s a commissioner of tourism to do?
“We were trying to figure out, what’s a way to get more young people into the
orchards? So we came up with an idea. A cute little idea.”
If apples just weren’t enticing enough to lure people to Vermont, Comissioner
Hyde thought, maybe there’s something else they’d prefer to find in the trees.
Like…
“An iPod!”
That’s right in the apple trees of Vermont.
“Macintosh. Courtlans. Red delicious.”
You can find iPods.
“Nano’s. A couple of touch’s. And the just the classic iPod.”
Now they’re not actually dangling from the trees.
“What we did is we made up wooden apples. They have the state seal on them.”
And if you find that, you can turn it and get an ipod.
“Yeah. And it really has brought a lot of people into the orchards. We haven’t
done any kinda survey. But the response I’ve heard from orchards is they’ve
never seen so few apples left on the trees.”
Orchard owner Nick Cowles agrees.
“Lotta people know about it, have heard about it. ‘Come on mom, lets go look
for the iPod!’ It’s a great program. It does what it set out to do. It really helps the
orchards. They’ve been very smart to do this.”
So what do the college students think?
Student: (laughs) “They’res gonna be iPods with apples!? No way!”
Miller: “Would that make you go? Would it up the ante at all?”
Student: “It absolutely does. I would definitely go apple picking if there was a
chance I could stumble across an iPod.”
But not all of them feel that way, in fact many of them pointed out that luring
people with iPods sounds so wrong. Kinda grinds against the notion of getting
people out into nature.
“Does that feel wrong? No.”
Orchard owner Nick Cowles.
“In my estimation, anything that brings families together, outside, doing
something like that – it doesn’t get any better than that. They’re out in the
orchard, runnin’ around, picking apples – that’s healthy. They’re doin’ it as a
family.”
Apple grower Jim Koan has discovered that baby pigs are best for taking care
of fallen wormy apples in his orchard. He says they have very tender noses.
The adult pigs like to root around in the dirt and tend to tear up the
orchard. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Jim Koan's Berkshire pigs, enjoying the early spring mud. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Berkshire pigs like to investigate visitors. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Some of the guinea fowl that Jim Koan first tried to use to tackle the apple
pest, plum curculio. It was working, until hawks found out the orchard
was full of tasty little birds. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Jim Koan says being an organic grower means thinking ahead. Once you have
an infestation - it's too late. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
There are a lot of insects that love to eat
apples. A harmful insecticide that kills some of
those pests is being phased out. So farmers are
looking for other solutions. Rebecca Williams visits
an apple grower who’s counting on pigs to get some
help with his pest problem:
Transcript
There are a lot of insects that love to eat
apples. A harmful insecticide that kills some of
those pests is being phased out. So farmers are
looking for other solutions. Rebecca Williams visits
an apple grower who’s counting on pigs to get some
help with his pest problem:
(farm animal sounds – turkeys, etc)
The spring rains have started, and at Jim Koan’s pig pen that means mud.
(sound of shoes squishing in mud and piggy snorts)
Of course, these pigs don’t really seem to mind that.
“These Berkshires, you can see, are really friendly, they’re just coming
right up to you.”
Jim Koan really likes his pigs. That’s because he’s hoping the pigs will
take care of one of his worst pests. It’s a beetle called the plum
curculio. In early spring the beetles lay eggs in the little green apples.
The larvae hatch and eat the apples from the inside out.
Then the tree drops the bad wormy apples on the ground. And the worms just
keep on eating.
For a long time, farmers used an insecticide called azinphos-methyl to kill
the beetles. But the Environmental Protection Agency is phasing it out.
That’s because the EPA says the pesticide is very toxic to some wildlife and
it can make farm workers sick.
Jim Koan hasn’t used the pesticide for 10 years, ever since he became an
organic grower. So for years now he’s been trying to find a perfect
predator to stop the beetle larvae.
The chickens were too lazy. Hawks ate the guinea fowl that he tried.
So, finally, Koan says he had a flashback. His grandpa used to have hogs in
the orchard.
“When I would climb up to go up in the tree in the summertime to get a green
apple to eat all the hogs would come running over there and my granddad
always told me you stay away from those hogs they’ll eat you up! I’d be
really scared and be up there for an hour or two until the hogs left again.”
(laughs)
Koan says he knows now that the hogs were just hoping for a snack. So last
year he decided to buy some hogs and see if they would eat the wormy apples
on the ground. He says baby pigs worked best.
“And they’d just go up one row gleaning it, kinda like little vacuum
cleaners (makes sucking sound) and suck up all the apples!”
Koan says the baby pigs ate 98% of the fallen apples with beetle
larvae in them. But he still needed to know that the beetles were actually
gone, so they wouldn’t come back to attack his apples next year.
That job
was up to researchers at Michigan State University. Koan says they fed a
mix of beetle larvae and apples to pigs on campus.
“Then they put diapers on the hogs – truly, diapers!! It was unbelievable.
They took special superglue and velcroed it on their butt so then when they
defecated they caught all that. Then they took these poor students and made
them go through there and wash all that and look for worms.”
Koan says out of 200 worms that were fed to the pigs, they only found one
worm at the other end. That means, so far it looks like pigs are a
pretty good predator.
But the researchers don’t want to let pigs run wild – just yet. David
Epstein is the lead researcher on the project.
“Jim and I are scheming all the time. I have great expectations that this
could be a good management tool in the future but we have to figure out how
to do it properly.”
Epstein says they need to make sure the pigs don’t cause any contamination
problems. Something like E. coli. He says so far there isn’t any
evidence of that, but it’s the kind of thing you have to be sure about.
If this all goes well, the farmer and the scientist will be writing a book
together. It’ll be sort of a self-help book: getting pigs to take care of
what’s bugging you.
Environmental groups are back in
court to challenge the use of the main pesticide
used in growing cherries and apples. Bob Allen
reports the environmentalists had set aside their
lawsuit while waiting for EPA to issue new rules
for applying the chemical during a phase-out period:
Transcript
Environmental groups are back in
court to challenge the use of the main pesticide
used in growing cherries and apples. Bob Allen
reports the environmentalists had set aside their
lawsuit while waiting for EPA to issue new rules
for applying the chemical during a phase-out period:
Azinphos-Methyl or AZM is a highly toxic chemical that
affects the nervous system. Last November, EPA released
stricter rules for applying it and they gave apple and
cherry growers another six years to phase it out.
Environmental groups say that’s much too long, and they’ve
taken up their suit again.
Shelley Davis is with Farmworker Justice. She says EPA was
supposed to weigh the cost to growers against the health
risks to workers and their families.
“The problem here is that EPA didn’t do that. All it did
was total up the financial benefit to the growers. And
that’s what we said to the court is not a fair deal.”
Regulators say growers need more time to learn to use
alternative pesticides.
Farm museums like this one are sometimes the only remnant of the agricultural life that has been overrun by development. However, some communities are buying farmers' development rights in an effort to save the rural landscape. (Photo by Lester Graham)
One way to keep farms from becoming subdivisions is to pay the farmers to never build on their land. This has been happening on the east and west coasts for decades. But it’s just now beginning to catch on in the Great Lakes region. In the second of a two part series on farmers and the decisions they make about their land, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette takes us to a place where local government is paying to keep land in agriculture:
Transcript
One way to keep farms from becoming subdivisions is to pay the farmers to never
build on their land. This has been happening on the east and west coasts for
decades. But it’s just now beginning to catch on in the Great Lakes region. In
the second of a two part series on farmers and the decisions they make about
their land, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette takes us to a place
where local government is paying to keep land in agriculture:
Whitney Lyon’s farm has been in his family for more than a century. He has 100
acres of cherry and apple trees. The orchards are on a peninsula that stretches
fourteen miles across a bay in Northern Lake Michigan. His farm is about a half
mile from the clear blue water that attracts thousands of tourists here every
year.
Lyon says real estate agents love his property.
“We run clean back to the bay on the north side… that’s view property. It’s
worth 30, 40,000 bucks an acre.”
But it’s not worth that much anymore. The rights to build houses on the Lyon farm have
been sold. The way this works is this: the Lyon’s keep the land, but they get paid
for the real estate value they give up to keep the land as a farm instead of house
sites.
(sound of apple picking)
There’s a thick fog across the peninsula today. Whitney Lyon is picking apples. His
wife Mary is inside watching kids. Mary says the day they sold the development
rights was the best day in their thirty years of farm life. She says she knew they’d
be able to stay on the land. And because of the money they made, she downsized her
daycare business.
“The big change, especially the last two or three years, I no longer just buy stuff
from just garage sales. I have actually been spending money on purchasing things for
the house. Which previously, everything came from garage sales.”
Many of the Lyon’s neighbors have sold their development rights as well. For ten
years, the township government has raised money to buy those rights with an additional
property tax. Almost no other community in the Midwest has a program like this. But,
if approved by voters, five more townships in this area might also start programs after
the November elections. Each township is separately asking voters to approve a property tax.
The American Farmland Trust has helped the townships design the program. The group is
excited because this would provide an example of local governments joining together to
protect farmland. Farmland Trust’s President Ralph Grossie flew in for a campaign event.
In a speech, Grossie told a crowd of about 100 people there’s a disconnect between farmers
and their communities. He says the community benefits from the farms while the farmers
struggle to make ends meet.
“We believe there is a middle ground here, there is a way to strike a deal between those
who manage our landscape – private farmers and ranchers, landowners – and those who
appreciate and benefit from that well-managed landscape. If you think about it, that’s
the heart of the property rights debate. Almost all those conflicts over property rights
are really about who pays for achieving a public goal on private land.”
Grossie says paying farmers with public money is the best option if a community wants to
keep farms. Otherwise, he says government forces farmers to pay when they give up profitable
uses of their land because of zoning laws. But a few in this crowd weren’t buying.
Some are opposed to more taxes on their homes or businesses so the township government can
write big checks to farmers. Others question if younger generations even want to farm.
(sound of noise from crowd)
And some are just plain suspicious of government. Roger Booth is talking to another
opponent of the propposal after the speech. Booth is explaining that when the right
to develop a piece of land is purchased, it’s gone forever. But he points out there
is one exception.
“Eminent domain. And who’s going to decide eminent domain has the right to take it? The
people in power of government at the time. Not today. Thirty years from now.”
Government also has an image problem because prominent local farmers often sit on the
town boards. It’s hard not to notice they could be the ones cashing in on the public treasury.
Critics also point out these programs tax farms to save farmland. And they say buying the
deveolopment rights does nothing to improve the business of farming. Supporters admit this
doesn’t guarantee future success for farms. But they say at least it gives the farmers a
chance to keep farming instead of selling to developers.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Peter Payette.
Along with the sights and sounds of autumn, there are certain
tastes associated with the season – like caramel apples, pumpkin pie, and
cider. But now, around the country, people are beginning to discover
another taste from the fall harvest. It’s "hard" cider, an alcoholic
drink made by fermenting ordinary apple cider. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Wendy Nelson reports on this growing industry:
Environmental scientist Rachael Pierce and her team travel on airboats into the marshes around Lake Okeechobee. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
