Heritage Hogs

  • Barbara Schaefer thinks locally raised heritage meat makes economic and environmental sense. (Photo by Lucy Martin)

Variety isn’t just the spice of life. You could say it is life. And you can’t have variety without lots and lots of genes.

Farmers have spent thousands of years developing livestock that do well in different conditions.

Modern agriculture usually concentrates on just a few breeds that maximize profit. But a lot of people don’t want to see all the valuable genes in older breeds just disappear.

Lucy Martin visited a farmer who says the future needs to include heirlooms from the past:

Transcript

Variety isn’t just the spice of life. You could say it is life. And you can’t have variety without lots and lots of genes.

Farmers have spent thousands of years developing livestock that do well in different conditions.

Modern agriculture usually concentrates on just a few breeds that maximize profit. But a lot of people don’t want to see all the valuable genes in older breeds just disappear.

Lucy Martin visited a farmer who says the future needs to include heirlooms from the past.

(Schaefer entering barn: “Watch your head, it’s a little mucky in here…”)

It’s a bright winter day, inside a classic red barn in Southern Ontario. We’re admiring docile animals whose name says it all: Large Black Pig. They look fine. Even though this pig is listed as critically endangered.

Schaefer: Sometimes you’ll be standing here and you think there are no piglets and suddenly one rises out of the straw!

(Sound of contented grunting)

Barbara Schaefer used live in Toronto. Until a few years ago, her career revolved around managing environmental projects. But when she got laid off, she decided to put theory into practice.

Schaefer: I can’t save the polar bear, but I can save this breed. How many things can you say that about? And that’s why what I’m doing now is 200 times more relevant.

What she’s doing now, is weaving different environmental threads together. Preserving the genetic diversity of rare livestock. Putting marginal land to higher use. Trying to revitalize rural economies. Offering an alternative to factory farming.

Nearly all commercial pork across North America comes from just a few main breeds, usually reared in confinement systems. A lot of science goes into maximizing production. But Schaefer doesn’t think that’s the whole picture.

Schaefer: They’re packed in fairly close, they don’t get the benefit of being outside in the sunlight. They have a artificial concrete floor, which for them, is a horror. Because these guys think with their nose, they want to be turning things up all the time and there’s no opportunity for that.

(Sounds of distant tractor and more pigs grunting)

In the barn yard, I mingle with small herds of thigh-high, curious pigs as they as they mill about, soaking up sun. Some amble over to near-by pastures for naps inside cosy hay huts.

Schaefer’s customers include local restaurants and ‘foodies’, people who like to cook and eat.

Fans admire heritage breeds because these animals were bred to thrive in the specific conditions of small-scale, local agriculture.

Lawrence: They’re rustic, they’re hardy, they’re often good mothers.

Ted Lawrence has spent years on this cause with Rare Breeds Canada. Some really admire the animals. And then there’s the whole ‘insurance’ argument: odd breeds have genes worth keeping. As base stock for even newer breeds, to adapt to changes in climate, or to survive some epidemic.

Lawrence: Food security, that will turn heads more quickly than saying we have to preserve the genetic diversity of minor breeds.

If these animals are special, why slaughter them?

Lawrence: That is actually a slogan that has been used in Great Britain: ‘We must eat them to save them’. It sounds counter-intuitive but what’s the purpose of breeding them if you can’t make any money, if you can’t sell them? Then the genetics will not continue. The breed will go extinct.

(kitchen clatter and music playing at Murray Street Restaurant)

Chef Steve Mitton co-owns a restaurant in Ottawa which features Schaefer’s pork. He’d hate to see old breeds die out.

Mitton: I mean, I get entire animals in and break them down from head to toe, and we use every last bit of it. The yield of the Large Black, in particular, is outstanding.

Mitton says more and more people care about where their food comes from and how animals are treated.

Mitton: I just want to broaden their horizons, open people’s minds a little bit, so they know that this is out there. And it’s just as good as commercial pork.

Most meat eaters have no idea what breed of animal ends up on their plate. But making sure there are lots of breeds around can help keep those plates full, and tasty.

For the Environment Report, I’m Lucy Martin in Ontario.

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Pint-Sized Power Plants

  • (Photo courtesy of Hyperion)

Most nuclear power plants are huge
multi-billion-dollar operations that take
ten years to build. But they can be much
smaller. Lester Graham reports on a company
that’s planning hot-tub sized reactors:

Transcript

Most nuclear power plants are huge
multi-billion-dollar operations that take
ten years to build. But they can be much
smaller. Lester Graham reports on a company
that’s planning hot-tub sized reactors:

It’s difficult to get political and financial backing for building big nuclear power plants.
But one company plans to build miniature nuclear reactors.

John Deal is the CEO of Hyperion.

He says the small reactor invented at the Los Alamos National Laboratory could be
useful for isolated areas. It could also be used by smaller cities to provide most of
their power needs.

“You might have a community of 20, 30, 40 thousand people and they can have their
own power plant. And then they might feed back their excess or draw down from
some centralized facility for when they’ve got power spikes or peak demand.”

There’s a lot of interest. But for right now Hyperion is not taking orders for the mini-
nukes from Western nations. Deal says Hyperion is first trying to bring power to
isolated areas in the developing world.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Saving Farmland From Sprawl

  • DeKalb County, close to Chicago in Illinois, is facing rapid urban sprawl. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Some counties near big cities are trying to save farmland from being developed into sprawling suburbs. Lester Graham reports the problem is finding money to fund programs that would preserve the rural character of an area:

Transcript

Some counties near big cities are trying to save farmland from being developed into
sprawling suburbs. Lester Graham reports the problem is finding money to fund
programs that would preserve the rural character of an area:


The real value of land as farmland is a lot less than what a developer will pay for the land
to use it to build strip malls, big box retail stores, or subdivisions of wallboard mansions.
Farmers are tempted to sell when it means they’d make more money off the land selling it
to developers than they would farming for the rest of their lives, but many feel they’re forced into the situation. They don’t really want to give up life on
the farm. They just feel they’d be foolish to keep farming when they could make so much
money selling to a developer.


Some counties that want to preserve the rural character of their area are putting together a program
that helps farmers by paying them some of that difference between farmland value and
development value. It’s called the purchase of development rights.


Usually, local governments, sometimes state, pay farmers to waive that right to develop
the land forever. No one can build on it. The land has to be kept as open space.


There are lots of reasons state, county and city and township governments might want to
do that. Some politicians want to make sure their communities continue to be surrounded
by scenic green space. Some want to preserve the rural character of their community.
Some want to make sure they have a source for locally grown food.


Scott Everett is with the American Farmland Trust. He says it can come down to simple
economics. Some politicians like purchase of development rights for lower taxes:


“Because we won’t have to add public services. Cows don’t go to school. Chickens don’t
dial 9-1-1. Corn, wheat and soybeans need a lot less fire and police protection than
residential development.”


Everett says purchase of development rights is a long term plan and if a county sees its
farmland might be threatened in the future, it better get busy now:


“In an urban-influenced county, you know, there’s a county next door to a big
metropolitan area maybe like Chicago, one of the things that really ought to be happening
to counties that are next to that county is some planning needs to take place. It
takes a very long time for a purchase of development rights program to take ahold.”


We found a place that fits that description exactly. DeKalb County is on the fringes of
the Chicago metropolitan area. The counties between it and the city are seeing incredible
development pressures. Farmland is being gobbled up at a rate almost unparalleled in the
nation. DeKalb County is trying to draw a line that would stop urban sprawl and allow only
carefully planned growth.


Pat Vary is a DeKalb County board member. She’s watched as counties closer to
Chicago have gone from farmland to urban sprawl in almost no time. She doesn’t want that to happen to
DeKalb County and she says most of the towns don’t want that:


“Most of the municipalities have said, ‘We want to grow this far, but we want to keep
green space around us and we don’t want to go much further than that.’ There’s lots of
pressure from developers right now.”


Vary, who’s also a biologist, says as the population grows and farmland is lost, she sees a
moment in the future where land that produces food is going to be a lot more valuable
than it is today:


“I really think that in about thirty years, forty years from now, that an acre of farmland in
DeKalb County will be worth more than an acre of downtown Chicago. You can’t eat
buildings. You can’t eat pavement. People are going to need to eat. I really believe it’s
critical, it’s vital to do something fairly fast.”


But, as we heard earlier, it takes a while to get a purchase of development rights program
rolling. It has to be funded, usually from several levels of government, and then you
have to persuade farmers that dedicating their land to only growing crops is the right
thing to do.


Scott Everett with American Farmland Trust says successful purchase of
development rights start out slowly, but gain popularity after everyone sees how it works:


“It’s one of these programs where once one farmer does it, the other farmers next door
and the neighboring farmers really start taking a look at it and saying to themselves ‘You
know, if they’re going to make the commitment, I will, too.'”


But Everett warns, if your county is one of those urban-influenced counties, if a
purchase of development rights program isn’t put in place and funded soon, your
farmland will be gobbled up by gridlock, strip malls, and dotted with residential suburbs
that often cost the government more in infrastructure and additional services than the new
real estate taxes will ever pay for.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Untapped Power in Offshore Wind Turbines?

  • Developers want to put wind turbines in offshore locations like Lake Ontario and off the coast of Massachusetts. (Photo by David Orsborne)

The U.S. Department of Energy wants 20 percent of the country’s electricity supply to eventually come from wind power. Some of that power could come from wind turbines located on the water. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports some power companies are hesitating:

Transcript

The U.S. Department of Energy wants 20 percent of the country’s
electricity supply to eventually come from wind power. Some of that
power could come from wind turbines located on the water. The
GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports some power companies are hesitating:


Until recently, the strength of the wind on the water was mainly of
interest to the shipping industry, anglers, and to people who like
to sail.


(Sound of sail ruffling and folding)


Lee Konczak is folding up the sail on a small sailboat that he often
takes out into Lake Michigan. Konczak says he likes the serenity of
riding on the wind and the beautiful view from offshore. Even so, he
says he wouldn’t mind if the view included a few wind turbines:


“With energy certainly being at the top of the news practically on a
daily basis right now, and with limited resources, I think an
experimental kind of thing with wind turbines would be excellent.”


Some wind power companies are planning more than a small
experiment. An effort is underway to put up 140 wind turbines in Lake
Ontario and another developer wants a wind farm off the coast of
Massachusetts. The industry would like to develop more projects. It
says the US is behind some European countries when it comes to
going offshore for wind. Compared to the US, European countries are
short on fossil fuel supplies and they don’t have as much land. So
they began placing turbines offshore a few years ago.


John Dunlop is with the American Wind Energy Association. He says the land-based
wind turbines in the US and Canada are important but often trigger local
disputes over new overhead transmission lines. Dunlop says lake-based
wind turbines would avoid some political squabbles by being close to
many cities:


“We enjoy living next to water, so consequently our population centers
tend to be close to the water which means a lake-based installation
may be no more than 10-20 miles away from that load center. Now, to get
that energy, that electricity from that wind project back to the city
you do need to have underwater cabling, but that’s a fairly common
technology so that’s not a huge impediment or a huge cost.”


Several environmental groups are getting on board with the idea of
putting wind farms in waterways. Charlie Higley is with the Citizens’
Utility Board in Wisconsin. He says there are already many coal and
nuclear plants near the water:


“Both of those have huge environmental and economic costs
associated with them, so we’re supportive of the development of
wind, not only on land but we really think the time is now to
start looking at developing wind resources on Lake Michigan.”


Higley acknowledges some people may not like the look of wind
turbines if they’re installed within view of the shoreline. Other
supporters concede there also needs to be more study of wind speeds
over the water. They also say there needs to be a cheaper way to fix
turbines that break down in waters dozens of feet deep.


Walt Musial helps oversee offshore wind projects at the National Renewable Energy
Lab. He says getting to a turbine in water is no easy task:


“You can’t drive a truck, so you have to drive a boat, or perhaps a helicopter like they do
in Europe. These add costs as well, and so these methods of accessing turbines have to be
developed and minimized.”


Still, Musial says because the Energy Department’s long-term goal is
to promote more wind production, he predicts some of that wind power
will come from offshore. But for now, the uncertainties have many
power companies rooted in inland turbines.


Kim Zuhlke is with Alliant Energy. He says his firm prefers a place
like Iowa, where there are already 800 wind turbines and a
desire from public officials to have more:


“You couple the acceptance, the economic growth, existing
transmission, all of those things together make it a logical place
for us to go.”


Still, Zuhlke says offshore wind turbines in the U.S. may become
a reality. He says engineers have to perfect a turbine that provides a big
enough payback for the additional expense of putting something way out in
the water.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach

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Illuminating How Plants Use Light

Scientists say changes for agriculture could be in store,
now that they’ve come up with a detailed map of how plants react to light. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

Scientists say changes for agriculture could be in store, now that they’ve come up with a detailed
map of how plants react to light. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Researchers have been trying for decades to get extensive details on how plants use light to
develop. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have come up with a blueprint of
how light tells a plant to germinate, grow and flower.


Plant geneticist Richard Vierstra says corn could be dramatically changed if light-sensitive
molecules called phytocromes can be re-engineered and introduced.


“If we could minimize how phytocromes work …in a cornfield, we could minimize them trying to
compete with each other for light, and so that they would hopefully expend more energy making seeds
rather than making stalks and taller plants which eventually fall over.”


Vierstra says more testing is needed before the photochemical properties of the plant molecules
can be changed. But he says the new map will tell scientists exactly what to do. The research
was published in a recent issue of the journal Nature.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Part 1: Selling the Family Farm to Developers

  • A former farm field in Central Ohio ready for development. It's an increasingly common sight in this area. This land is right next door to a dairy. Worried about his new neighbors, the farmer is planning to sell. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

In the Great Lakes region, farmland is rapidly being developed into homes, office parks and shopping centers. Nationally, farmland is lost at a rate of more than 9-thousand acres a day. But in order for this development to happen, someone has to sell their land. In the first of a two-part series on farmers and the decisions they make about their land, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamara Keith introduces us to some farmers who have made the difficult choice to sell:

Transcript

In the Great Lakes region, farmland is rapidly being developed into homes, office parks
and shopping centers. Nationally, farmland is lost at a rate of more than nine-thousand
acres a day. But in order for this development to happen, someone has to sell their
land. Tamara Keith introduces us to some farmers who have made that difficult choice:


At a busy intersection in a newly suburban area, a red barn and white house sit back
off the road. Lush green pasture land hugs the old farm buildings. But the days are
numbered for this bucolic scene.


(sound of construction)


Across the street dozens of condos are under construction… and farmer Roy Jackson has
put this 216-acre farm in Central Ohio under option for development. As soon as the
developer gets approval to build, Jackson’s farm will be no more.


“I’m a third generation farmer and you put your roots down and to see your land be
developed is something I have seen coming, but to actually see it happen across the
road; it’s a sad thing, but it’s progress.”


Sitting on his front porch, Jackson looks our on a neighborhood where once there were farms.


Jackson: “At one point we farmed over 1500 acres and now we’re down to about 300.”


Keith: “What happened?”


Jackson: “We’ve lost a lot of it to development. In the estate of my mom and dad
we had to sell that to settle the estate and that was part of it as well.”


Like many in agriculture, Jackson didn’t own all the land he farmed. He was leasing
it and when the owner decided to sell for development, Jackson was out of luck. Now
he says there’s not enough land left to farm profitably.


“I have a son that wants to farm with me and to do it here, there just isn’t enough
land to sustain two families and make a living for both.”


So, he’s found a big piece of land down in Kentucky, in an area where land is still
plentiful and development pressures are distant. He’s leasing it with an option to buy.
Soon Jackson and his son will have the cattle ranch they’ve been planning for years.
It just won’t be in the state where his family has farmed for three generations.


(sound of heavy machinery)


Workers operate backhoes to grade the ground in an open field that will eventually
be home to some seven-thousand people in a new development. Retired farmer and
agriculture educator Dick Hummel recently sold a portion of this land, allowing
the project to move forward.


“I had some people critical of me because I was going to sell farmland, but on
the other hand, I really didn’t. I traded. You just have to accept that in this
community because that’s what’s going to happen. That’s what has happened. Plus
the fact, it’s been pretty tough farming and this has given a lot of farmers a
chance to sell some land for some excellent prices.”


Hummel sold about 100 acres of farmland and bought some new land – 77 acres –
farther out in the country. His father had bought what Hummel calls the “home farm”
in 1935, and that family history weighed heavily on Hummel when he was deciding what
to do.


“It was harder to decide to sell that land because it had been in my family for many
generations than it was the agricultural part.”


His father bought the land for 100 dollars an acre and Hummel was able to sell it
for a whole lot more. Asked why he sold, Hummel’s answer is simple.


“The offer. I hadn’t thought about selling at all. I didn’t even know that they
would want any of this particular land ’till all at once there were others that
were selling for a price. I heard about that, and first thing I knew, a heck of
a lot of land in this area was selling. So you compare notes as to prices, et
cetera and so forth, and that’s how it happens.”


Hummel says he wasn’t pressured to sell. He’s well past retirement age, and
he says it was the right decision personally. And such is the case for most
farmers who sell their land for development, says Sara Nikolich, Ohio director
with American Farmland Trust.


“You’ve got acres of farmland that can be sold for 20, 30,000 dollars an acre at times.
For a lot of farmers that’s their retirement they’re sitting on, and when you have
development surrounding you and you don’t have any public policy to promote agriculture
and perhaps you don’t have any heirs, you don’t have any options available to you other
than development.”


And so, the personal decisions of individual farmers are transforming some of the
nation’s rural landscape into suburban landscapes.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamara Keith.

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Report: U.S. Not Ready for Bioterror Attack

  • Some see national struggles with the availability of the flu vaccine as a measure of our readiness for an act of bioterrorism. (Photo by Pamela Roth, courtesy of creatingonline.com)

A new study finds the nation is still not prepared for a biological terrorist attack… mainly because it could take us years to respond to it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:

Transcript

A new study finds the nation is still not prepared for a biological terrorist attack –
mainly because it could take us years to respond to it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Jenny Lawton reports:


The study found that viruses specially manufactured by terrorists – or even a rare, natural
virus – could be devastating to the country. That’s because as it stands now, it takes
nearly a decade to develop vaccines against them. Mark Lister is one of the authors of the
report, published by the Sarnoff Corporation and the Center for Biosecurity of the University
of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He says the recent scramble over the shortage of flu vaccines
just proves the point…


“If we are fairly ill-prepared for an annual flu vaccination process, how prepared are we
going to be if a bioterrorist event occurs on a large scale?”


Lister says the government needs to coordinate its efforts more closely with drug and
biotech companies. That, he says, could help new drugs of all kinds hit the market faster.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.

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The Right to Sprawl

Governments are trying to figure out the best way to deal with urban sprawl. Legislators and planners are considering all kinds of approaches to manage the growth of cities, but some say government really has no business trying to stop the market forces that are driving the rapid growth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the deeper debate between property rights and land use protection:

Transcript

Governments are trying to figure out the best way to deal with urban sprawl. Legislators and
planners are considering all kinds of approaches to manage the growth of cities. But, some say
government really has no business trying to stop the market forces that are driving the rapid
growth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the deeper debate
between property rights and land use protection:


Through the public process, states that are grappling with urban sprawl end up hearing from everyone involved. While the media and environmental groups tend to look at the
problems of congestion and loss of green space and farmland due to the rapid growth at the edges
of cities, others see the growth as driven by what people want – it’s natural growth, even organic. In
fact, many property owners, builders and developers, see government interference as “un-
American,” as testimony from this public hearing in Michigan shows.


“As an American, I strongly believe in our citizens’ rights to pursue life, liberty and property.”
“Centralized planning did not work in Russia, Cuba, North Korea or anywhere else they’ve
attempted it.” “Are we gonna mandate where they’re going to live? Is this gonna be America?”
“The land should be controlled by the individual who has paid for the land and pays the taxes on the land and should be able to do with that property what he wants to do.” “Our Constitution tells
us about the preservation of private property rights.”


There’s something deeply rooted in the American cultural ethic that bonds people to the land – or
more precisely – to their land. It might be leftovers of the concept of Manifest Destiny where,
in the words of one essayist, land ownership was associated with wealth and tied to self-
sufficiency, political power, and independent “self-rule.” This seems to be especially true of
people who live in rural areas, or are only a generation or two removed from the farm.


Amy Liu is with the think-tank, the ‘Brookings Institution.’ She says when states start looking at
growth management techniques, commonly called “Smart Growth,” landowners and builders
become suspicious.


“There is a belief that the government needs to get out of the way of the market. And so the idea
of having government intervene in the real estate market and consumer choice is considered un-
American.”


And property rights advocates quickly become dogmatic about their beliefs and resist any kind of
restrictions on use of land.


In the same way, some environmentalists consider sprawl to merely be a matter of greedy
developers and builders wanting to make money no matter what the cost to the environment,
green space, or farmland. They sometimes ignore the fact that consumer demand for larger lots
and larger houses, as well as convenient shopping, is much of the driving force behind urban
sprawl.


Liu says many on each side of the urban sprawl debate are inflexible.


“You know, I think that there are definitely reasons why the environmentalists can be extreme
and why the property rights advocates can be extreme.”


And generally, the two sides are talking right past each other.


Ann Woiwode is with the environmental group, the Sierra Club. She says the opponents of
“Smart Growth” say they don’t want government interference, but she says they don’t talk that
way when they’re in need of roads, fire protection, good schools, and other government services.
Woiwode says “Smart Growth” doesn’t mean unreasonable restrictions.


“I’m not trying to take anybody’s rights away and I don’t think that’s the appropriate approach.
What in any society part of being a society is that we collectively decide how we’re going to
make decisions that affect the entirety of the community.”


And while Woiwode and other environmentalists are in favor of making sure green space is
preserved, most of them acknowledge that growth is inevitable. They say they just want to make
sure it’s the right kind of growth.


Amy Liu at the Brookings Institution says not every growth management plan makes sense.
Some of them only look at benefiting the environment and ignore market forces, the desire that
many people have for a bit of land and a home to call their own.


“There are certainly growth management policies that don’t work, that strictly limit development-
growth boundaries and are therefore anti-growth. I think the growth management policies, the
Smart Growth policies that do work are those that really do try to anticipate and accommodate
growth in a metropolitan area in a way that is going to promote economic development, that is
fiscally sustainable, that is environmentally sustainable, and that actually allows low-income
working families and middle-class and upper-income families to enjoy that growth.”


And finding that balance in a world where politics and competing interests sometimes muddy the
best intentions will be the real trick, as states try to define what “Smart Growth” will mean for
people pursuing the American dream of owning their own home.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.