fertilizer - The Environment Report

Keeping Your Lawn From Bugging You

There's a movement to stop using pesticides and sprays on your lawn. (Photo courtesy of Horia Varlan CC-BY)

A lot of us have a love-hate relationship with our lawns. We love them when they’re lush. We hate them when they’re full of dandelions and dead patches. It’s easy to have someone come out and spray pesticides to take care of weeds and bugs. But some people say it’s not necessary and could do more harm than good. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

A lot of us have a love-hate relationship with our lawns. We love them when they’re lush. We hate them when they’re full of dandelions and
dead patches. It’s easy to have someone come out and spray pesticides to take care of weeds and bugs. But some people say it’s not necessary and could
do more harm than good. Rebecca Williams reports:

So, you might be using pesticides on your lawn right now. And of
course, the pesticide industry says that’s okay.

The industry says the chemicals are safe to use on the lawn if you use
them correctly.

Alan James is president of Responsible Industry for a Sound
Environment, or RISE. It’s a trade group for pesticide companies.

“If individuals or professional applicators read the labels and follow
labels, the likelihood of misuse of pesticides is virtually zero because the
labels provide all the information a consumer or professional needs to
apply products both efficiently and safely.”

But the problem is, not everybody reads the label.

Alan James says if you’re hiring someone to spray your lawn you should
make sure they’re certified and insured. You should also take your kids’
and pet’s toys off the lawn before they spray.

But a lot of people say there’s no point in using chemicals just to make
your lawn look good.

Jay Feldman is with the group Beyond Pesticides. He says of the 30
most common lawn pesticides, most of them are suspected by the
Environmental Protection Agency to cause cancer, birth defects or other health problems.

“There’s a range of adverse effects that are indicated as a part of the
pesticide registration program at EPA. EPA knows this information.
Why not remove pesticides from the equation, especially in light of the
fact that they’re not really necessary?”

There’s a movement to stop using pesticides in North America. Both
Ontario and Quebec have banned the sale and cosmetic use of
pesticides.

So if you’re not going to use pesticides, what do you do?

That’s a question Kevin Frank gets a lot. He’s an extension agent at
Michigan State University and an expert on lawns.

“I love to mow my lawn on the weekends because nobody can call me on
the phone or email me with questions.”

He’s been showing me green, healthy test plots of grass and some that
look sad and neglected. The scientists here have been working to find
ways to have good-looking lawns without a lot of chemicals.

Back in his office, Kevin Frank says he tells people they shouldn’t be
afraid to experiment.

“Do you have it in you to let it go for one season and see what happens?
And it could be ugly, so you’ve got to be prepared for that!”

He says a healthy, dense lawn is actually really good at fighting off
weeds and pests all on its own. So, how do you get a healthy, dense lawn
without a lot of chemicals? Frank says it might take a couple years to get
there. And it means going against conventional lawn advice.

“We’ve done a great deal of research here at Michigan State that runs
contrary to what I call ‘turf dogma’. You know: water deeply and
infrequently – and we’ve shown if you do it on a more frequent basis you
end up with a healthier plan overall.”

He recommends watering lightly – just 10 minutes – every day instead
of soaking the lawn once a week. Frank says it’s also good to fertilize
twice a year, use a mulch mower, and mow high instead of giving the
grass a buzz cut.

He says that could make your lawn so healthy, it might mean you won’t
need to spray or hire someone to spray your lawn.

He says the biggest adjustment in reducing pesticide use is managing
your expectations, and deciding how many weeds and bugs you can live
with.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Chicken Feces in Cattle Feed

Author David Kirby says cattle eating cattle by-product could risk another outbreak of mad cow disease. The FDA says there’s no measurable risk. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

The hamburger you put on the grill this weekend could be from cattle raised on feed that includes chicken feces. Lester Graham reports…a year-old Food and Drug Administration rule says it’s safe:

Transcript

The hamburger you put on the grill this weekend could be from cattle raised on feed that includes chicken feces. Lester Graham reports…a year-old Food and Drug Administration rule says it’s safe.

The rule came about after the mad cow disease outbreak. It made some changes, but still allows putting chicken litter – that’s the straw, feathers, chicken manure and scattered food left after raising chickens in a building– into cattle feed.

David Kirby wrote a book entitled “Animal Factory.” He says the government buckled to the chicken industry because the industry didn’t have a place to go with all the chicken litter.

“There’s too much to spread on local farmland, so they very often put it into cattle feed. It contains urea which cows can convert into protein.”

Chickens are messy. They scatter their feed and it gets into the chicken litter that’s put in some cattle feed. Some chicken feed contains beef by-products. Kirby says cattle eating cattle by-product could risk another outbreak of mad cow disease. The FDA says there’s no measurable risk.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Greening the Golf Course

Audubon International estimates the average American golf course uses 312,000 gallons of water a day. (Photo source: Easchiff at Wikimedia Commons)

This time of year, golfing might be
the furthest thing from your mind.
But during the off-season, golf course
managers get to strategize how to best
treat their million dollar turf. Some
golf courses have a bad rap with
environmentalists. But, as Tanya Ott reports, there’s a budding
green movement in the golf industry:

Transcript

Golf courses take knocks for using too many chemicals and too much water. Audubon International estimates the average American golf course uses 312,000 gallons a day.

Gil Rogers is with the Southern Environmental Law Center. He says that’s a boatload of water.

“In Georgia, they’re defined as agriculture – which doesn’t make any sense – but that allows them to use a lot more water than they would otherwise be able to.”

That can be a problem, especially in places with water shortages. Places like Atlanta, where a federal battle over water rights might soon leave the city high and dry.

(sound of rain hitting metal roof)

Of course, on this day, water doesn’t seem like much of a problem. It’s been raining all night. I’ve come to the Stone Mountain Golf Course, just outside Atlanta, to talk to superintendent Anthony Williams. He won golf’s highest environmental stewardship award this year.

(sound of power screwdriver)

Technicians raise the reels on the mowers to help protect the wet turf. Williams says it’s been a tough fall. In October, a big storm – they call it the 500 year storm – dropped 16 inches of rain on Stone Mountain in one day. Williams says the only thing that saved his course were the acres of native plants.

“When that flood – literally – came into the property, those plants did exactly what nature created them to do. They fluffed out. Fanned out and really just acted like a sponge.”

When Williams took over a few years ago he ripped out the non-native ornamentals and replaced them with native perennials that don’t require any additional watering. Just rain.

(sound of rain on roof)

Stone Mountain isn’t just using less water. It’s also using fewer chemicals. Williams’ crew is creative. Take, for instance, one of their big problems: wild geese. They can do a lot of damage to million dollar turf.

“We refer to it as the in-and-out damage. The ‘in damage’ is when they’re actually eating the grass and physically tearing the green up. The ‘out damage’ is as they’re walking, well, (laugh) the eaten grass becomes, well, goose droppings and then the cleanup is very, very difficult.”

Conventional golf courses spray foul-tasting chemicals on the grass or light fireworks overhead to scare the geese. But at Stone Mountain, their secret weapon is a 13 year old hound dog named Cushman. When the geese see Cushman coming, they think he’s a predator. Williams says it works like a charm!

This focus on environmental stewardship is paying off financially. Anthony Williams says they’re using significantly less fertilizer and insecticides. He estimates they’ve saved nearly $50,000 on chemicals in the last two years.

How confident is he about the health of his golf course? I asked him if he was willing to put his course to the test. Apparently, some old-school players still lick their golf balls to clean them. Not a good idea when there’re pesticides on the grounds. Would Williams do it now?

“There’s a lot of things in nature that you probably wouldn’t want to eat or put in your mouth. So the golf ball’s going to encounter a lot of those along the way. I would definitely line up with the ‘do not lick your balls.’ I’m gonna be on that side of the fence.”

More golf courses are starting to look at their environmental impact for the first time. They’re planting different grasses.

And nearly 1,000 US golf courses use recycled or reclaimed water. Another reason not to lick your balls.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

Where Nothing Can Survive

Shrimpers have seen their catches dwindle down from thousands of pounds of shrimp a day to very little due to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Of course, the bigger the zone, the further out shrimpers have to send their boats. That means a lot of wasted time, fuel, and wages. (Photo by Samara Freemark)

Every summer, thousands of
square miles of the Gulf of
Mexico die. The Dead Zone is
caused by pollution that flows
down the Mississippi River. It’s
runoff from factories, sewer
plants, and farms. And it causes
a lot of problems for fishermen
in the area. This year, the Dead
Zone is projected to be huge –
maybe the largest ever. Samara Freemark explains:

Transcript

Imagine for a moment you’re a shrimp fisherman. Every day you send out your fleet to the same waters you’ve fished for decades. And your boats pull in a lot of shrimp- thousands of pounds a day, millions a year. And then one day, a normal summer day, you send the boats out, and they come back empty.

“You go from about 5000 pounds to nothing. It’s dead. That’s why they call it the dead zone.”

That’s Dean Blanchard. He runs the largest shrimp company in America- Dean Blanchard Seafood.  

Blanchard started seeing the dead zone about five years ago, but it’s not a new phenomenon. For a long time, nutrient fertilizer from upstream has run into the Mississippi River and from there, into the Gulf. It fertilizes big algae blooms– and when the algae decays, it sucks oxygen out of the water, making it impossible for fish to live there.

What’s new is how much fertilizer there is now.

“It’s not natural.”

Nancy Rabalais is a marine biologist at LUMCON. That’s Louisiana’s center for marine research. She says that over the past several decades there’s been a surge in fertilizer use in the Corn Belt states. That eventually ends up in the Gulf.

“We’re having 300 times more than we did in the 1950s. And it’s just over loaded the system.”

Rabalais predicts this year’s dead zone will be almost three times as big as it was twenty years ago – more than 8000 square miles.

Of course, the bigger the zone, the further out shrimpers like Dean Blanchard have to send their boats. That means a lot of wasted time, fuel, and wages.

And the zones might mean even bigger problems. Don Scavia is a professor at the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan.

“There’s a half a billion dollar shrimp industry in the gulf. And the shrimp depend on that habitat. And what we’re concerned about is that if the dead zone continues or even grows, that fishery may collapse.”

Congress is taking some measures to address the problem. Conservation programs in the Farm Bill work to reduce how much fertilizer farmers use, and how they apply it.

But there’s something else in the Farm Bill too – a lot of subsidy programs. Those pay for ethanol production. Which means more corn. Which means a lot more fertilizer.

“And what is debated every 5 years is how much funding will go into those conservation programs, relative to funding going into subsidy programs. And, by far, the subsidies win.” (laughs)

Scavia says for every $1 spent on conservation programs in the Corn Belt, $500 go to subsidizing crops.

Shrimper Dean Blanchard says he’s not sure how long he can live with that balance, especially as he watches the dead zone grow.

“How big is this thing going to get? If we kill the oceans we have problems. We have serious problems.”

But Don Scavia is hopeful. He says we know exactly how to reduce nutrient runoff – in fact, the basic programs are already in place. It’s just a matter of Congress choosing the right funding priorities.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Dollars and Streams

A creek runs through Melvin Hershberger's farm in Holmes County, Ohio. He was able to clean up the water with money from the Alpine Cheese Company. The company needed to offset phosphorous pollution from its factory, so it pays farmers to reduce their manure runoff. (Photo by Julie Grant)
Hershberger has 54 milking cows. Their manure used to run into the waterways. Now the cows are fenced away from the creek. (Photo by Julie Grant)

When you hear about dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, they’re largely caused by pollution draining from the farm belt. It can take a long time and a lot of money to reduce pollution at factories. So they’re starting to pay farmers to cut pollution instead. Julie Grant explains:

Transcript

When you eat cheese, you might not realize that something so delicious creates a lot of waste. And that waste – that pollution – ends up going into the drain. It eventually ends up in rivers and lakes.

(sound of a factory)

We’re at a cheese factory in Holmes County, Ohio where they make nearly 60,000 pounds of cheese a day.

The big stainless steel vats look immaculate. But our shoes are wet.

Bob Ramseyer is CEO of the Alpine Cheese Company.

He says the floors are covered with water because the equipment is constantly being washed.

“We have a pre-rinse – that goes to drain. We have a final rinse, and that goes to drain. And we have all the floors that are flushed down and so forth, so that all ends up as part of the wastewater.”

The cheese factory’s wastewater includes not only those caustic chemical cleaners, but wasted milk by-products. One milk nutrient is the chemical, phosphorous.

About a decade ago, the Environmental Protection Agency told Ramseyer that the cheese company had to reduce the phosphorous it was releasing into the nearby river. Ramseyer was concerned.

“The equipment alone was going to cost a half million dollars. We projected it was going to cost between a half million dollars and a million dollars a year in operating costs. So we were looking for any way we could to reduce that cost. That’s where we got into the nutrient trading program.”

Alpine Cheese was among the first to negotiate what’s called a nutrient – or water quality – trading program. Instead of reducing the phosphorous coming from his factory, he pays farmers to reduce manure – another source of phosphorous – from washing from feedlots into the river.

(sound of cows)

Mervin Hershberger is an Amish dairy farmer with 125 acres and 54 milking cows.

(sound of a stream)

His farm looks like a postcard – beautiful hilly green pasture.

But a lot of the manure was washing off his farm into the streams. Herberberger says the cows were grazing right around the water.

“With the cows being in the creek we could see dirty water. The rocks were covered with dirt from cow’s waste. You walk through the stream, you’d kick up dirt and waste from the cows.”

Hershberger didn’t like it, but he didn’t have money to change it.

So when the County Soil and Water Conservation District held a neighborhood meeting to explain that Alpine Cheese was going to pay to reduce pollution from nearby farms, Hershberger saw a way to afford to clean up his farm.

He did about a dozen projects to reduce manure run-off into the water, like building a fence to keep the cows out of the stream.

And the little creek is bouncing back:

“As of now, it’s just totally clean, what you see. For the minnows and all the critters that are in the creek.”

Hershberger gets paid for the amount of phosphorous he keeps out of the water.

About 25 other farms in Holmes County are doing similar projects to reduce water pollution. And Alpine Cheese foots the bill. In exchange, the company doesn’t have to clean up wastewater coming from the cheese factory.

It’s a lot like a cap and trade program on water pollution.

There are a growing number of small programs like this around the country. But some people are trying to create water trading projects on a much larger scale.

That would mean a factory in one state might be able to pay farmer in another state. Eventually, all of the thousands of factories in just one river basin could pay farmers enough to reduce dead zones like the one in the Gulf of Mexico and in some of the Great Lakes.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Electricity From Factory Farms

Methane is one of the worst greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. (Photo by Bill Tarpenning, courtesy of the USDA)

Lots of people who live near big livestock farms complain
about the stench of manure. One of the by-products of all
that manure is methane gas – which can be used to create
electricity. More states are starting to offer tax breaks to
factory farms to make energy from their waste.
Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Several states around the nation are offering tax breaks to
encourage factory farms to capture the methane from their
cow manure – and to convert it into usable electricity.
Methane is one of the worst greenhouse gases contributing
to global warming.

You might think environmental groups would support the
idea. But Ed Hopkins of the Sierra Club says taxpayers
should not subsidize manure-to-energy projects.

“We see factory farms as a business. And like any business,
they should pay the costs for their pollution control
equipment – not the public.”

Hopkins says taxpayer money for manure to energy projects
will only encourage more factory farming and the other
pollution problems associated with those big operations.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

The “Enviropig” Cuts Pollution

Researcher Cecil Forsberg created the first Enviropigs in 1999. Their meat may soon be available at American supermarkets. (Photo by Julie Grant)
An Enviropig at the Arkell pig research station at the University of Guelph, Ontario (Photo by Julie Grant)
Manure runs off farm fields into waterways (Photo by Murray Borrello)
Pollution from animal farms leads to algae blooms that choke all the oxygen out of waterways (Photo by Murray Borrello)

At factory farms, cows and
pigs produce a lot of manure, and
that sometimes causes a lot of
pollution. Julie Grant reports that
one scientist says he’s got a solution:
genetically modify pigs so they produce
less pollution. But to be successful,
people have to be willing to eat
genetically modified meat:

Transcript

Murray Borrello says pig and cow poop is killing everything
in some of the water he studies. He’s a geologist and has
been researching water pollution with chemists and
biologists at Alma College in Michigan. Borrello says there’s
no fish in parts of the river – because of all the animal feces
running off of nearby farms.

“It’s very obvious. It’s this kind of brown, mucky,
murky looking substance.”

That poop is full of phosphorous, nitrogen, and other things
that cause pollution problems. It creates algae that clogs up
waterways and sucks out all the oxygen.

Borrello says some of the farms house more than
10,000 hogs. Farmers sometimes hold 20 million gallons of
pig manure in lagoons. They liquefy it and spray it on the
fields for fertilizer. But Borrello says it’s too much manure,
so it runs off the land and into the waterways.

In some places, it’s the same water is used for drinking
water. And the same rivers drain into the Great Lakes.

On the northern side of the Lakes, a Canadian scientist says
he’s found a possible solution to this pig pollution problem.

(sound of a pig barn)

It’s called the Enviropig.

Cecil Forsberg has genetically modified pigs so they produce
less pollution in their waste.

I met him at his research barn at the University of Guelph in
Ontario.

There are no windows – just a ventilation system. And,
wow, it’s hard to concentrate – the smell of pig waste is so
strong.

He introduces me to a group of Enviropigs, they’re about a year and
a half old. He says they have no detectable difference from
regular pigs.

“They have four legs, two ears, a snout, and they like to dig
in the shavings.”

But while most pigs poop out a lot of polluting phosphorous,
Forsberg has made the Enviropig into a much better
machine for digesting phosphorous.

He’s no Dr. Frankenstein. But to do it, he did use DNA from
a mouse. He says it’s considered a safe technique, but he
knows it makes people cringe.

“There’s no mouse in these pigs, except for a little fragment
of DNA.”

The mouse DNA allowed Forsberg to add a bacterial gene to
the pigs. It’s that bacteria that triggers the pig’s salivary
glands to start the digestion of phosphorous.

Forsberg says the waste from these pigs does a lot less
damage to the environment than most pigs.

“There’s a reduction in the phosphorous in the manure by up
to 60%. And that’s important because phosphorous is the
component in manure that is the first one that’s problematic.”

And it’s part of what chokes the oxygen out of the waterways –
killing fish and other aquatic species. Forsberg wants to see
Enviropigs bred on the global scale to reduce pollution from
the growing number of large scale hog farms.

Back in Michigan, water specialist Murray Borrello
says reducing phosphorous pollution from giant hog farms
will benefit water quality, but he does not think a genetically
modified pig is the answer.

“The problem is that does not address the issue of all the
other stuff that is very concentrated going into surface water
and ground water.”

Stuff, such as nitrogen and ammonia.

Borrello says a better solution is to reduce the size of hog
farms, so there aren’t so many pigs concentrated in such
small spaces.

But the Enviropig is starting to get some traction.

When Forsberg and his colleagues created the first
generation of Enviropigs, nearly 10 years ago, the question
was: could they do it?

Today, seven generations of pigs later, the question is: will
people eat it?

Until recently, the US government hadn’t allowed the sale
of genetically modified meat. But, the Food and Drug
Administration recently published guidelines for it. And
some industry analysts say you could be eating pork from
animals like the Enviropig as soon as 2011.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Tag-Teaming the Dead Zone

It is predicted that the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of the state of Massachusetts (Photo courtesy of NASA)

A scientific panel wants two
federal agencies to start working together,
to reduce pollution. Fertilizer pollution
is causing problems for the Mississippi
River system and contributing to a ‘Dead
Zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

Nitrogen and phosphorus come from fertilizers used on lawns and farm fields. The chemicals
pollute water throughout the Mississippi River Basin and down to the Gulf of Mexico. The
National Research Council has been studying the problem.

David Dzombak is an Engineering Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and helped the
council write a new report. He says the biggest recommendation is for the US Environmental
Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture to team up.

“This is a very large scale problem. It’s taken many years to develop and will take many years to
turn around.”

And Dzombak says the two agencies need to get started. The report recommends the federal
agencies work with states to restrict the amount of fertilizer that can go into streams and rivers. It
also calls for a network of experiments to filter or buffer the fertilizer runoff in badly-polluted
watersheds.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Dead Zone Pollution Goes Unchecked?

It is predicted that the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of the state of Massachusetts (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Environmental groups are
petitioning the government to limit
pollution from farm fields in states
that drain into the Mississippi River
and its tributaries. The pollution
contributes to a so-called ‘Dead Zone’
in the Gulf of Mexico. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

Nine groups from states bordering the Mississippi River are calling for standards
to limit nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. The main source of the chemicals
is runoff from farms.

Attorney Betsy Lawton is with Midwest Environmental Advocates.

She says it’s been ten years since the Environmental Protection Agency said it
would make states in the Mississippi Basin protect and clean up the waters.

“EPA has long held that it would step up and take action when states failed to do.
It has set several deadlines for states to take this type of action and limit this
pollution but has let the states slide from those deadlines.”

The nitrogen and phosphorus flow down the Mississippi into the Gulf Dead Zone
– an oxygen depleted area of about 8,000 square miles – or the size of the state
of Massachusetts.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Dead Zone to Reach Record Size

It is predicted that the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico could be the largest ever (Photo courtesy of NASA)

A researcher is predicting farm
fertilizers will cause record “Dead Zones”
in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay
this year. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A researcher is predicting farm
fertilizers will cause record “Dead Zones”
in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay
this year. Lester Graham reports:

These dead zones are areas where oxygen is depleted. No oxygen and much of the
marine life leaves or dies. It’s caused by nitrogen-based farm fertilizers that are
washed off the fields and into the water.

Donald Scavia is a researcher at the University of Michigan. Using U.S. Geological
Survey data, he predicts the dead zone in Chesapeake Bay will be the sixth largest
on record.

“The six other ones are also not that much bigger than what we’re predicting for this
year.”

Heavy rains and flooding across the Corn Belt washed nitrogen fertilizers into the
Mississippi River system and then on to the Gulf of Mexico. Scavia predicts the
dead zone in the Gulf could be the largest ever.

“What you put down on the land is what gets flushed in those rainstorms. And we’re
putting too much fertilizer on the land. So,
what’s changed over the last three decades is agricultural practices. What changes
from year-to-year is the weather.”

Scavia says better methods of farming could reduce the dead zones.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Tag: fertilizer

Keeping Your Lawn From Bugging You

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Chicken Feces in Cattle Feed

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Greening the Golf Course

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Where Nothing Can Survive

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Dollars and Streams

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Electricity From Factory Farms

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The “Enviropig” Cuts Pollution

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Tag-Teaming the Dead Zone

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Dead Zone Pollution Goes Unchecked?

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Dead Zone to Reach Record Size

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