Co2 Crops Not Tops

  • Theories that crops, such as the corn in Illinois, will benefit from increases in CO2 might not be as good as predicted. (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)

Carbon dioxide emissions from our cars and factories are the number one
cause of global warming. Scientists have long theorized that more of
the gas in the atmosphere could actually help farmers grow bigger
plants. But new research from America’s Breadbasket is challenging
that assumption. David Sommerstein reports:

Transcript

Carbon dioxide emissions from our cars and factories are the number one
cause of global warming. Scientists have long theorized that more of
the gas in the atmosphere could actually help farmers grow bigger
plants. But new research from America’s Breadbasket is challenging
that assumption. David Sommerstein reports:


Lin Warfel’s a fourth generation farmer in east-central Illinois. His
fields are flat and endless, the soil chunky and black and just about
the best in the world. An Interstate highway groans on one side of his
cornfield:


“In my career, early on, there was no Interstate past my farm.”


As traffic increased over the years, Warfel noticed a strange
phenomenon. The crops closer to the Interstate grew bigger than those
further away:


“They respond to the carbon dioxide. They can stay greener longer than
plants out into the field.”


OK… so, here’s a high school biology reminder: carbon dioxide, along
with water and sun, is an ingredient in photosynthesis, which makes
plants grow.


Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is also the biggest cause
of global warming. So scientists thought, huh, more carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere, bigger crops. They even coined a term: the “carbon
dioxide fertilization effect:”


“The effects of CO2 on crop yields are fairly well-understood.”


The Department of Energy’s Jeff Amthor has studied this stuff since the
1980s:


“We would expect that by the year 2050, that the increase in CO2 alone
would probably increase yields by about 10 to 15% in soybean, wheat and
rice relative to today’s yield, with nothing else changing.”


Other things are changing, like hotter temperatures and more drought.
But the predominant thinking has been that the increased carbon dioxide
will moderate those negative factors, maybe even outweigh them. A
recent study by the American Economic Review concluded U.S. agriculture
profits will grow by more than a billion dollars over the next century,
due to global warming. Most of this is based on experiments done in
controlled, greenhouse conditions, but new research done in real fields
is challenging the assumptions:


“Where you’re standing is what we refer to as our global change
research facility on the south farms of the University of Illinois.”


That’s biologist Steve Long. He runs what’s called the SoyFACE project
at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Here, Long can
actually pipe carbon dioxide gas out to the fields, and grow real crops
in an atmosphere of the future.


Long strolls out to one of 16 test plots and stop at a white pipe
sticking out of the ground:


“This is one of the pipes where the carbon dioxide actually comes up
and then it will go out into the field here.”


The carbon dioxide pipes circle a plot about the size of a tennis
court. They release the gas over the crops. Computers monitor the air
to keep the concentrations steady:


“And the current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is about
380 parts per million. We’re raising that to the level which is
expected for the year 2050, which is about 550 parts per million.”


Long has grown the crops of 2050 for 5 years now. His results
shocked him. The plants did grow bigger. They survived longer
into the fall, but the yields were 50% lower than expected. And
pests thrived. The Western corn rootworm, for example, laid
twice as many eggs:


“Japanese beetle, which eats quite a lot of the leaves of soybeans, do
twice as well under these elevated CO2 conditions. They live longer. They
produce many more young. The yield increases we’ve seen could start to be
counteracted by those increased pest problems.”


Long’s results found supporters and critics when published in
Science magazine last summer. Some researchers say extra CO2
could hurt agriculture more than it helps because weeds become more
aggressive.


The Department of Energy’s Jeff Amthor co-wrote a paper challenging the
interpretation of Long’s data. But he agrees more work needs to be
done in real-life conditions:


“The bigger questions that are now before us are the interactions of CO2 with
warming and change in precip, changes in weed communities, changes in
insect communities, changes in disease outbreak. There are a lot more
questions there than there are answers.”


Amthor says what’s at stake is our future food supply.


For The Environment Report, I’m David Sommerstein.

Related Links

Corn Ethanol: Higher Food Prices

Some people are warning there are hidden costs
to the drive for ethanol. The demand for corn-based
ethanol for fuel has pushed the price of corn close
to the highest price it’s been in 10 years. In the
first of our two-part series on ethanol, Rebecca Williams
reports that economists say the push for more ethanol will
mean higher prices at the supermarket:

Transcript

Some people are warning there are hidden costs
to the drive for ethanol. The demand for corn-based
ethanol for fuel has pushed the price of corn close
to the highest price it’s been in 10 years. In the
first of our two-part series on ethanol, Rebecca Williams
reports that economists say the push for more ethanol will
mean higher prices at the supermarket:


(Sound of burger sizzling)


Everything in your classic American meal has one thing in common.


(Sound of soda can opening and fizzing)


The burger, chips, soda, even the ketchup. They all depend on corn.


Cows eat corn. Chips have corn oil in them. And your soda and ketchup
have high fructose corn syrup as a main ingredient. Supermarkets are
loaded with food that has something to do with corn.


And lately, corn’s been near its highest price in ten years. The price
has nearly doubled. Everyone from livestock producers to beverage
companies has been feeling the squeeze of more expensive corn. And
that’s been starting to show up at the grocery store.


The US Department of Agriculture predicts our food is going to get more
expensive this year, and maybe for many years to come.


Ephraim Leibtag is a USDA economist. He says we’ll probably be paying
between two and a half and three and a half percent more this year at
the store:


“That’s on average for your food bill. So if you’re buying an average
basket of products and you spend $100 when you go to the store, now
you’ll be spending $103. But you’ll see it first in products most
related to corn. In addition you’ll see some after-effects because if
more corn is produced that may drive up the price of other commodities
if the tradeoff in land is between, let’s say, corn and other potential farm
products.”


So if farmers plant more corn for ethanol instead of soybeans, that
will drive up the price of soybeans, and in turn, the food that’s made
from them.


It turns out that’s exactly what farmers are planning to do this year.
A recent USDA report says farmers will be planting 12 million more
acres of corn than last year… and less soybeans, and rice.


Leibtag says high corn prices have been great for corn farmers, but he
says it’s been rough on a lot of other people:


“If you use corn as a main ingredient you’ve already noticed your costs
go up quite a bit. Some companies have explored the possibility of
substituting or using other products. But certainly producers of livestock and
poultry have higher feed costs. They have to think about exactly how they’re
going to produce their product when one of their inputs goes up 20, 30,
50, 80 percent in price.”


Ethanol backers say it’s just a matter of time before the market will
adjust to more expensive corn. Bob Dinneen is the president of the
Renewable Fuels Association:


“Corn prices are indeed going up… Our own industry is paying more for feedstock for ethanol today. But
at the end of the day, as the marketplace adjusts, we’ll be able to grow
more than sufficient grain to satisfy the country’s demand for food,
fuel and fiber and rural America will be better for it.”


But others argue it won’t be possible to have it all forever. Lester
Brown is the president of the Earth Policy Institute:


“Usually in the past, rises in food prices come when we have a poor
harvest somewhere in the world as a result of weather and therefore is temporary. It usually
lasts a year or so and weather comes back to normal and we get a good
harvest again. What we’re looking at now is continuous pressure on
prices as far as we can comfortably see in the future, simply because in
agricultural terms, the demand for automotive fuel is insatiable.”


Brown says we’re at risk of trading food for ethanol fuel. And he says
it’s not just going to impact food prices in the US. It’s also going
to affect food supplies worldwide, especially in developing countries.


“The biggest effects are hitting people in other countries who consume
corn more directly, like Mexico for example, which has a corn-based diet and there
the price of tortillas has gone up about 60 percent.”


Brown says many US politicians have what he calls “ethanol euphoria.”
He’s called for a moratorium on licensing new ethanol plants. He wants
the government to think about whether it makes sense to keep
subsidizing ethanol made from corn.


Many people, even some in the ethanol industry, say ethanol from corn
is a limited solution. So researchers are looking for ways to make
ethanol from other sources, such as woody plants like switchgrass.


In the meantime, ethanol from corn is still the most viable option.
Economists say if corn gets diverted into ethanol on a large scale,
that might mean we’ll all be paying higher food prices for the next
several years.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

More Trees Lost to Emerald Ash Borer

A tree-killing beetle continues to spread through the region. The beetle has left millions of ash trees in its wake. Now it’s spread into northeast Indiana and will cost one city there much of its natural beauty. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jeff Bossert reports:

Transcript

A tree-killing beetle continues to spread through the region. The beetle has left millions of ash trees in its wake. Now
it’s spread into northeast Indiana and will cost one city there much of its
natural beauty. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jeff Bossert
reports:


A survey of ash trees in Decatur by the state’s Department of Natural
Resources shows the emerald ash borer has been wreaking havoc there
for some time on some trees, as long as 4 or 5 years. So, the city recently
announced it would spend 1-million dollars to cut down about 15-
thousand of them.


The ash borer slowly kills trees by making tunnels under the bark and
cutting off the food supply.


City Forester Dwight Pierce says the trees are almost entirely
infested. He hopes this move will end any concerns of the ash borer
showing up elsewhere in the state.


“We don’t want to let it spread out of our city and get into adjoining
cities, and spread farther south in the state. We’re still hoping we can
control it here before it gets down to south of Indianapolis and it turns
into a whole forest again. We obviously don’t want to let it get into
that.”


Pierce says the beetle likely came from firewood brought in from
infected areas in Michigan or Ohio… and he hopes residents of Decatur
heed warnings about moving firewood across state lines.


For the GLRC, I’m Jeff Bossert.

Related Links

Epa Tightens Rules on Slaughterhouse Waste

It takes a lot of work to turn a cow or chicken into a hamburger or chicken nuggets. And the process creates a lot of waste. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency is aiming to reduce the pollution that’s released into rivers, lakes and streams. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

It takes a lot of work to turn a cow or chicken into a hamburger or chicken nuggets. And the
process creates a lot of waste. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency is aiming to reduce
the pollution that’s released into rivers, lakes and streams. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Rebecca Williams has more:


The EPA estimates meat and poultry processors use 150 billion gallons of water every year.
Most of that water becomes wastewater. That wastewater can contain oil, blood, manure, and
feathers.


If the wastewater isn’t treated, organic wastes and nutrients are released directly into waterways.
Excess nutrients can cause harmful algae blooms, and kill fish.


The new rule targets about 170 meat and poultry processors.


Mary Smith directs a division of the EPA’s Office of Water.


“The meats industry will have to meet tighter limits on the pollutants that it discharges to the
water. And then, of course, for poultry, this is the first time they will be regulated at all, they
didn’t have preexisting regulations, unlike the meats industry. And they will have to meet limits
for ammonia, total nitrogen, and what we call conventional pollutants.”


These regulations are a result of a lawsuit against the EPA, settled 13
years ago.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Ice-Breakers Finish Up Duty

  • The Coast Guard cutter Sundew was built in 1944 in Duluth as a "buoy tender." In 1979, the Coast Guard had the ship's hull reinforced and beefed up its engine so the ship could double as an icebreaker. Photo by Chris Julin.

Cargo ships are moving on the Great Lakes, but Coast Guard icebreakers are still on duty on the north side of the Lakes. The Coast Guard’s massive icebreaker, the “Mackinaw,” smashed ice from its home in Michigan all the way across Lake Superior to Duluth. And the Coast Guard cutter “Sundew” has been chipping away at the ice in Duluth for weeks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Julin has this report:

Transcript

Cargo ships are moving on the Great Lakes, but Coast Guard icebreakers are still on duty on the
north side of the Lakes. The Coast Guard’s massive icebreaker, the “Mackinaw,” smashed ice
from its home in Michigan all the way across Lake Superior to Duluth. And the Coast Guard
cutter “Sundew” has been chipping away at the ice in Duluth for weeks. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chris Julin has this report:


There’s a whiff of spring in the air in lots of places, but parts of Lake Superior are still covered
with ice. Cargo ships are leaving their berths where they spent the winter. But when the first
ships got ready to go, the ice on the Duluth Harbor was still two feet thick. That’s thick enough to
keep a ship locked in place.


The Coast Guard cutter Sundew carved a path through the ice so ships could leave.


(sound of chop, splash)


As the Sundew churns away, slabs of ice tip on edge under the bow. Each slab looks like the
floor of a single-car garage turned on edge. The Sundew will cut a swath several miles long, and
then come back along the same path. With each pass, the shipping lane gets a little bit wider.


Bev Havlik is the commanding officer on the Sundew.


“We’re taking out just little shaved bits of it at a time to make the ice chunks smaller. It’s like
sawing a log, just shaving off a bit of it at a time.”


“The Sundew wasn’t built as an icebreaker. It’s usual duty is tending buoys. The ship places, and
maintains about 200 navigational buoys on Lake Superior. But a couple decades ago, the Sundew
got some extra steel added to its hull, and a new, bigger engine. Since then, it’s done double duty
as an icebreaker.”


Commander Bev Havlik says the Sundew slices through thin ice like a butter knife. But in
thicker ice, like this stuff, the hull actually rides up on top of the ice and pushes down through it.
That’s why there are three mini-van-sized chunks of concrete on the ship’s deck. Each one weighs
12,000 pounds.
“It helps us bite into it with the bow, instead of riding up too high.” It keeps the weight down
forward more.”


A little bit like putting sandbags in the back of your pickup in the wintertime?


“It’s a similar sort of principle, right. It gives you the bite you need.”


Icebreaking is serious business. It gets ship traffic moving weeks before the ice melts. But
beyond that, Bev Havlik says it’s really fun.


“This is awesome. It’s the only job that I’d ever had where they pay us to come out and break
something.”


The Sundew is 180 feet long. That’s about the length of 10 canoes lined up end to end. It has
about 50 crew members. One of the junior crew members is usually at the wheel. The real
“driver” is an officer who’s standing 20 feet away, out on the deck through an open door. The
officer adjusts the ship’s speed, and calls out a steady stream of steering commands to the
“helmsman” — that’s the guy at the wheel.


(sound of Helsman)


“Right five-degrees rudder … steady as she goes, aye.”


Ensign Jason Frank is about to take his turn driving the Sundew. He wears a big rabbit fur hat
when he’s out on the deck driving the ship.


“We actually have face masks and goggles for when it really gets cold. It gets so cold out here
sometimes it feels like your eyes are going to freeze out, or something.”


(natural sound)


Jason Frank is halfway through his two-year stint on the Sundew. Then he’ll be stationed
somewhere else, and the Sundew will be removed from service. The ship was built in Duluth in
1944, and it’s retiring next year. Jason Frank wanted to work on the Sundew because aren’t many
ships like this still in service. On newer vessels, the officer driving the ship stands inside. And
here’s something right out of the movies – the Sundew has a big, brass steering wheel.


“Whereas with the new ships, most the new ships have just a little joystick. It’s very similar to
like a joystick you’d have maybe when you’re playing a computer game or something. All you
have to do is turn that joystick and the computer tells the rudder what to do. We’re actually
maneuvering the throttles, we’re actually driving. With the new ship, basically it has an
autopilot.”


The ice is melting in the Duluth Harbor, but it still clumps together on windy days and makes
trouble for ships. The Coast Guard cutter Sundew will stay on ice-breaking duty until the
weather warms up, and a good southwest wind pushes the rest of the ice out of the harbor into
Lake Superior.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chris Julin.


(sound fade)

Ethics of Human Pesticide Tests

Pesticides are designed to kill pests – and so – by their nature are toxic substances. They wouldn’t work otherwise. While that poisonous nature is useful for certain jobs… most people would probably hesitate before knowingly taking the chemicals into their bodies. But the Environmental Protection Agency is now looking at the issue of testing pesticides on humans. As bad as that may sound, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Greg Dahlmann reports there are some people saying it’s what we need:

Tracking Livestock to Limit Diseases

Those worried about food safety say it’s time for a uniform animal identification system – one that could rapidly isolate animals suspected of carrying contagious diseases. Wisconsin agriculture officials have taken the lead on this type of preventative action but will need the help of all the Great Lakes states to make it work. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Jo Wagner has more:

Transcript

Those worried about food safety say it’s time for a uniform animal identification system, one that could rapidly isolate animals suspected of carrying contagious diseases. Wisconsin AG officials have taken the lead on this type of preventive action but will need the help of all the Great Lakes States to make it work. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Jo Wagner has more.


There’s growing consensus among agricultural officials that some type of universal animal identifier is needed to trace animals from birth to the marketplace. Especially in light of recent occurrences of “mad cow” and “foot and mouth” diseases in live animals overseas and the nasty form of e coli in meat products here. Wisconsin secretary of agriculture, Jim Harsdorf says the ID system started in Europe. Now it’s moved to Canada, where it’s mandatory, and Harsdorf says Holland has a central database containing information on all the nation’s animals.


“It’s housed in one location and the producers within 48 hours have an animal ID’d after it’s born and that animal ID stays with it for life.”


Federal officials in the United States have been slow to implement such a system though, so Harsdorf says state officials are working to come up with one. It might be tied to different identification networks that farmers already use to keep production and reproduction records, herd health, vaccinations and the location of cattle that are sold, or it could be a totally new system that keeps some or all of those records on one central computer database managed by state, private or non-profit organizations.


Wisconsin state veterinarian Clarence Siroky says public feedback surprised them. State officials were expecting farmers to want only a voluntary system but what they found at public meetings was that producers want a more comprehensive mandatory system nationwide


“We move cattle all over the United States rapidly…we can have one cow at least touch 27 other states within a week…one pig can touch 19 other states within 24 hours.”


For those reasons, Siroky says, all animals will have to be included, not only cows, but sheep, horses and pigs. In England for example, cows are identified, but sheep are not, and he says sheep were implicated in the rapid spread of foot and mouth disease there.


That concerns Ted Johnson. He’s a Wisconsin dairy farmer who likes the idea of a universal identification system because it would quickly pinpoint the location of animals that might have come in contact with a disease.


“If in the event of an outbreak of some highly contagious disease, it could be stopped very quickly and we wouldn’t have to have wholesale slaughtering of cattle.”


Still Johnson says many farmers are concerned about how much the ID would cost, who would maintain the records, and who would have access to them.


“The worst case scenario would be if that information is released and there is some doubt about the information or if the information is used in an incorrect manner, the perception can be there’s a problem on individual farms.”


State veterinarian Clarence Siroky says that’s why input from farmers, processors, privacy advocates and consumers is important as the technology is developing.


Still to be decided is the type of animal ID that would be used. Siroky says it could be a tag placed on the animal’s ear. However, some animals already have so many different ear tags, he says one ear can look like a Christmas tree. Other possibilities include a computer chip or other type of recyclables monitor placed inside an animal.


Meanwhile, AG secretary Harsdorf says the records included in a computerized type of system could be very beneficial to consumers at the supermarket.


“At some point in time, you’re gonna have the ability to go through a grocery store and see up on a screen when you buy that package where it came from, a picture of the operation — it’s almost mind boggling to see what could happen down the road.”


Still, farmer Ted Johnson worries all the talk right now about the need for animal identification might create a consumer backlash.


“I feel as a producer our food supply is very safe. I don’t want the perception to be that an animal ID program is being instituted because we have a problem.”


But a potential problem without plans to deal with it could create havoc for the agricultural industry, and so far veterinarian Siroky doesn’t know when a system with wide support might be in place. He does say animal health officials are on high alert for the appearance of any contagious diseases. At the same time, he says even if Wisconsin comes up with a proactive plan, unless other states adopt a similar identification method, any tracking system would have limited effectiveness. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Jo Wagner.

Epa Examines Biotech Corn Distribution

The Environmental Protection Agency says a genetically altered corn intended only for animals is in human food less often than first thought. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Detecting Genetically Altered Crops

With growing concerns over the safety of genetically-altered food, some
farmers and processors are trying to segregate crops that have not been
genetically altered. But that can be hard, because you can’t tell them
apart just by looking… now, there’s a new test to detect genetically
engineered crops. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson
reports:

Can Agriculture Keep Up?

As of this month (Oct.), there are six billion people on the planet and
the population will keep rising. It’s predicted the population will hit
eight-and-half billion by the year 2025. But some experts say the demand
for food will rise even faster. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports… feeding the world will be one of the biggest
challenges of the coming century: