Global Trade in Frog Legs Bad for Frogs

  • At least 200 million, but maybe as many as one billion frogs are eaten every year (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Frog legs are showing up on more menus all over Europe and North America. Biologists say this is just more bad news for frogs. Frogs are already in serious trouble from habitat loss and a fatal disease caused by a fungus. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

Frog legs are showing up on more menus all over Europe and North America. Biologists say… this is just more bad news for frogs. Frogs are already in serious trouble from habitat loss and a fatal disease caused by a fungus. Rebecca Williams reports:

It’s hard to know exactly how many frogs we eat. Only a fraction is reported in global trade numbers. So, at least 200 million but maybe as many as one billion frogs are eaten every year.

Ian Warkentin has been looking at our appetite for frog legs. He’s the lead author of a new study in the journal Conservation Biology.

He says some frogs are raised for food. But most of the frogs are taken from the wild.

“There was a harvest in North America and a harvest in Europe that depleted those stocks. The source then became India and Bangladesh and now we’re moving to Indonesia and Southeast Asia. And our concern is, well, we’re just going to harvest them to the point where there no longer is a viable harvest any more.”

He’d like to see better oversight on wild frog harvests, and more commercial frog farming. But, until that happens, he says you might want to take a pass on the frog leg platter.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Nature and Ice Wine

  • Vidal blanc grapes used in ice wine. The vines are netted to protect the grapes from high winter winds and animals. (Photo courtesy of Mario Mazza)

When you think about wine you might think about sunny Italy or warm
Napa Valley in California. But one wine is the product of cold
weather. Ann Murray has the story:

Transcript

When you think about wine you might think about sunny Italy or warm
Napa Valley in California. But one wine is the product of cold
weather. Ann Murray has the story:


Today, the weather and the sales are brisk at the Mazza Winery and
Vineyards.


Sales Person: “Did you want these in a bag?”


Mary Ventura: “Yes, this is all going to the same spot.”


Mary Ventura is buying small bottles of wine that she describes as
“liquid candy.” Ventura and the sales clerk chime in when I ask her
what she’s talking about:


“This is ice wine. It’s not something you can find on all the shelves.
And so we came across this little winery and it’s great.”


Mazza’s is one of the few wineries in the United States that sells and
produces ice wine. More and more people are discovering this rare,
super sweet dessert wine:


“We’re going to head out right behind the winery, actually.”


Mario Mazza is a third generation grower. He says their vineyard’s
location along the Lake Erie shoreline in Pennsylvania makes ice
wine production possible. For vineyards in this region, the Great Lake
changes the local climate:


“In the spring it keeps the shore a little bit cooler, keeps the grapes
from budding too early, which is a good thing… prevents them from
getting hit from the later spring frost. In the fall, we have the reverse
happen. In September and even in October we have a little bit more
warmth along the lake shore here.”


But the real ticket to producing ice wine is a final burst of cold winter
weather. In December or January, winds off Lake Erie can bring the
temperature to well below freezing. As snowflakes whip around the
vineyards, Mazza stands next to rows of grapes still on the vine. The
rows are netted by hand to protect the vines from high winter winds
and hungry animals:


“These vineyards we’re looking at here are vidal blanc grapes.
They’re a great variety because they have a relatively thick skin and
can hold up to the colder climate, to the colder weather and leaving
them on the vine for an extra two months.”


Natural ice wines require a hard freeze to occur sometime after the
grapes are ripe. If a freeze doesn’t come fast enough, the grapes
might rot and the crop will be lost. If the freeze is too severe, no juice
can be extracted.


(Sound of bottling inside winery)


Back inside the winery, Mazza helps out with bottling. During a break,
he says that catching the right sustained freeze means that workers
must be ready to roll out of bed early to pick the grapes used in ice
wine:


“When we go out there and pick ’em about 5:00 in the morning with
headlights down the rows, you’re actually picking these grapes at
about 18 degrees Fahrenheit so they’re actually frozen, just like a marble.
You get very, very sweet juice when you press that out.”


Ice wines are very sweet because the grapes dehydrate the last two
months on the vine. That concentrates the sugar and the flavor:


“The sugars are twice that we get in a normal harvest date in October. And
the flavors are just so much more intense and concentrated.”


Murray: “So you don’t end up with a lot of juice then?”


Mazza: “Hence the rarity, the sale in a smaller bottle and the price
tags on ice wines. A lot of people look at them and say wow, those are
awfully expensive. When they learn about the extensive effort put into
making these wines, they then understand that it’s well worth it.”


At $40 dollars a half-bottle, ice wine generally is worth the extra work
for growers. It might take months to completely ferment ice wine.
Regular wines take days or weeks. Each year, the Mazzas produce
only about 250 gallons of ice wine — a tiny amount compared to other
wines.


Worker: “There should be about a case down there.”


Upstairs, customers continue to stream in and out of the Mazza wine
shop, some of them eyeing the small bottles of liquid gold that nature
and patience help make possible.


For the Environment Report, this is Ann Murray.

Related Links

Canning Food Parties

  • The jars are from a mildly more successful canning party than that described in our tale. If we can, you can, too. (Photo by Jennifer Szweda Jordan)

It’s harvest season – that time of year when farmers are selling cucumbers,
tomatoes and corn for cheap because there’s such bounty. So what do you do
with that kind of surplus? Jennifer Szweda Jordan followed one author’s
advice for preserving:

Transcript

It’s harvest season – that time of year when farmers are selling cucumbers,
tomatoes and corn for cheap because there’s such bounty. So what do you do
with that kind of surplus? Jennifer Szweda Jordan followed one author’s
advice for preserving:


Not long ago, I heard an interview with author Barbara Kingsolver about her
newest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.
Kingsolver and her family spent a year mostly eating foods they’d harvested
on their own or bought from local farms. The idea was to prove to herself
that her family could live well while cutting down the fuel used in food
transportation. In the interview, she mentioned that the family had canning
parties. Well, that was enough to inspire me.


I ordered a half-bushel of tomatoes from a local organic farmer and headed
to Ann Murray’s house. Ann’s a friend and co-worker whose family used to
can:


“I have to tell you what my father says of canning, he says: eat what you can, what
you can’t, can, and it’s so true.”


As a kid in rural West Virginia, Ann was the shucker of corn and the snipper
of beans. She never had a leading role at the pressure cooker – that tightly
sealed pot with the frightening capacity to explode if handled incorrectly.
Like me, the friends who joined us, Robin Hewlett and Matt Willard don’t
know much about canning either.


For canning instruction we turn to the 1964 edition of The Joy of Cooking.
Check out the language in this book: “Good organization and proper
equipment simplify canning and give you, with a minimum of effort, gay-
looking shelves of glistening, jewel-like jars… all labeled and dated and
ready to use.”


Matt recalls a similar book from his childhood:


“My mom had the Betty Crocker cookbook from like 1965 and they had like
explicit pictures of the process and I always found it really intriguing to read
through that ’cause I was like, I live in NYC, no one cans here. That was so
far from my mind. I’m thinking of some person in Wyoming on a farm like
actually still canning… But now it’s coming full circle, it’s great.”


Not many people think much about canning these days. But the process has
a rich history. Learning to preserve food this way actually helped Napoleon
win wars. Now canning has made its way into Ann Murray’s kitchen, where
we’re waiting for a pot of water to boil. We’ve scalded, and skinned our
tomatoes. Now we lay out our plan for organization that Joy of Cooking
promises will leave us with glistening jars:


(Sound of people talking while canning)


Anyway, what do we know? We try to get the right amount of tomatoes in
the jar – not too much so they’ll explode, but not so little that we’re mostly
packing water.


We submerge eight quarts into boiling water and wait what seems like a very
long 45 minutes. Ann throws us a bone to keep us going:


“They’re lookin’ beautiful, guys. Lookin like my mother’s cupboard.”


Since Ann’s the only one with actual canning memories, we’re all ears:


“I just remember it being really hot outside, incredibly hot, steamy in the kitchen. I felt like my mom was sacrificing a little so
we could have canned stuff. But it was always so great to open it up in the
middle of the winter.”


At the end of six hours, we only have 12 quarts of tomato jars to show for it.
I’m a little disappointed because I wish we could’ve been more efficient. I
mean, it’s a good thing we’re not in the French military, right, because we, like,
seriously couldn’t survive on this:


(Hewlett:) ” I feel like the sitting around and the canning is part of the social canning party
aspect.”


They eventually had me convinced that we were productive enough. Until I
did some searches on the internet about canning parties. In a 1918 book
called Use Your Government: What Your Government Does For
You
, there are tables listing teams of Kansas canners and their output.
If I read correctly, Mrs. P.W. Rieger, aided by 17-year-old Bernadette
Rieger, canned 622 and one half quarts of fruit, vegetables, soups and meats.


Wow, I wonder if I’m too old to join 4-H?


For The Environment Report, this is Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

Related Links

Ethanol Puts Strain on Immigrant Farming

  • Jenny Chang at a farmers' market with her produce. (Photo by Joel Grostephan)

Demand for corn-based ethanol is growing and that’s made farmland more valuable. This
year, American farmers planted 14 million acres more corn than they did last year. Some
small immigrant farmers believe that’s why they’re having a hard time finding land to rent
to grow fresh fruits and vegetables. Joel Grostephan reports:

Transcript

Demand for corn-based ethanol is growing and that’s made farmland more valuable. This
year, American farmers planted 14 million acres more corn than they did last year. Some
small immigrant farmers believe that’s why they’re having a hard time finding land to rent
to grow fresh fruits and vegetables. Joel Grostephan reports:


Jenny Chang doesn’t want to change the government’s policy on ethanol subsidies. She
just wants some good land to raise her vegetables that she sells at the farmer’s market.
When planting time came around this year, she was still looking for a plot to rent. Chang is
Hmong and she came from Laos more than 20 years ago with few job skills. For
the last 7 years, she’s made part of her income from farming on land she rents. In the
past, finding land to rent wasn’t that hard. But, Chang says through her daughter who
interprets for her, this year was different:


“She said that this year, we couldn’t find land, that’s why we got stuck with this bad area.
She’s really sad.”


With corn selling for double what it did last year, land values are going up. That means
rent is going up. And the 300 Hmong farmers in this area are having a hard time finding
land they can afford.


Kent Olson is an economics professor at the University of Minnesota. He says he thinks
land scarcity is due to higher demand for ethanol:


“Your ethanol may have started the ball rolling, and created higher prices for corn, which
pushed corn onto other land from other crops but that’s pushed soybean prices up. So we
are seeing higher rent from a couple different directions.”


In theory, ethanol from corn is supposed to be good for the environment. It burns cleaner
and means less reliance on foreign oil.


But… conventional corn farmers rely on fossil fuel-based fertilizers and chemical
pesticides. By the time their diesel-powered tractors plant the corn, combines harvest it,
trucks transport it and ethanol distillery plants cook it, the energy gain from corn ethanol
is marginal.


The Hmong farm differently. Most don’t use fossil fuel-based fertilizers or pesticides.
Instead, they do a lot of hand weeding, and put in long days. Jenny Chang fertilizes her
tomatoes with chicken manure. Chang’s daughter, who is also named Jenny Chang, says
many older Hmong farmers are suspicious of chemicals:


“They like gardening the way they used to back in old Laos. They don’t really know what
insecticides and pesticides are, or how to use it so that’s why they just don’t use it. And a lot of
people are afraid of cancer, so they just like to grow things organically because they eat it
themselves.”


And researchers say growing food this way seems more environmentally friendly than
growing corn for ethanol.


Bill Moseley is a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul. He studies the
environmental effects of agriculture:


“Conventional corn production is displacing, in this particular case, a form of
agriculture that is more environmentally sound in terms of it’s using fewer fossil
fuel imports, and it’s producing crops for the local market, it’s particularly ironic in
this instance.”


Government officials don’t think increased corn production for ethanol is the problem.
Perry Aasness works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency. When he learned the Hmong farmers were having a hard time finding land to rent, his
agency helped them. But Aasness believes corn production for ethanol is NOT the cause
of the land shortage:


“Well, at least in Minnesota I think it’s very, very minimal. I think the real issue that I
have seen in Minnesota is that the Hmong farmers, the Hmong community is primarily
based in the Twin Cities metro area. They have to go further out to get land — a lot
of it I think is just due to urban sprawl.”


For many people in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, the Hmong are the face of agriculture
at farmers markets. But since no government agency keeps track of their numbers, it’s
hard to know if their tradition of raising crops on small plots of rented land is going well,
or if ethanol and high corn prices are actually putting their small businesses in danger of.


For the Environment report, I’m Joel Grostephan.

Related Links

Searching for New Bio-Diesel Source

The U.S. is looking for ways to depend less on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. A popular method is so-called bio-fuels. Those are fuels, such as
ethanol or bio-diesel, made from plants. Cleaner burning bio-diesel has been billed
as an environmentally-friendly replacement for our 60 billion gallon a year thirst for
diesel oil. But there aren’t enough crops or land to produce enough bio-diesel to
replace fossil fuel-based diesel. Amy Quinton reports new research is looking at
another way to make bio-diesel: using algae:

Transcript

The U.S. is looking for ways to depend less on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. A popular method is so-called bio-fuels. Those are fuels, such as
ethanol or bio-diesel, made from plants. Cleaner burning bio-diesel has been billed
as an environmentally-friendly replacement for our 60 billion gallon a year thirst for
diesel oil. But there aren’t enough crops or land to produce enough bio-diesel to
replace fossil fuel-based diesel. Amy Quinton reports new research is looking at
another way to make bio-diesel: using algae:


Bio-diesel is made primarily from plant oils: soybean, canola, rapeseed. Ihab Farag
is a chemical engineering professor at the University of New Hampshire. He climbs
up scaffolding to demonstrate a processor that turns waste oil from the University’s
cafeteria into bio-diesel. Farag says this is more environmentally-friendly than diesel:


“It’s coming from vegetable oil, so therefore it’s cleaner… it doesn’t have the sulfur in it so you
don’t get acid rain issue that you get from diesel, it doesn’t do particulates which are suspect[ed] to be cancer-
causing.”


Almost any diesel engine built in the last 15 years can use bio-diesel, but Farag says
there’s a major drawback: it takes an acre of most crops to produce only 100 gallons
of bio-diesel per year:


“I think it has been estimated that if we are using just something like soybean[s] and want to
produce bio-diesel for the whole country, we need almost an area of land that’s about
two and a half to three times the area of Texas.”


That would be an environmental nightmare because bio-fuels require a lot of fossil
fuels to plant, harvest and process them. They only produce a bit more energy than
the energy needed to make them. It also would put the nation’s fuel needs in conflict
with its food needs. That could drive the price of both sky-high.


So Farag and Master Chemical Engineering student Justin Ferrentino are looking at
another plant. One that’s capable of producing much more oil : algae.
Inside the University’s bio-diesel lab, Ferrentino holds up a glass jar filled with a sea-
green powder:


“This is freeze-dried cells that we’ve grown up in our photo-bioreactor.”


He’s testing different ways of extracting oil from these single-celled algae plants to
produce the most bio-diesel:


“People have projected with micro-algae you can grow somewhere between five and 15,000
gallons per acre per year, so it’s a big difference.”


Compared to 100 gallons per acre of soybeans, it’s a very big difference. Ferrentino
has built a contraption of two small fiberglass tanks, surrounded by florescent lights
and reflectors. It’s called a photo-bioreactor. With the right amount of light, the algae
here grows rapidly:


“When I fill these with growth medium and then add the cells to them and they just
multiply, they divide… they double every ten to 15 hours, when they’re growing
exponentially.”


The more cells, the more oil, and the more bio-diesel. Ferrentino’s photo-bioreactor
is small, producing only a tenth of a gram of bio-diesel. But build one on a larger
scale where there’s lots of sunlight, like the desert Southwest, and it could potentially
produce thousands of gallons on just an acre of land.


And Farag says because carbon is needed to fertilize algae growth, the potential
exists to remove greenhouse gases while simultaneously producing bio-diesel:


“If we can connect it with a wastewater treatment plant, where they have a lot of
waste coming in with lots of carbon in it then you can consume the carbon to grow
the algae and at the same time clean up the wastewater.”


But skeptics say one of the biggest challenges is making algae production
economical. Commercial production would initially yield fuel that could cost between
20 and 50 dollars a gallon. Ferrentino recognizes the drawbacks, but says their
research is worth pursuing:


“I think that our energy needs are not necessarily going to be solved with a magic
bullet, but I think this is certainly one part of it, being that you don’t need arable land
you have the added benefit of maybe being able to use the carbon from flue gases
from power plants, maybe being able to treat wastewater. So, it has some significant
added benefits so it could be one piece of the energy picture.”


But growing algae in the desert or anywhere else doesn’t have the kind of political
appeal that subsidizing farmers to grow soybeans for soy-diesel does. So finding
funding for a commercial-sized algae bio-reactor will face significant obstacles.


For the Environment Report, I’m Amy Quinton.

Related Links

Battle Over the Right to Grow Rice

  • Roger LaBine winnows the wild rice. (Photo by Michael Loukinen, Up North Films)

Since European settlers first came to this country they have had serious conflicts with Native Americans. The GLRC’s Sandy Hausman reports on one modern-day dispute between a Native American tribe and communities in the upper Midwest:

Transcript

Since European settlers first came to this country they have had serious conflicts with
Native Americans. The GLRC’s Sandy Hausman reports on one modern-day dispute
between a Native American tribe and communities in the upper Midwest:


(Sound of Ojibwe music)


The Ojibwe tribe first came to the north woods of Michigan and Wisconsin hundreds of
years ago. They say their migration from the east coast was guided by prophets. Those
prophets told them to keep moving until they came to a place where food grows on the
water. Roger Labine is a spiritual leader with the tribe. He says that food was wild rice:


“This was a gift to us. This is something that is very, very sacred to us. This is very
important, just as our language. This is part of who we are.”


For hundreds of years, wild rice was a staple of the tribe’s diet, but starting in the 1930s,
private construction of hydroelectric dams pushed water levels in rice growing areas up.
High water killed most of the plants and took a toll on wildlife. Bob Evans is a biologist
with the U.S. Forest Service. He says fish, bird and insect populations dropped
dramatically:


“Black tern is a declining, threatened species that is known to use wild rice beds,
Trumpeter swans. They’re a big user of rice beds. Um, just a whole lot of plants and
animals. It’s really a whole ecosystem in itself.”


So in 1995, the tribe, the U.S. Forest Service and several other government agencies
demanded a change. A year later, the federal government ordered dam operators to drop
their maximum water levels by 9 inches. The dam owners appealed that decision, but in
2001 a federal court ruled against them.


That fall, the Ojibwe who live on Lac Vieux
Desert harvested nearly 16 acres of wild rice and this summer, the tribe is tending more than 55 acres.
But the resurgence of rice beds comes at a price. Lower lake levels have left docks in this
boating community high and dry, created muddy shorelines and made long-time residents
and summer boaters angry:


“I used to come here and dock all the time. We picnicked here. I had to walk in 50 feet,
because there wasn’t enough water to float a pontoon, and it’s that way all around the
lake.”


Ken Lacount is president of the Lac Vieux Desert homeowners association. He first
came here in the 1940s and doesn’t see why his cultural traditions should take a backseat
to those of the Ojibwe:


“My grandfather built one of the first resorts. I fished in Rice Bay my entire life. That
was his favorite place to take me.”


Lacount is bitter. He and his neighbors feel powerless to change the situation, since a
federal court has ruled for the Ojibwa. Defenders of that decision say water levels are
especially low because of a prolonged drought in region. When that ends, they predict
lake levels will rise, and homeowners on Lac Vieux Desert will be happier.


(Sound of paddling)


Such conflicts are nothing new. Ron Seeley is a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal. He’s covered Native American issues for more than 20 years. Paddling through the rice beds, he recalls an earlier battle
over fishing rights. In the late 80s, a court ruled the Ojibwe were entitled by treaty to
spear fish each spring. Local fishermen worried the practice would destroy their industry:


“Sometimes thousands of people would show up at the landings on a spring night. Tribal
members from all over the upper Midwest would come to support the spearers and drum
and chant. The anti-Indian forces were arrested for using wrist rockets or real powerful
sling shots to shoot pellets at the tribal members while they were out spearing. It was a
violent time up here.”


As court after court upheld the rights of native spear fishermen, and as commercial
fishermen continue to prosper, hostilities subsided and now, as the Native Americans prepare for
their biggest rice harvest in more than 50 years, the Ojibwe hope that the controversy over water levels
will also die down. Tribal leader Roger Labine says wild rice is a symbol of the Ojibwe’s survival:


“This is an endangered species. It’s something that we’re fighting to save, just like the
eagle, just like the wolf. We were put here to care for Mother Earth and all the gifts that
the creator gave us.”


And having won the first battle to restore rice beds, Labine is hoping to secure even
greater protection for these wetlands by asking the federal government to declare the rice
beds historic.


For the GLRC, I’m Sandy Hausman.

Related Links

Beetle Threatens Anishinabe’s Ash Trees

  • Emerald Ash borer is a type of beetle that is threatening black ash trees. (Photo courtesy of USFS)

American Indians have been making baskets from the wood
of black ash trees for hundreds of years. Now, they see that tradition threatened by a beetle. The emerald ash borer has killed millions of ash trees in Lower Michigan over the past few years, and Indian basket makers are preparing for the day when their grandchildren may no longer find black ash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Allen
reports:

Transcript

American Indians have been making baskets from the wood of black ash trees
for hundreds of years. Now, they see that tradition threatened by a beetle. The
emerald ash borer has killed millions of ash trees in Lower Michigan over the
past few years, and Indian basket makers are preparing for the day when their
grandchildren may no longer find black ash. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Bob Allen reports:


(Sound of museum)


The Anishinabe believe the black ash tree is a gift to their people, and they say
its carried them through many hard times. The story of the baskets is part of a
display in the Ziibiwing Center at the Saginaw Chippewa Reservation in
central Michigan.


Judy Pamp is assistant director of the Center, and she remembers how
important baskets were when she was growing up.


“If we ate it was because there were baskets to sell or trade, and it went from
that being the thing that sustained us to where now it’s more of a an art and a rare art,
and that you do in limited quantities.”


Pamp comes from a long line of basket makers, and she’d like to pass on the
skills to her granddaughter, but she says the baskets aren’t the most
important thing… rather it’s a sense of connection among the generations.


“You know the whole family pulling together, the whole community pulling
together to help one another out… that everybody was important and
everybody had their role.”


Some family members may be good at one part of the basket making, and
there’s plenty of work to divvy up. First, there’s going into a swamp to find a
black ash tree, cut it down and haul it out.


(Sound of pounding)


Then, there’s peeling off the bark, and pounding the wood into strips, called
splints, for baskets. All that can take 25 hours of hand labor. Then, it’s
another 6 or 8 hours to weave a basket. Without the trees, basket makers worry
they may lose that closeness of working together.


The emerald ash borer isn’t on tribal lands yet, but it’s in
two neighboring counties. Scientists say it’s only a matter of time before the
beetle invades the reservation and wipes out the ash tree. The invasive pest got
to the U.S. in cargo shipped from Asia. Despite quarantines the bug continues to
spread because people move infested firewood, timber or landscape trees.


Deb McCullough is an entomologist at Michigan State University. She
concedes ash trees in Lower Michigan are goners.


“Took me a while to get my mind around that. You know we’re going to see
somewhere probably in the neighborhood of four hundred million ash trees in the forests
of lower Michigan that eventually are going to succumb to emerald ash borer
unless something really amazing happens in the next few years.”


McCullough says they’re looking for a way to help trees resist the insect, or a
predator to keep it in check, but it might be years before a solution is found.
So, the tribes are looking at their own ways to deal with the ash borer.


(Sound of splint pulling)


One idea is to harvest a whole bunch of black ash splints for baskets and freeze
them to use later. That would keep basket making going for a while.


(Sound of basket maker)


Another plan is to collect and save seeds from black ash trees.


Basket maker Renee Dillard says someday maybe trees can be replanted from
seed, but she says that means forty or fifty years before any wood is
harvestable, and she doesn’t think she’ll be around then to teach her
grandchildren how to choose the right tree and pound out the splints.


(Sound of pounding)


“As a people, we’re pretty resilient and we can adapt to change. It’s just that we’re
losing an important part of that whole black ash process, and I don’t want my great
grandchildren to just make baskets. They need to understand the whole process because
it’s done carefully and prayerfully.”


Dillard follows the old ways. She lays down tobacco as an offering of thanks for the tree,
and she believes this calls her ancestors to witness her use of the gift.


The Anishinabe don’t know why the emerald ash borer is taking their trees at
this time, but their tradition teaches for every hardship there will be an answer
and something to balance the loss.


For the GLRC, I’m Bob Allen.

Related Links

Region’s Timber Cutting on the Rise

  • The demand for timber has increased in the past year and is expected to continue to rise. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

The sale of timber from national forests in the upper Midwest is expected to be up ten percent this year. That follows a ten percent increase last year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette Reports:

Transcript

The sale of timber from national forests in the upper Midwest is expected to be up 10 percent this year. That follows a 10 percent increase last year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette Reports:


Two years ago, the six national forests in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota sold 230 million board feet of timber. Next year the industry expects sales to top out at more than 300 million board feet.


The forest service has been drafting new management plans. Altogether those plans propose an increase in the amount of logging in the forests. Jim Crouch is a consultant for the Lakes States Federal Timber Purchasers.


“All six plans are either complete or at least in draft form, and so there’s new clear direction on what the forest should be doing and that equates to substantial increases in what we’ve seen happen in the past.”


Environmental groups have fought the new management plans in every state. They say the forests are already being harvested at unsustainable rates and the new plans will make things worse.


For the GLRC, I’m Peter Payette.

Related Links

Neighbors Reclaim Abandoned Urban Land

  • Maria Graziani (in green) teaches neighborhood kids about farming. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

It can take years for city government to demolish or develop abandoned property. In one urban neighborhood, a group of neighbors has found a new way to reclaim land that has been left behind. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton has their story:

Transcript

It can take years for city government to demolish or develop
abandoned property. In one urban neighborhood, a group of neighbors has
found a new way to reclaim land that has been left behind. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton has their story:


Maria Graziani’s house was built on a hillside. At the top of the hill, people have dumped old refrigerators, broken air conditioners, dried up paint cans, worn out tires… lots and lots of junk on the abandoned property. Last year she brought her neighbors and the city together to clean up the mess. This year, she’s farming it.


(Sound of rusty metal squeaking)


On her front porch, she lifts a manual reel mower onto her shoulder to carry to the top of the hill. She’s made this trip so many times before, she’s carved a path through the weeds. On her way, she has to step over and around various pieces of rusted junk.


“There’s like a wooded area that’s owned by the city that, I guess, used to be people’s backyards because there’s trash and cars up here.”


Graziani’s not your typical urban developer. Her orange knitted headband keeps her brown dreadlocks at bay, her paint-splattered overalls are ripped, and her pockets are stuffed with tools. At the top of the hill, she leans on her knees to catch her breath. Ahead of her, is a field covered by invasive knotweed.


“This is where the farm property starts.”


Despite field’s condition, it has a breathtaking view. Nearly the entire Pittsburgh skyline is framed by trees and lit by a gold setting sun.


“It’s one point seven acres, nineteen lots that the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the city own.”


Graziani formed a non-profit organization to get foundation money to pay for the block and the back taxes. In five years, it will all belong to The Healcreast Urban Community Farm.
The farm doesn’t have a lot of rules. If you help out, you can have some food.
If you’re needy, there’s food available for the asking. Besides the theft of the farm’s tomato plants, Graziani says it works pretty well.


As the sun falls and the evening cools off, another workday begins.
Volunteers trudge up the hill from every conceivable direction.


(Sound of shovels, talking)


The volunteers say once they heard about the urban farm they wanted to help. Even if they weren’t sure how.


VOLUNTEER 1: “I know close to nothing about farming, so I just need to learn – I need to dig in and learn how to do it.”


VOLUNTEER 2: “I work for the Bloomfield Garfield Corporation So that’s how I learned about this; it’s a small office.”


VOLUNTEER 3: “It seemed fairly absurd at first, but it makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it, with all the vacant spaces in town that aren’t being used.”


Everyone picks a spot and starts digging. Immediately they’ve got a problem: they’ve hit concrete. It’s the foundation of a demolished house. That’s only one of the obstacles the Healcrest farmers have faced. The volunteers had an easy time with their first garden. Not much junk was dumped in that area. But the rest of the property is contaminated with arsenic and lead, but Graziani has a plan.


“I would like to till it and put in some dwarf sunflowers. Which I want to use for phyto-remediation.”


The sunflowers will draw up the contaminants into their roots. In the fall, farmers will pull up the plants – roots and all – and dump them at a hazardous waste facility.


(Sound of rain)


Two days later it’s another workday. And it’s raining. But the Healcreast farmers hardly notice.
Because they uncovered the foundation of an old house, they’ve decided to build raised beds.
They layer peat moss, compost, and topsoil into mounds. And even though it’s raining the sun breaks through for a moment.


“And I think that I see it; it’s right there! So we’ve got a rainbow, just kind of right over the hill, it’s quite gorgeous.”


As summer has progressed, all kinds of vegetables are growing strong: peppers, collard greens, corn, squash. With a grant from the Health Department, Graziani can pay junior high school students a little bit of cash to help her once a week. They’re kids from the neighborhood, who’ve only known the hilltop as a dump. Soon, Graziani, the kids, and the volunteers, will have a harvest on the hilltop.


For the GLRC. I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

Study Challenges Efficiency of Ethanol

  • A new study takes into account the resources used to grow the corn that is used to make ethanol. (Photo by Ian Dun)

Despite its political popularity, a study suggests ethanol from corn is not as environmentally friendly as its supporters claim. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Despite its political popularity, a study suggests ethanol from corn is not as environmentally

friendly as its supporters claim. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


A new study published in the journal “Critical Reviews in Plant Science” shows producing ethanol

from corn uses more energy than the fuel provides.


Researchers at the University of California-Berkeley looked at the amount of energy used to plant,

fertilize, harvest and process corn into ethanol. Some studies have shown a net energy gain, but

this research takes into account the water and nutrients used to grow corn as well as the pollution

caused by fertilizers and pesticides.


The researchers say that makes this study a more accurate assessment of energy consumed to produce

ethanol. Supporters of ethanol say it’s the most environmentally-friendly replacement for MTBE,

that’s a gasoline additive used to reduce ozone pollution.


MTBE is being phased out because of concerns that it can contaminated groundwater sources.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links