Flooded corn in southern Illinois (Photo by Robert Kaufmann, courtesy of FEMA)
The flooding in the Midwest has destroyed
people’s homes and businesses. It’s also caused
some environmental problems. But reporter Alex
Heuer finds flooding can also benefit the
environment:
Transcript
The flooding in the Midwest has destroyed
people’s homes and businesses. It’s also caused
some environmental problems. But reporter Alex
Heuer finds flooding can also benefit the
environment:
When rivers flood, they can wash pesticides and fertilizers from farm fields
into backyards, homes, and even into drinking water supplies. Floods also
destroy crops on the low-lying farm fields.
But, those lowlands are fertile soil because of flooding.
Sean Jenkins is the Director of the Western Illinois University Kibbe Life Sciences
Station. He says flood waters carry soil and nutrients that benefit crops and wild plants.
“A lot of areas you get sediment build-up, which gives more
nutrients for the plants, so you can actually have more vigorous growth in certain areas the next year after
a flood.”
Some of the trees in the river bottomlands along the Mississippi have
adapted to frequent flooding. Jenkins says silver maples and Eastern
cottonwoods can survive in flood waters for months and then do even better
the following years.
That’s good, because trees can help slow the rush of
the flood waters when they come again.
Scientists say the size of this year’s dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is bigger than average. It’s grown to more than 65-hundred square miles in size. The GLRC’s Mark Brush explains:
Transcript
Scientists say the size of this year’s dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is bigger than
average. It’s grown to more than 6,500 square miles in size. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mark Brush explains:
Each spring, scientists measure the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution coming
down the Mississippi river. The excess nutrients mostly come from farm fields and
sewage treatment plants in the Mississippi river basin. The nutrients cause algae blooms
in the Gulf of Mexico which eventually rob the water of its oxygen.
Dave Whittall is with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He says
the dead zone has a big impact on the region’s ecology and economy:
“That whole area where we don’t have oxygen, nothing can live there, so this is an area
the size of the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island put together where you have no
aquatic life essentially.”
Government officials are working toward a goal of cutting the size of the dead zone by
half in the next nine years. And they’re looking to farmers and cities to help them with
that goal.
Many schools are finding that food that comes from cans... (Photo by Davide Guglielmo)
Aren't as good for the tastebuds or health of the students as locally-grown foods. (Photo by Daniel Wildman)
More and more schools, universities and other institutions with cafeterias are by-passing processed foods from multi-national corporations. Instead, they’re buying food from local farmers. Advocates say locally-grown fruits and vegetables are fresher. They say the food tastes better, and they’re finding kids sometimes ask for apples and tomatoes instead of candy and chips. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
More and more schools, universities, and other institutions with cafeterias are bypassing the processed foods from multi-national corporations. Instead, they’re buying food from local farmers. Advocates say locally-grown fruits and vegetables are fresher. They say the food tastes better. And they’re finding kids sometimes ask for apples and tomatoes instead of candy and chips. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:
(Sound of cafeteria)
In this cafeteria, there are displays on the wall asking, “What is local food?” and answering, “Foods grown and raised where you are.” Well, that makes sense, but there’s more.
“Then when you get into the lines…”
Sociology professor Howard Sacks is director of Kenyon College.
“We have these menus that talk about all the things that are being served here and it tells exactly where they come from. So the pasta alfredo with tomato and basil features noodles produced by Mrs. Miller’s noodles in Fredericksburg, Ohio, and the cream is by the Broughton Dairy in Marietta, Ohio. As you can see this is about thirty lines long and it shows about thirty different local producers.”
As recently as the late 1990’s, only a handful of colleges and universities had programs to buy locally-produced foods for their cafeterias. Today, more than two hundred are looking for local farmers for their produce, dairy, and meat products. Most of those schools, such as Kenyon, Yale University, and the University of Wisconsin among the nation’s most expensive and elite.
But even some struggling public school districts are making it a priority to buy local foods. Ray Denniston is Food Services director of the Johnson City School District in the Catskills region of New York. He says a few years ago they served produce that had been shipped from California or Mexico, or they just opened cans.
“So your fruits and vegetables, kids weren’t taking them; it wasn’t a quality item. I’m not going to say we didn’t worry about it, but it got less attention then the other items on the trays. And now that’s changed. So, instead of getting a canned green bean, which I might as well put sawdust out there as far as nutrients, instead of that, now we would have fresh broccoli.”
Denniston used to sit in his office and look at price quotes from food distributors. Now he visits farms and negotiates the best prices for local products he can find in season. He says the change started with a few tomatoes.
“When I first met with Frank, the farmer, he stopped down and dropped off just some tomatoes. And the staff had some, we had some in the cooler and we brought some out and we cut them and there was a taste thing, and they said, ‘Don’t ever get any others but his.’ I mean, they were just so much sweeter, juicier, wonderful tomatoes and then it just kept going.”
Then came the rich green colored broccoli. It was a big change from what they offered their kids before.
Other schools say students love the taste of milk from local farms that don’t give their cows antibiotics. Johnson says cafeteria workers are excited by the fresher vegetables and meats. They like talking with the students about the food, and they like cooking again. Many schools don’t even have kitchens anymore; they only have heating trays for pre-packaged foods.
Deb Bruns is with the California Department of Education. She says those heated meals often don’t taste very good and she says they send the wrong message to kids.
“…that lunch is a time to grab something processed and hurry through it and get out to recess, and it doesn’t matter what we tell them in the classroom about nutrition if we’re not modeling that in their dining experience then we’re just missing such an opportunity to really teach them where their food comes from.”
Many schools start these programs because of nutrition and obesity concerns. By serving fresh, local food, the nutrition lessons continue when the kids line up in the cafeteria. Some schools say prices from local farms are actually lower then national distributors, but they often end up spending more money on fruits and vegetables. That’s because – believe it or not – kids are eating more broccoli, apples, and tomatoes.
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.
Large-scale livestock operations face a big challenge: how to
handle all the manure the animals produce. Manure spills and runoff can
contaminate water with nitrogen and phosphorous. The result can be
polluted drinking water, or fish kills in streams and lakes. But now,
Purdue University researchers have found a way to significantly lower
the
pollutants in hog manure. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy
Nelson reports:
Flooded corn in southern Illinois (Photo by Robert Kaufmann, courtesy of FEMA)
