Preserving Cultural Remedies

  • Faith learned about the use of many herbs for home remedies from her father in Louisiana when she was a small girl. (Photo by Kyle Norris)

When most of us get sick we go to the doctor and get medicine. But
some people are holding onto the old ways of healing. And many
people think we could learn a lot from the old ways. Kyle Norris has
this story:

Transcript

When most of us get sick we go to the doctor and get medicine. But
some people are holding onto the old ways of healing. And many
people think we could learn a lot from the old ways. Kyle Norris has
this story:


The small store is called Nature’s Products. It’s in a neighborhood with
a lot of abandoned buildings and store-front churches. When you walk
inside the store, the smell of incense clings to your clothes.
Green plants hang in the windows, and there are jars and jars of bulk herbs lining
the shelves.


Gary Wanttaga opened the store thirty years ago. He’s always been
interested in natural healing techniques and herbal medicine. That all
might sound new-agey, but this place is not new-agey at all. The
reason Wanttaga opened the store in his hometown of Detroit was
because he wanted to help the people who lived here:


“In lot of urban areas people are very limited on resources. They’re limited
with money. They’re limited with shopping resources. And this is one way
that I try to give back to the community”


Wanttaga says one of the main reasons he’s stayed in Detroit is because of
his customers. They’re some of his biggest teachers. Many of his
customers are older African-Americans. They came from the South to work
in the factories during World War II. When they came they brought with
them a cultural knowledge of herbs and natural healing techniques.


One of his customers is 72-year-old Faith. That’s her legal name – just
“Faith.” She grew up in a segregated farming community in Louisiana. Her
father was a farmer, and he taught her all about the herbs:


“I’m the youngest child of all, so I’m the baby. And he would often let me
ride on his shoulder. And sometime I’d be saying ‘Papa, what is this?’ and he
would tell me what that was, we’d be walking through the fields and he
would tell me what was, and he would tell me different things, what you use this for
what you use that for. I had 100 questions. Boy, I was a kid I had a 100
questions.”


She says back then, everyone knew about the herbs, and everyone used
them. At that time, people who were poor or black or who lived in rural
areas did not often have the option of going to a doctor. And so they turned
to the plants and trees around them for medicine, and they developed a great
knowledge about what did and didn’t work to keep people healthy:


“The pine tree was used for many things. Because it’s one of things where
you get turpentine from. It was definitely used for healing. And we used
turpentine for sores. And it works today! If you get a cut and you put
turpentine on it immediately as soon after you hit it, it will never be sore.”


Herbs were out first form of medicine. That’s what Suzanna Zick says.
She’s a naturopathic physician who teaches at the University of
Michigan. She says we have a collective knowledge about herbs that’s
thousands of years old. She says when you compare that to what
modern-day science knows about herbs, it’s not much of a comparison:


“In a sense we have just a tiny little window that science shows us, as
compared to the long use.”


Zick says we could learn a lot from these folks and the knowledge they
have, but not many researchers are studying people like the customers
here in Detroit:


“I think that we can actually learn what herbs they’re using a lot of and
what for. Because I think those are probably the ones that would be of
most interest. In particular, it’s a good question too if they’re using
them with conventional medications, it’s for safety issues. But also if
this is their primary health care for some of them, if it’s working, then
this is a very inexpensive way of providing health care for people who
might otherwise get none.”


Everyone we heard from in this story said the same thing. For us to
have good health, the old-school ways of healing can work hand-in-
hand with modern-day doctors and science. But the people who know
about the herbs are growing older and dying, and their knowledge is dying with them.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

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U.S. Motorcycles to Rev Up in China?

Many American manufacturing companies are trying to break into the Chinese market. With about a billion people, the idea of selling goods in China is an attractive one, but the GLRC’s Christina Shockley has the story of one company that’s having a hard time reaching Chinese citizens. That’s because local environment and safety regulations often stand in the way:

Transcript

Many American manufacturing companies are trying to break into the Chinese market.
With about a billion people, the idea of selling goods in China is an attractive one, but
the GLRC’s Christina Shockley has the story of one company that’s having a hard time reaching
Chinese citizens. That’s because local environment and safety regulations often stand in the way:


Motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson opened a dealership in Beijing in April. It’s the
company’s first shop in China in at least 60 years.


Robert Kennedy is Executive Director of the William Davidson Institute at the University
of Michigan. The institute studies business and policy issues in emerging markets.
Kennedy says there’s a huge demand in countries like China for products associated with
the American way of life. He says Harley-Davidson motorcycles are a prime example:


“I mean, they’re associated with a particular lifestyle here, it’s a very American thing.
And they have very low penetration in China and India, and these other countries now,
but because there’s slowed demand growth in the US, if they want to grow, that’s a great
place for them to go.”


Kennedy says it’s very common for companies to try to ease restrictions in other
countries to make it easier for them to export goods and there are several restrictions on
motorcycles in China. The rules vary from community to community, but most large
cities ban, or severely limit, motorcycle use in the city center.


Experts say the rules are in place partly because of safety and environmental issues.
Barrett McCormick specializes in Chinese politics at Marquette University. He says
environmental problems can be intensified because Chinese roads are clogged, and most
motorcycles there are dirty:


“Anyone who’s been to China 10 years ago or something, a common site is some horrible
little motorcycle putting down the road, with a big cloud of smoke behind it, and I think that’s
the kind of thing that the Chinese government has regulated to eliminate.”


McCormick says air quality is one of China’s most pressing problems. A recent report
from the World Health Organization says many of the most polluted cities in the world
are in China. It says one of the main sources of air pollution there is motor vehicles
emissions.


Zhixin Wu is with a company that’s working with government agencies to develop
Chinese transportation policies. He says emissions from dirty, small motorcycles in
china account for roughly 50 or 60 percent of emissions in urban areas:


“In China almost all the motorcycles use the two stroke internal combustion engine.”


Wu says that type of small engine is very dirty. But, Harley-Davidson says those bikes
are a far cry from the motorcycles it produces:


“The motorcycles in use in China, I guess I wouldn’t even characterize them as
motorcycles. I would call them two-wheelers.”


Tim Hoelter is the company’s Vice President for International Affairs. He says Harley
bikes easily meet environmental regulations in every market in which they’re sold. And
Hoelter says the company is working with officials in the United States and China to get
this point across:


“Not too long ago the Chinese ambassador to the United States came to Milwaukee and
met with local business people. I sat two seats away from him at dinner, and was able to
talk to him about these riding bans.”


Hoelter says the company is also meeting with American trade officials, and authorities
in the Chinese government, to get the rules changed. He says his company has already
helped ease motorcycle restrictions in other countries, such as Vietnam and India.


Robert Kennedy, from the William Davidson Institute, says Harley-Davidson will
probably be able to get the rules changed in a few years, assuming the regulations have
the inadvertent affect of keeping out Harley motorcycles. He says China has a huge trade
surplus with the United States, and that’s a sensitive political issue.


Kennedy says it’s not unusual for countries to have rules that keep foreign goods out,
even if that’s not their intent:


“The US has some of these regulations that keep out other countries products, and other
countries have regulations that keep out our products. It’s not like under the Romans or
the British where a country would send in the army and force them to buy our goods, it’s
just governments working together to sort out the details to allow trade to happen.


Kennedy says even though most Chinese wouldn’t be able to afford Harley motorcycles,
there are many who could, and as people there become more wealthy, the possibility
exists for a huge market.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley.

Related Links

Study: Wetland Banking Hurts Urban Areas

In some parts of the country, developers who damage or destroy wetlands are mitigating that by buying credits for wetlands that have been created somewhere else. It’s called “wetland banking” and it’s similar to banking programs for air pollution. Wetland banking resulted from state and federal efforts to stop the loss of wetlands nationwide. The GLRC’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

In some parts of the country, developers who damage or destroy
wetlands are making up for it by buying credits for wetlands that have
been created somewhere else. It’s called “wetland banking” and it’s
similar to banking programs for air pollution. Wetland banking resulted
from state and federal efforts to stop the loss of wetlands nationwide.
The GLRC’s Erin Toner reports:


J.B Ruhl is a professor of property at Florida State University. He
compiled a list of all wetland banking transactions in Florida. Ruhl
found a clear shift of wetlands from urban areas to rural areas, taking
environmental services away from cities.


Ruhl says wetlands provide flood and storm surge control, capture
pollution and recharge groundwater.


“If you take that wetland out, you’ve lost some value that you have to
either replace by building cement storm water ponds and all the other
things that could kind of replicate the wetland. Or, you just don’t replace
them, and either way you’re either spending money to replace the
wetland or you’re spending money to deal with the problems that arise
when the wetland is gone.”


Ruhl says the federal government should keep better track of where
wetlands are being lost and where they’re being replaced – and of the
environmental costs and benefits of those transactions.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

INSURANCE RATES DRIVING SPRAWL? (Short Version)

Some big city mayors and urban legislators say insurance rates are unfair to people who live in cities. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports, state legislatures are reluctant to change insurance rate structures in fear of angering suburban voters:

Transcript

Some big city mayors and urban legislators say insurance rates are unfair
to people who live in cities. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports, state
legislatures are reluctant to change insurance rate structures in fear of
angering suburban voters:


Insurance rates are higher in cities than they are in suburbs. Often
they’re much higher. Peter Kuhnmuench is an insurance industry
spokesman with the Insurance Institute of Michigan. He says there are
more risks and more insurance claims in the cities that drive up the costs.


“We see a higher incidence of fire and burglary and theft in the urban
areas typically than you do in the suburban areas.”


And although suburban residents typically drive their cars farther to
work, drivers in the city have more collisions and theft claims.


Legislators in cities want the insurance costs tp be spread out across a wider
population, but suburban legislators don’t want their residents to have to
subsidize urban insurance rates. Those in the city say the irony is:
through tax dollars, their residents are forced to subsidize more lanes of traffic for
the suburbanites who commute to work in the city.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Duck Decline Blamed on Fragmented Habitat

  • A mallard duck hen sitting on her eggs in a strip mall tree planter in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ducks Unlimited researchers have found that recent declines in duck populations are partly due to a lack of corridors between grasslands where ducks nest and wetlands where they thrive. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Researchers with the hunters’ conservation group Ducks Unlimited are reporting they’ve found some of the reasons the duck reproduction rate is falling in the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Researchers with the hunters’ conservation group Ducks Unlimited are reporting they’ve
found some of the reasons the duck reproduction rate is falling. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


(sound of birds, a duck quacking and a truck door slamming)


YERKES: “Load in.”


Two years ago, we went out in the field with biologist Tina Yerkes and other Ducks
Unlimited researchers.


YERKES: “Every day these guys go out and they track the birds and that’s basically how
we figure out what they’re doing. ”


(sound of newly hatched ducklings peeping with hen hissing)


At the time, they were tracking mallard hens, watching them nest, and watching them as
they moved their ducklings from the nests in the grass to nearby wetlands and lakes.
After three years of study, they found some of the reasons duck reproduction rates are
down. We recently had a chance to sit down and talk with Tina Yerkes about the study.
She says, surprisingly, they found that egg production and nesting are good, despite nests
being destroyed by mowers and predators eating the eggs.


TY: “The problem is duckling survival. We have very poor duckling survival in this
area. And, that leads us to believe that we need to alter habitat programs to actually start
doing more wetlands work.”


LG: “So, what’s happening is the ducks are able to nest, they’re able to hatch out the
ducklings, but then when they move from the grasslands where the nesting is to the
wetlands where the ducks feed, they grow, they’re not surviving. What’s killing them?”


TY: “What we’re seeing is that hens, once they hatch their young, they move right after
the first day into the first wetland and it’s a dangerous journey. Basically, because our
habitat is so fragmented that they’re moving these ducklings through non-grassed areas,
across parking lots, roads. It’s dangerous. And, a lot of the ducklings either die from
exhaustion or predators kill them on the way. A lot of avian predators get them at that
point.”


LG: “So, we’re talking about hawks and not so much domestic animals like cats and
dogs.”


TY: “Ah, cats are a problem, yeah. It’s hard to document exactly what is getting them,
but feral cats and domestic cats are a problem. Hawks and jays, sometimes…”


LG: “Blue jays?”


TY: “Blue jays can be mean, yeah. But, it’s interesting to note that if you put those
corridors back between nesting sites and wetlands, it’ll be a much safer journey for
them.”


LG: “So, what are you proposing?”


TY: “I would look more away from urban areas where those infrastructures are already
intact. We would not certainly expect anybody to tear that type of stuff up. But, outside
the cities and urban areas there are lots of opportunities to look at areas where there is
grass existing or wetlands existing and then piece the habitat back together where we
can.”


LG: “There are places, for instance in Chicago, where they’re working to do exactly that.
Do you see that kind of effort in most of the states you studied?”


TY: “Yes, actually we do. Some states like – Chicago’s a very good example. A very
strong park system not only throughout the city, but out in the suburbs as well and we do
see that in a lot of different places. That’s a positive thing.”


LG: “Where are the worst places for duckling survival?”


TY: “The worst duckling survival was the site that you were at two years ago in Port
Clinton, Ohio. And, if you think about what that habitat looks like, what you have is a
few patches of grass and an area that’s heavily agriculturally based, but all the wetlands
have been ditched and drained so that when a bird has to move from an area where it
nested to get to a nice, safe wetland habitat, they have to make a substantial move across
a lot of open fields that don’t have a lot of cover on them. So, here you’re looking at
maybe piecing cover back between the wetland areas and still being able to maintain farm
operations at the same time.”


LG: “What can farmers do to help duck survival?”


TY: “Oh, let’s see. Leave some patches of grass along the fields, especially if they have
wetlands in their fields. Leave a nice margin around the wetland, a nice vegetative
margin around the wetland because the ducks will nest right in that edge as well. Then
they don’t have to move very far to take the ducklings to a nice food source and a nice
wetland.”


LG: “Now, this is not just about making sure that mallard ducks reproduce. What’s this
going to mean for the ecosystem as a whole?”


TY: “Every time we replace a wetland or replace grass on the landscape, we’re
improving the water quality because those types of habitats remove nutrients and
sedimentation from runoff. So, there’s all kinds of benefits. There are benefits to any
other species that depends on grasslands to nest in or wetlands to either nest in or even
for migratory birds. So there’s just a suite of benefits beyond ducks.”


Tina Yerkes is a biologist with Ducks Unlimited. She says the group will be working
with states to develop programs to encourage development of corridors between the
grasslands where the ducks nest and the wetlands where they thrive.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Church Takes a Stand Against Sprawl

  • Sunday mass is much emptier than it used to be at St. Josaphat Parish in Detroit. Only a few dozen Catholics attend mass here each Sunday, though there's room for 1200 - many parishioners have moved to newer churches in the suburbs. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)

When people left inner cities, many things followed. Newer, better schools were built in the suburbs. And strip malls and shopping centers sprang up. But back in cities, stores and restaurants shut down. Schools and churches also closed. Now, the Catholic church is encouraging people to work together to prevent more urban sprawl. Catholic clergy say they don’t want to close perfectly good churches and cathedrals only to build new ones farther and farther out into the suburbs. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

When people left inner cities, many things followed. Newer, better schools were built in the
suburbs. And strip malls and shopping centers sprang up. But back in cities, stores and restaurants
shut down. Schools and churches also closed. Now, the Catholic church is encouraging people to
work together to prevent more urban sprawl. Catholic clergy say they don’t want to close perfectly
good churches and cathedrals only to build new ones farther and farther out into the suburbs. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


Twenty-five years ago, Loraine Krajewski lost nearly everything. She lost her home and she lost
her church. Both were demolished when General Motors built a sprawling auto plant over
Poletown, a Polish-American neighborhood at the border of Detroit. Krajewski says it was the fight
of her life.


“I did things I never thought I would do. I picketed, I mean, in rain and snow. I wrote
letters, I mean, to Congressmen and to our council and everything. And I went to meetings
that would last until one, two o’clock in the morning at times, and I took time off from work
to go downtown to the council meetings.”


Krajewski was mad at the city of Detroit for letting it happen. And she was mad at the Catholic
Church in Detroit for not fighting the project. But not mad enough to leave the church. Krajewski
and others forced out of Poletown found a new parish in the city, called St. Josaphat.


Krajewski headed for the suburbs after Poletown disappeared. But she still returns to the city every
Sunday for Mass at St. Josaphat. It’s a 15-mile trip.


“We decided we are not going to let another Polish church go down the drain. And that’s
why I’ve been coming here. It’s just too bad that we don’t have a larger congregation.”


More parishioners would make Krajewski feel more sure that St. Josaphat would always be here,
that it was safe from closing down. But it’s not safe. Only a few dozen Catholics show up here
anymore for Mass on Sunday. And the church can hold 12-hundred people.


Father Mark Borkowski is the pastor at St. Josaphat. He says people like Krajewski, who are
coming from 10, 15 or 20 miles away, are the only ones keeping his church open. But just barely.


“If we were to live on Sunday collections alone, the parish would not be able to survive. So
with our monthly fundraising dinners, we can survive. But there’s a difference between
surviving and flourishing.”


People left the churches when they left the city for bigger plots of land and better schools. And the
Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit followed its people. Catholics built new churches in the suburbs.
But now, the Archdiocese is rethinking its role in urban sprawl.


Father Ken Kaucheck is on the Detroit Archdiocese urban sprawl committee. He says the church is
concerned about sprawl because it creates social and economic inequities between cities and
suburbs.


“It creates blight. It creates loss, it creates desolation and desecration. And it destroys not
only communities, but therefore, it destroys the lives of people.”


Kaucheck says the main tenet of the church’s anti-sprawl campaign is encouraging local
governments to work together on economic development. He says if communities are not trying to
one up each other to win new development projects, there would be less incentive for companies to
move farther into rural areas.


Kaucheck says the church wants its priests to talk about sprawl in their Sunday sermons. He calls it
“stirring the population” to affect social change.


“It’s government of the people, for the people and by the people. That’s what a democracy
is about. But somebody has to raise the question and you raise the question, faith-based,
through the scriptures. Is this what the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to? No, it doesn’t call
us to sprawl, it calls us to solidarity in community, and to looking at how service of one
another sometimes means dying to myself, that means maybe I’m going to have to give
something up.”


It isn’t likely the church’s urban sprawl committee will be able do much to bring people back to
parishes in the city. Father Mark Borkowski at St. Josaphat prays about the problem to the
Madonna. Her picture is at the center of the church’s main altar.


“My personal reason for the novena is to say to the Blessed Virgin Mary, ‘I haven’t got a
clue as to what to do, so I’m turning the problem over to you. This is your shrine, if you
want to stay here Mary, do something to help us help you stay, and help us stay here. When
the problem is too big you have to turn it over to a higher power.'”


The Catholic Church now hopes to protect churches that could become the next victims of sprawl.
Those are in places that once served the early waves of Catholics leaving Detroit for the first
suburbs.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.

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What Is “Smart Growth?”

The rapid growth of suburban areas, what some people call urban sprawl, is getting renewed attention by states. New governors in several states are setting up commissions or task forces to address the issue and to find ways to adhere to what’s called “Smart Growth.” The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that there’s a lot of interpretation of what “Smart Growth” means:

Transcript

The rapid growth of suburban areas, what some people call urban sprawl, is getting renewed
attention by states. New governors in several states are setting up commissions or task forces to
address the issue and to find ways to adhere to what’s called “Smart Growth.” The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that there’s a lot of interpretation of what “Smart
Growth” means:


Many urban planners have been alarmed over the last couple of decades as metropolitan areas have
sprung up where farmland or wooded areas once stood. Following new subdivisions have been
strip malls, parking lots and fast food franchises in a not always attractive fashion.


Last year’s election saw a number of states with new governors and some of them are looking at
what can be done to control that kind of unbridled growth. Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm noted it
during her State of the State speech.


“We will develop a cooperative, common sense approach to how we use our land so we can protect
our forests and farms, prevent the sprawl that chokes our suburban communities and threatens our
water quality, and bring new life to our cities and older suburbs.”


Governor Granholm says she wants “Smart Growth.” It’s a popular term, but what is it? What
does it mean?


“I think that Smart Growth is really hard to – certainly hard to describe.”


Barry Rabe is a Professor of Environmental Policy at the University of Michigan’s School of
Natural Resources and Environment. He says “Smarth Growth” sounds great.


“I don’t know anyone who’s really against Smart Growth. But, you can spend a long academic
seminar or actually a lifetime in search of the one common definition of exactly what that means.
Again, it has sort of an intuitive appeal. It resonates. We can all think of examples that are not so
Smart Growth or dumb growth. But, I think clearly this is something that lends itself to differing
kinds of interpretations by different groups.”


And as you ask the people who’ll be sitting at the table debating “Smart Growth,” it becomes clear
that each one has a different definition.


Lynn Egbert is the CEO of the Michigan Association of Home Builders. He says “Smart Growth”
is a private citizen building a home wherever he or she thinks is an ideal site.


“Our basis continues to be and our primary focus is, and it will remain, that it’s private property
rights under the U.S. Constitution that have to be maintained and that is an individual right. It is a
citizen’s right. And we have to work with local and state government to make sure that that’s
achieved and balanced.”


Egbert says the culprit causing urban sprawl is not the choices that landowners make. He says it’s
too much government regulation. Egbert says, generally, municipalities that zone areas into large
lots stop home builders from building more houses on smaller plots of land.


Others also place much of the blame for sprawl on government, but for different reasons. Hans
Voss is with the Michigan Land Use Institute.

______________
“Landowners do have a right to live in the area in which they choose as long as they follow local
land-use regulations and pay the full cost of that lifestyle. And right now the taxpayers in the cities
and across the whole states are actually subsidizing that style of development.”


Voss says to implement “Smart Growth,” the government has to stop subsidizing urban sprawl by
building highways and sewer systems that all of us have to pay for with our taxes instead of just the
residents who benefit from them. He says that money could be better used to revitalize older
suburbs and the center of deteriorating cities.


There are a lot more ideas of what “Smart Growth” means… and there’s a bit of public relations
spinning because of the ambiguity of the term “Smart Growth.”


The University of Michigan’s Barry Rabe says we’ll hear a lot about “Smart Growth” for some
time to come.


“It’s one of these buzz words that everybody likes. But, to come up with a common definition of
it, much less figure out how that would be implemented in public policy is tricky.”


Ultimately, compromise will define “Smart Growth” as states grapple with trying to find better ways
to use land without losing so much farmland to sprawling subdivisions and paving over natural areas
for parking lots.


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

Small Towns Invite Sprawl

  • Eleven million acres of prime farmland were lost to urban sprawl in a 15 year period. Some small cities are embracing the growth and helping developers circumvent so-called Smart Growth restrictions on sprawl.

Researchers have found that small towns hungry for new tax dollars are making it possible for developers to get around Smart Growth plans. Often the result is urban sprawl that paves over farmland and natural areas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has the story:

Transcript

Researchers have found that small towns hungry for new tax dollars are making it possible for developers to get around Smart Growth Plans. Often the result is urban sprawl that paves over farmland and natural areas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


Despite the best efforts of some politicians to slow down the pace of turning farmland into suburbia, the 2000 Census shows population growth is exploding at the edges of Metropolitan areas, and all those people need somewhere to live and shop. So, in the Midwest, often housing developments and shopping malls are built where corn or soybeans grew just the year before.


For example, Kane County, Illinois, as recently as the 1970’s was predominately farmland. Now with more and more people moving there, only about half the county is left for farming.


Randall Road cuts through the heart of the county, although housing developments and retail stores are starting to infringe on the country setting, on one side of the road you can still see rows of crops and pasture, and on the other side of Randall Road, it’s nearly solid shopping malls and subdivisions. But in the middle of all that development, there’s still one dairy farm. Mike Kenyon and his family still grow hay and corn, and milk cows here. But their fields are surrounded by three sprawling towns. Kenyon says Randall Road used to be the line where planners said urban sprawl would stop. They were so confident that they even said so in their planning document for the year 2020.


“And they drew a line in the county and they said ‘we want the growth to occur here and we want to maintain this as rural, as farms. Well, how did developers get around that? Well they go to a little village and they say ‘Well, we’ll put a big housing development over here. Please, annex us and this’ll be more revenue and they’ll even have a sewer system when we get done.’ So, that’s what happens; they kind of bribe the villages so they get around the 2020 plan.”


And that, Kenyon says, is what’s now happening on the other side of Randall Road where Kane County was supposed to remain rural. Kane County officials are trying to implement all kinds of programs to save the remaining farmland from urban sprawl, or at least keep urbanization to certain areas of the county. But at the town and village level, many local politicians see growth as nothing but good and are willing to expand their city limits to include developments. That’s because those developments help increase their tax revenue.


The story is not unique to the Chicago region. It’s being repeated throughout the Midwest and the Great Lakes, as well as across the United States.
So much so that millions, yes millions of acres of prime farmland in the U.S. have been lost in a little more than a decade. Rich Green is a geographer at Northern Illinois University. He’s been tracking the fringes of the ever-growing Chicago Metropolitan area. He’s been adding up just how much former cropland has been turned into suburban lawns and parking lots.


“What we found is this: the nation between 1982 and 1997, that’s a 15 year time period, lost about eleven million acres of prime farmland, cropland, to urban development.”


Green also found, perhaps coincidentally, that an identical amount of land, eleven million acres of rangeland was plowed up and put into crop production during the same period.


“What we’ve been looking at is losing the nation’s best farmland in places like Chicago and other metropolitan areas in the Midwest, and replacing it with marginal lands in the arid West which requires more inputs, particularly water, irrigation.”


Green says shifting farming to less productive and more environmentally damaging land might not be the intent of the small towns that want to grow, but that’s the apparent result.


Just off campus at Northern Illinois’ Social Sciences Research Institute, Director Harvey Smith says Midwest states such as Illinois should take the time to better learn and weigh the costs of continued urban sprawl.


“Economically, Illinois relies very, very heavily on its agriculture. And, it is also the case that a lot of the very rich farmland is in the northern tier of the state which is closest to the moving fringe of the suburbs.”


Many times government at a more regional level, such as at the county level, is struggling with balancing development and farmland preservation. Even though it’s something of a contradiction, Smith says the people who move to the suburbs’ fringes causing further urban sprawl, actually want to preserve some of the farmland.


“The fact is that many of the people who move into the suburbs, while they like the sort of scenic quality of a farm or two over the hill, aren’t in a position to stop the disappearance of the farms themselves. It requires cooperation between local and regional governmental agencies to make a real effort to protect these qualities that are likely to disappear if they don’t.”


For some towns, it’s too late to recover the rural character and small town charm they lost to development, but for those at the fringes of the sprawling large metro areas with adherence to Smart Growth planning, some planners believe there’s still the opportunity to preserve a little of the setting of the suburbs that drew so many people there in the first place.

SMALL TOWNS INVITE SPRAWL (Short Version)

  • Eleven million acres of prime farmland were lost to urban sprawl in a 15 year period. Some small cities are embracing the growth and helping developers circumvent so-called Smart Growth restrictions on sprawl.

The U.S. has lost millions of acres of productive farmland in the last decade to urban sprawl. Researchers say state and county officials are seeing Smart Growth plans circumvented by politicians in small cities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The US has lost millions of acres of productive farmland in the last decade to urban sprawl. Researchers say state and county officials are seeing smart growth plans circumvented by politicians in small cities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


Most states have passed legislation or are looking at doing so to reduce urban sprawl. Even some counties are working to restrict development to certain areas. But often developers approach small cities, promising increased tax revenues and infrastructure if the town annexes large areas of surrounding land for the developers. Rich Green is a geographer at Northern Illinois University. He says some small town officials don’t see past their own city limits.


“And in some respects, they may overlook the regional concerns to benefit their own territory, developers, shopping malls, retailers, playing one municipality off the other in terms of getting the best deal to locate.”


And so long debated plans to manage growth become nothing more than lines on a map, while natural areas and farmland are replaced by subdivisions and parking lots. Green says that’s led to eleven million acres of prime farmland being taken out of production in the fertile Midwest and East in a 15 year period due to urban sprawl. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.