ROOM FOR CONSERVATION IN FARM BILL? (Part 1)

  • A combine harvests soybeans in Minnesota. Photo by Don Breneman.

Although it has been delayed by the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Congressional debate is still scheduled to begin this fall on legislation that will shape the nation’s farm policy for the next 5 to 10 years. Right now, the vast majority of subsidies go to farmers who grow commodity crops like corn and soybeans. That leaves out many small dairy and vegetable farmers throughout the Midwest. Environmentalists say a shift in farm program priorities would help those farmers and be a boon to the environment. In the first of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure visits a place that’s considered to be a success story in the nation’s conservation reserve program:

Transcript

Although it has been delayed by the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Congressional debate is still scheduled to begin this fall on legislation that will shape the nation’s farm policy for the next 5 to 10 years. Right now, the vast majority of subsidies go to farmers who grow commodity crops like corn and soybeans. That leaves out many small dairy and vegetable farmers throughout the Midwest. Environmentalists say a shift in farm program priorities would help those farmers and be a boon to the environment. In the first of a two-part
series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure visits a place that’s considered to be a success story in the nation’s conservation reserve program:


When cattle buyer Del Wehrspann was growing up on an Iowa farm in the 1950’s and 60’s, he saw the floodplain of the Des Moines River plowed up and planted in crops. Wehrspann is a lifelong conservationist and avid fisherman. He watched, dismayed, as the rivers fish and wildlife languished. So in 1968 he moved north to the Minnesota River valley, where the bottomland was still unplowed.


“But then we lived here not very long and I seen the exact same things taking place that had taken place in Iowa for me when I was a boy. That was draining every last wetland, tearing out every last fence, plowing everything that could be plowed for agricultural production.”


But these days as Wehrspann drives along the Minnesota River, he sees something he never expected in his lifetime – the river’s bottomland is being restored. It’s happening because Wehrspann and other citizens in the valley helped convince the state and federal government to begin what’s known as the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. The program pays farmers an annual fee to take environmentally sensitive land out of cultivation. Now cattails, willows, and young cottonwoods grow on bottomland that just a few years ago was rows of corn and soybeans.


(sound of pontoon boat)


Already, Wehrspann has noticed changes on the river, where he often fishes from his pontoon boat. This spring when he floated past a field his neighbor has restored to a cattail marsh, the water running into the river was clear, not muddy with soil washing off a plowed field.


“This spring, the walleyes, they spawned. There was quite a few of them, the fish were here, nice fish. And for years, the Department of Natural Resources told us that we couldn’t have production, natural walleye production in this area because the water was too dirty.”


(Wahlspann putters downstream, past wood ducks, great blue herons,
Kingfishers, a black crowned night heron, and a soaring bald eagle.)


At a bend in the river, he beaches the boat and walks through land that was once diked and drained and is now a wetland. The mud is littered with freshwater mussel shells and crisscrossed with animal tracks.


“Like I say, this land is in production. It may not be in agricultural production, but as far as the deer, the other wildlife, the water quality, the aesthetics, it’s producing something. (Killdeer cry) that’s a killdeer.”


Under conservation programs similar to the one in the Minnesota River Valley, farmers nationwide have retired more than 33 million acres of environmentally sensitive land since 1985.


A farm bill amendment sponsored by Representatives Ron Kind of Wisconsin, Sherry Boehlert of New York and others would substantially increase spending for such programs to more than one quarter of the farm bill’s budget.


It’s not clear how well such proposals will fare…. but Tim Searchinger, senior attorney for the Washington DC based Environmental Defense, believes the time is right for a shift.


“It’s become increasingly obvious to people that these traditional farm programs leave out a large number of farmers. Nationwide, two-thirds of all the farmers don’t get any farm payments, and of the payments that are provided, two-thirds goes to the top largest ten percent.”


Searchinger says members of Congress from states like Wisconsin and New York where farmers receive relatively little in farm subsidies are starting to wake up to the inequities – especially as farm bill spending balloons.


He says congressmen from those states are increasingly supporting conservation programs. And in a recent boost for conservationists, a new report by the Bush administration proposes a similar shift from transitional subsidies to conservation programs.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Losure.

Hanging on to Karner Blues

  • Karner Blue butterflies depend on wild lupine for survival. Lupine is the only plant Karner Blue caterpillars will eat. Photo by Ann B. Swengel, courtesy of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Once, a postage-stamp-sized butterfly known as the Karner Blue was found all across the Great Lakes states, from Minnesota to New York. Today its population has declined by 99 percent. The Karner Blue’s last stronghold is in Wisconsin, where an unprecedented state-wide effort is underway to save it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure reports:

Falcons Leave the Big City

Today, peregrine falcons nest on skyscrapers and smokestacks in citiesall around the Great Lakes. It’s the result of a successful effort tobring the birds back from the brink of extinction, after they werenearly wiped out by the insecticide DDT. Peregrines still have notreturned to all their old wild habitat, but that’s starting to change.This summer for the first time in 40 years, peregrine falcons arenesting and raising young in one of their traditional strongholds– thecliffs along the upper Mississippi River in Minnesota, Wisconsin, andnorthern Iowa. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure reports:

Transcript

Today, peregrine falcons nest on skyscrapers and smokestacks in cities all
around the Great Lakes. It’s the result of a successful effort to bring the
birds back from the brink of extinction, after they were nearly wiped out by
the insecticide DDT.


Peregrines still have not returned to all their old wild habitat, but
that’s starting to change.

This summer for the first time in 40 years, peregrine falcons are nesting
and raising young in one of their traditional strongholds— the cliffs
along the upper Mississippi River in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and northern Iowa.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure reports.

(Sound of traffic whizzing by)

The traffic is heavy on highway 61 along the
Mississippi River south of Winona, but retired
University of Minnesota biologist Bud Tordoff ignores it.

He strides along the shoulder carrying a tripod and high powered spotting scope.

He sets them up and aims at the sheer rock cliffs about a quarter mile in the distance.

They rise like fortresses from the wooded bluffs along the river.

“Well, let me just see what’s up there first.”

Within seconds, he has a mother peregrine in his sights.

“There’s the falcon.”

She’s perched on a dead tree, so far away she’s invisible to the naked eye, but Tordoff knows where to find her.

He’s spent his life studying peregrine falcons.

For almost 30 years Tordoff has been one of the leaders of the effort to bring them back to the Midwest.

In the mid 1970’s, he and his colleagues tried releasing captive bred birds from Mississippi cliffs.

But those efforts met with disaster.

Tordoff believes great horned owls killed the baby falcons.

“The early nestlings, they never got beyond about three weeks; as
soon as they started getting conspicuous, they vanished. At both places we
climbed to band them, you put band on them about three weeks of age, only to find at one place the chicks had disappeared overnight, and the other, the remains of one dead chick and two others that disappeared the next couple of nights.”

Peregrines were so scarce that Tordoff and his coworkers were afraid to risk any more birds on the cliffs.

So instead, they began releasing them from skyscrapers in Minneapolis and Saint Paul and from power plant smokestacks along the Mississippi.

There, peregrines built up their numbers.

Now, young birds looking for a place to nest are starting to do what earlier generations couldn’t when there were so few peregrines.

On their own, they’re taking back the old, wild strongholds on the cliffs.

“I’ll show you the nest ledge. If there’s a still an active
next, it’s back down in there behind that ledge you’re looking at. See the
dropping of whitewash from the birds that have been perched there? Little white
marks? When the female went back into it last time I was here, she went clean out of sight. So if there are chicks they’re probably in there somewhere.”

Tordoff trains his spotting scope on the ledge and waits patiently, he knows the birds have nested, but not whether any chicks have survived.

“There’s the chick! It looks like it’s about 33, 34 days old. Take
a look. On the left hand side of the ledge.”

It’s an unglamorous heap of whitish down and dark feathers, hunkered down
uncertainly, but it marks a milestone in peregrine conservation.

It’s taken nearly 30 years and 14 million dollars to bring the peregrine back.

Critics questioned spending so much time and money on one species, when so many others were in trouble. But Tordoff never wavered.

“If you want a better world, you’ve got to start somewhere. What
are you going to do if you don’t start something you can handle. Everybody has their own special interest, and you work on the things that interest you, I think that’s just human nature. (why did they interest you so much?) I just like birds, I’ve always liked birds. I’ve been an ornithologist my whole adult
life, and peregrines are just about one of the most spectacular of birds.
When they were gone they were sorely missed, and getting them back just seems
worth doing.”

This summer, peregrine falcons have nested successfully on 3 cliff faces on the
Mississippi, and Tordoff says in time, they should be able to take back all their old nesting places on the river.

Peregrines are also returning to cliff faces along the north Shore of Lake Superior.

In the eastern United States, the birds are starting to take back the cliffs along the Hudson and other lowland rivers where they used to nest.

“Here she goes, she’s flying, coming across the face. Maybe we’ll see the male. Nice updraft, look at her, she just goes up like an elevator.”

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Losure.

Genetically Engineered Livestock

Animal geneticists from around the world are meeting this week inMinneapolis (Monday, July 24th) amid protests from opponents ofbiotechnology. They worry scientists are pushing the frontiers ofanimal breeding into the controversial territory of geneticengineering. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure reports:

Transcript

Animal geneticists from around the world are meeting this week in Minneapolis (Monday, July
24th) amid protests from opponents of biotechnology. They worry scientists are pushing the
frontiers of animal breeding into the controversial territory of genetic engineering. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure reports.


Midwest farmers have planted genetically altered crops since the late
1990’s.
So called GMO crops like Bt corn and roundup ready soybeans are
bioengineered to contain a gene from another species. They now make up one third of the
corn and half the soybean crops.

Genetically altered crops have sparked growing public opposition. Now, the
possibility of genetically altered farm livestock is on the horizon.

So far, scientists have created goats, sheep and dairy cows with
transplanted
genes for use in laboratories. The animals produce human pharmaceuticals in
their milk. For example, the high tech cows can produce the substance
humans
need so their blood can clot properly.

In theory, scientists could use the same technology to create high tech
dairy
cows for widespread commercial use by the nation’s farmers. The cows could
be
genetically engineered to resist diseases or produce more milk.

But Chuck Muscoplat, dean of the College of Agricultural, Food, and
Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota, says huge obstacles
stand in the way.

“It’s very, very expensive, it’s almost not feasible except for
the
most valuable of all human pharmaceuticals. That may happen within the
decade,
to have very, very specialized pharmaceutical producing animals, but I
don’t
think it’s likely to be routine production of milk or dairy or meat products,
within the next decade. I think that’s a much longer term time horizon.”

For one thing, genetically engineered animals are much difficult to
propagate
than plants. In general, embryonic cells injected with the desired gene
must
be cloned and raised in surrogate mothers. The failure rate of cloning is
spectacularly high. It takes 100 attempts to produce just two or 3 live
offspring. Muscoplat says current technology just isn’t up to the task of
producing genetically engineered animals on a large scale.

More importantly, he says , the public still needs to deal with the
troubling
social and ethical questions raised by the new technology.

“I think these things find their way into society when society
comes to understand them and realizes the benefits outweigh the risks, and its my opinion that community is not yet ready for genetically modified animals on
any large scale.”

But others seem undaunted by the obstacles. Michael Bishop is president of
Infigen Incorporated, a biotechnology company in DeForest, Wisconsin. The
company owns the technology that led to the birth of the worlds first
cloned
cow in 1997. Bishop says his company is very close to producing
genetically
modified livestock for widespread commercial use.

“All we lack is the genes that we want to put in the cells to do
it
right now. Because we could create the founder animals carrying the gene,
for
instance the bull, and use that bull to breed literally thousands and
thousands
of cows.”

Bishop says he expects the necessary genes will be identified within the
next
few years. But even if the company solves the technical problems standing
in
the way of transgenic farm animals, Bishop acknowledges the public may not
be
ready for them.

“That may take a few years. We may need to do more research to prove to
the
public that we’re good stewards of technology, and that the technology
does
not harm the animals, and that the products from the animals do not harm
people.”

The public may still have a few years to get used to the idea of transgenic
farm animals. But transgenic FISH are much closer to the market place.
Fish
are easier to genetically manipulate than animals, because fish produce
massive numbers of eggs that can be raised in water. A Waltham,
Massachusetts
based company called A/F Protein is now raising test pens of genetically
altered salmon on Prince Edward Island in Canada. The salmon contain a
gene
from a cold water fish known as an eel pout. They grow 4 to 6 times faster
than standard salmon. Company president Elliot Entis hopes to have the
genetically altered salmon ready for sale to commercial fish farmers in two
years. He says they will be clearly labeled to show their high tech
origin.

“We’re very sensitive to the fact that consumers need to be made aware
of
what the product is. We’ve got nothing to hide.”

The company is now in the process of seeking approval from the Federal Food
and
Drug Administration. Entis says the main objections have come from
environmentalists concerned that the transgenic fish could escape from fish
farms and mate with wild fish. The company plans to address those concerns
by
sterilizing its genetically modified salmon.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Losure.

Prescription Drugs in Great Lakes Water

Researchers in the United States are starting to investigate a new and potentially serious problem in the water supply. The United States Geological Survey has begun a study of streams in 31 including many in the Great Lakes region looking for both prescription and over the counter drugs. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure reports:

The Latest on Frog Deformities

An X-ray study of deformed frogs lends new support to the idea
that there are many different causes for the frog deformities found in
the
Great Lakes region and across the nation. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mary Losure reports:

Potato Farms Create ‘Super-Sized’ Problem (Part 2)

Ron D. Offutt is the biggest potato grower in the world.
His privately owned company raises 1.8 BILLION pounds of potatoes a
year. They go to make French fries for fast food chains like McDonalds
and big potato processors like J.R Simplot. But Offutt’s
success has a downside. Many people who live near his potato farms
worry about the pesticides sprayed on his fields…but they soon find
they’re up against a system much bigger than they are. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure reports, in the second part of a two part
series:

Potato Farms Create ‘Super-Sized’ Problem (Part 1)

Ron Offutt grows more potatoes than anyone else in the
world. He grows them for the French Fry market. Press reports call him
the Sultan of Spuds and the Lord of the Fries—but his success has an
environmental price, as people in small towns near his potato farms have
learned to their dismay. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary
Losure reports in the first of a two part series:

Market Testing Irradiated Beef

Early next year, the nation’s two largest meat-packers will test market
a new product—ground beef that’s been irradiated to kill harmful
bacteria. The Federal Food and Drug Administration approved irradiation
for red meat in 1997, but the meat industry has been moving cautiously.
Companies are unsure whether consumers will accept irradiated meat. The
product got a major test recently in Minnesota. Minnesota Public Radio’s
Mary Losure reports:

Dairy Farm Endangers Trout Stream

In the tiny town of Martell in western Wisconsin, residents are trying
to stop a big new dairy farm they fear will pollute one of the best
trout streams in the Midwest — the Rush River, about an hour’s drive
east of the Twin Cities. Its the same kind of battle small towns and
rural residents are fighting across the Midwest, as large-scale
livestock operations continue to expand. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mary Losure reports: