Eight whooping cranes trying to migrate to their summer home in Wisconsin are now stuck in Michigan. The birds are part of a flock of 36 that have all been hatched in captivity. They’re taught to migrate to Florida in the fall following an ultra-light aircraft. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:
Transcript
Eight whooping cranes trying to migrate to their summer home in
Wisconsin are now stuck in Michigan. The birds are part of a flock of 36
that have all been hatched in captivity. They’re taught to migrate to
Florida in the fall following an ultra-light aircraft. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:
The lost whooping cranes are the newest members of the flock. They
were returning from Florida for the first time. Wildlife officials say the
birds were scared by people in North Carolina who came too close. The
cranes took off, flew at night and got off course.
Now they’re on the wrong side of Lake Michigan and won’t fly over it.
Joan Garland, with the International Crane Foundation, says the cranes
could summer in Michigan and hopefully return to Wisconsin during their
spring migration next year.
“We had a bird for instance, last year, from the 2002 flock that ended up
all summer in Northern Illinois and so we were watching her to see if she was
going to go back to northern Illinois or Wisconsin… it turned out this year,
she did come back to Wisconsin.”
Garland believes the twenty other cranes in the flock made it back to
Wisconsin. There are less than 500 hundred whooping cranes in North America.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Peter Payette.
Characters in the upcoming film Barn Red. Ernest Borgnine plays a farmer, who's struggling to keep his 240-acre fruit farm in the face of development pressures.
People worried about land-use issues usually don’t laugh about them. But a Michigan filmmaker has made a romantic comedy about development pressures on America’s farmland. Director Rich Brauer hopes the humor of his movie “Barn Red” will make the issue more accessible for the general public. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:
Transcript
People worried about land-use issues usually don’t laugh about them. But a
Michigan filmmaker has made a romantic comedy about development pressures
on America’s farmland. Director Rich Brauer hopes the humor of his movie
“Barn Red” will make the issue more accessible for the general public. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:
You might call Micheal Bollini puzzled at the beginning of the movie, “Barn
Red.”
The old fruit farmer played by actor Ernest Borgnine is a picture of rugged self-
reliance. But he’s bewildered by the pressure he’s under to get out of farming.
“Did you ever get that feeling that you’re going too fast and you pass a police car
and he’s got his radar at you. That’s how I feel when they talk about selling the
farm and everything. It gives me butterflies in my stomach. Terrible.”
Bollini can’t comprehend developer Paul Haight, played by actor Wayne David
Parker. In their first meeting, Haight tells Bollini he figures Bollini has to sell his
farm. Haight wants to build a subdivision there called Oak Wind. In a
conversation with his assistant, Haight calls Bollini’s 240- acre family farm a
bonanza.
HAIGHT: “So you go in here, drive up this way, turn here and your home.”
ASSISTANT: “Oak Winds is a good name. Bollini has a ton of oaks up there.”
HAIGHT: “Actually we’ll cut those down and plant this… it’s a
juniperous…something. They grow faster and there’s no leaves, no messy yards,
no leaves to clean up. So they’re perfect, no lousy squirrels.”
He goes onto say they’ll plant purple loosestrife for ground cover in Oak Wind.
Purple loosestrife is an invasive species that chokes out other the naturally
occurring plants.
Haight can’t figure out why loosestrife is so cheap.
A lot of the humor in “Barn Red” lampoons characters with their own lack of
understanding.
Bollini, the farmer, doesn’t open letters from the IRS that say he owes hundreds
of thousand of dollars in estate taxes.
Haight, The developer, gets poison ivy while trespassing on Bollini’s property.
In this scene a woman notices him scratching himself.
WOMAN: “Look’s like a pretty nasty rash you got there.”
HAIGHT: “I don’t know what the heck it is. I’m doing all I can not to scratch it,
but it seems to be spreading.”
WOMAN: “Looks like poison ivy to me. Good thing you put that pink stuff on
it.”
HAIGHT: “Oh, yeah, I sure hope it clears it up. I don’t know where I could have
gotten it at.”
The Filmmaker, Rich Brauer, says he made his movie entertaining so people will
pay attention to an issue he cares about.
Brauer lives in a rural part of northern Michigan. The region is under as much
development pressure as just about any place in the Midwest.
And Brauer’s been involved with land-use issues for years. He says he didn’t
have to invent the antics of the developer from scratch. He just had to tell about
some of the things he’s seen.
“I’ve seen these guys and I thought they were kidding. But they weren’t. Therein
lies comedy. So all I did…I just sort of created a character that echoed what I
had experienced in real life…This isn’t just completely off of a blank sheet of
paper…I was inspired by reality.”
The developer isn’t the butt of every joke.
In one scene the township clerk gets out their master plan to show to a friend of
Bollinis. She tells how it cost the township 150 thousand dollars and then the
plan just sat on the shelf for last five years.
People unfamiliar with planning and zoning might miss the sarcasm here.
But Larry Mawby didn’t. Mawby owns a vineyard in the township where “Barn
Red” was filmed. He’s been involved in local government there for twenty years.
Mawby says the county put together a state-of-the-art master plan in the mid-90s.
Mawby says people came from other parts of the state to see what they had done.
“That master plan has been totally and completely ignored. The Board of
Commissioners doesn’t pay attention to that master plan at all. Where they’re
citing the jail is contrary to their master plan. None of their facilities questions
have they ever looked at that master plan or paid attention to it. It’s like, what’s
the point here?”
The point of laughing about it in a movie may be to get everybody to lighten up.
Glenn Chown is the executive director of the Grand Traverse Regional Land
Conservancy.
Brauer consulted with Chown while writing the script for his movie.
Chown thinks the levity of “Barn Red” will help the image of environmentalists.
“Sometimes we can be accused of being all gloom and doom. And the sky is
falling and it’s all falling apart and we’re all doomed. And I think we need to
lighten up a little bit. If we do lighten up a little bit, we’ll reach people more
effectively.
But… the film ends with a little gloom and doom.
Between the end of the movie and the credits a figure from the American
Farmland Trust appears on the screen. It says America loses more than 1.2
million acres of farmland to sprawl each year.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Peter Payette.
For decades, a small number of people have believed milk is more nutritious if it’s not pasteurized. Modern science doesn’t support that claim. And the idea of milk going right from the cow to the breakfast bowl is unthinkable for most doctors and food safety experts. But advocates are finding a new audience for their message: Small farmers trying to compete against large dairy companies. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:
Transcript
For decades a small number of people have believed milk is more nutritious if it’s
not pasteurized. Modern science doesn’t support that claim. And the idea of milk
going right from the cow to the breakfast bowl is unthinkable for most doctors and
food safety experts. But advocates are finding a new audience for their message:
Small farmers trying to compete against large dairy companies. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:
A thick white blanket of fresh snow covers Chris Halpin’s small farm in northern
Michigan. All his goats are in the barn this morning munching on hay.
“These girls in here are all in here with a billy goat and they’re all milking
right now and they’re waiting to get bred. That’s the billy there.”
Halpin hasn’t sold much milk, even though he’s been raising goats for a number of
years. He says small farmers must cut out the middleman to make a living and
he’s exploring options to sell milk products without going through a big dairy
company.
Pasteurization equipment is too expensive for his small farm. So, for the last two
years he’s sold un-pasteurized milk to a small number of people.
“The demand for raw milk is huge. Pasteurized milk is a dead product. It’s
dead. It’s heated up to temperatures that kills not only any the bacteria that
could be in the milk but it kills all the enzymes in the milk and so there’s nothing
in there that could promote the body to digest the milk.”
It’s not legal to sell the raw milk in Michigan. A few other Midwest states and
Canada also ban such sales. Health officials say that raw milk can carry food-
borne illnesses. But Halpin says his animals are clean and healthy and he has no
concerns about the safety of the milk.
“That’s not my concern at all. We have five children and my wife makes yogurt
and cheese and we drink raw milk and I have no concerns at all and I don’t have
no concerns for my own family. If I guy has concerns it seems like it’d be for his
own family.”
Food regulators say the dangers of raw milk are well documented. In 2001, for
example, an outbreak of a bacterial infection in Wisconsin sickened 19 people.
The state says 17 of them reported drinking raw milk.
And raw milk advocates have not been able to convince regulators that raw milk
has any nutritional benefit over pasteurized milk, as is often claimed.
The legislative liaison for the Michigan Department of Agriculture, Brad Deacon,
says opponents of the pasteurization requirement weren’t persuasive when his state
updated its dairy laws in 2001.
“There haven’t been any credible studies that we’ve been able to find. Our minds
are not closed on the matter. But we’ve been yet to be given any credible studies
that pasteurized milk has fewer nutrients than unpasteurized milk.”
Raw milk advocates point to older studies, mostly done in the first half of the
twentieth century. Those studies did suggest health benefits from drinking raw
milk.
And they have anecdotal stories of people overcoming health problems by
switching to a diet that includes raw dairy.
They say the scientific community’s view is entrenched and influenced by the
interests of big agribusiness and big dairies.
But with modern science against them, raw milk activists are taking their message
directly to farmers.
And they’re finding receptive and occasionally large audiences.
The President of the Weston A. Price Foundation — the national group leading the
campaign for raw milk — was recently the keynote speaker at a small farm
conference in the Midwest that attracted 600 people.
Sally Fallon told the farmers they’re up against corporations that want squeeze the
little guy out.
“For this to happen, she says the big companies must make sure all food goes
through the corporations on its way from the farm to the table.”
“The farmer who adds value by farming organically by making cheese or butter
or by simply selling directly to the consumer, he is the enemy to this system and a
whole battery of laws, health laws, licensing laws, even environmental laws, is
used against us. We need to get rid of some of these laws.”
Fallon says raw dairy products are good for the consumer and the bottom line of
the farm.
For instance, she says raw butter made from cows free roaming on fertile pasture
is “the number one health food in America.”
The farmer making this butter should get at least five dollars a pound for this
product. In Washington D.C., we’re getting ten dollars a pound for the beautiful
Amish butter. Now that kind of income will pay for lots of improvements on the
farm.”
But the plight of small farmers doesn’t change the facts, says Dr. Stephen Barrett,
a retired psychiatrist and journalist who operates the website quackwatch.org.
Barrett says small businesses are having trouble everywhere.
“One have to ask rather cynically, if a company isn’t viable in the marketplace,
they either better do something or they’re going to perish, and if doing something
means putting the public at risk, that’s not good.”
Good or not, activists will continue to push for what they see as a fundamental
right to drink and sell milk without interference from the government.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Peter Payette.
Two environmental groups have released a study that questions the benefits of allowing bigger boats on the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway. Save the River and Great Lakes United paid for the report because they fear deepening the channels and allowing ocean-going vessels on the Great Lakes would harm the ecosystem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:
Transcript
Two environmental groups have released a study that questions the benefits of
allowing bigger boats on the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway. Save the River
and Great Lakes United paid for the report because they fear deepening the
channels and allowing ocean-going vessels on the Great Lakes would harm the
ecosystem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:
Researchers at the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute critiqued a study done by
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The critique focused on the idea of making the
locks and canals big enough to handle container ships. These boats now dock on
the East Coast and their cargo comes into the Midwest by rail or truck. The new
report says there’s no evidence that it would be more efficient for container ships to
unload at Great Lakes ports.
Lead Author Evelyn Tomchick says moving containers into the Midwest by water
would be slower.
Also the longer transit times are usually associated with greater unreliability. That
is, there’s variation in the time of arrival, the actual time of arrival.”
Tomchick says unreliability has costs that weren’t calculated.
A spokesman for the Army Corps agrees further study is needed to know the costs
and benefits of any expansion. The Corps of Engineers is currently studying what
it will cost to maintain the locks and channels the way they are.
For The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Peter Payette.
