One crop that Carbofuran was used on is potatoes (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA)
The Environmental Protection Agency says no amount of the pesticide carbofuran is safe on food. Mark Brush has more on the new EPA rule:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency says no amount of the pesticide carbofuran is safe on food. Mark Brush has more on the new EPA rule:
The EPA has been phasing out this insecticide, but it’s still used on some crops like rice, corn, and potatoes.
When people are exposed to carbofuran, it can cause damage to the nervous system. And the EPA is particularly worried about kids exposure when eating food or when drinking water near treated farm fields.
Potato farmers say they use carbofuran to kill bugs that resist other pesticides.
John Keeling is the CEO of the National Potato Council. He says they were hoping the EPA would let them keep using it.
“We had tried to work with the agency to modify use patterns, or limit the use to particular areas, so that we could continue to use the product – but they obviously didn’t continue in that direction.”
FMC Corporation makes the chemical. Officials there issued a statement saying they’ll fight the EPA’s new rule.
One lawyer wants a class action suit against the manufacturer of Atrazine, an herbicide used on crops (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Atrazine is a weed killer. It’s
used by farmers in several crops,
basically because the herbicide is
relatively cheap and effective.
When Atrazine is used in the spring,
it sometimes ends up getting in
water – and in some cases at levels
above the government’s drinking water
standard – the maximum contaminant
level of three parts-per-billion.
Steve Tillery is an attorney in a
lawsuit against the manufacturer of
Atrazine – Syngenta – and Synenta’s
partner, Growmark. Tillery represents
water suppliers and he’s seeking class-
action status to represent all water
suppliers who’ve had to deal with Atrazine
contamination. Lester Graham talked to
him about the lawsuit:
Transcript
Atrazine is a weed killer. It’s
used by farmers in several crops,
basically because the herbicide is
relatively cheap and effective.
When Atrazine is used in the spring,
it sometimes ends up getting in
water – and in some cases at levels
above the government’s drinking water
standard – the maximum contaminant
level of three parts-per-billion.
Steve Tillery is an attorney in a
lawsuit against the manufacturer of
Atrazine – Syngenta – and Synenta’s
partner, Growmark. Tillery represents
water suppliers and he’s seeking class-
action status to represent all water
suppliers who’ve had to deal with Atrazine
contamination. Lester Graham talked to
him about the lawsuit:
Lester Graham: Mr. Tillery, what’s this lawsuit about, if the level is less than the 3-parts-per-billion the government says is safe?
Steve Tillery: Well, actually, at different times of the year, Atrazine does in fact exceed the federal standard. The federal government refers to MCL – maximum contaminant level – and that’s the maximum, they say, a chemical should exist in the water supply to be consumed by people in the community. The maximum contaminant level for Atrazine is 3-parts-per-billion. Many times, throughout the Spring, throughout Illinois and other Mid-Western cities, the levels grossly exceed 3-parts-per-billion. So what happens is that the cities, the water districts, are required to pay large amounts of money to filter the water so it is below that level. In addition, some have gone to the expense of completely cleaning it out of their water supplies. So that it doesn’t exist at all. And they should, in our view, be entitled to reimbursement for the expenses that they have incurred for completely cleaning it out of their water supplies.
Graham: Scientists that worked, then, for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association told me that during the application season, during the Spring, that they measured levels of Atrazine exceeding the safe drinking water levels in the rain on the East Coast from all of the application in the Midwest. Rather than just cleaning it up, is this not a problem of too much Atrazine – maybe we limit the amount?
Tillery: Well, the issue is whether or not it should be banned completely. The European Union has done exactly that. For all of the reasons that people look at – scientists look at – this chemical and point to the adverse health affects, changes to the environment, all of those reasons, the Europeans banned it some years ago.
Graham: The defense in most cases like this is: this is a regulated product, the label is the law, if it isn’t applied correctly, it’s the applicator – the farmer’s – fault; and if it is applied according to the label, the government says it’s safe.
Tillery: Yeah, we’re not safe. For two reasons. First of all, it’s not a problem with farmers. Farmers are doing exactly what is on the label. They are applying it precisely the way the manufacturer says it should be applied. So they’re not the issue. The problem is the manufacturer. To the extent that we rely on federal regulators to do the right thing, we are misdirected in this instance. For many years, the relationship between Syngenta – the principle manufacturer of this chemical – and the EPA has been under close scrutiny. And I’m hopeful that it’s reevaluated and examined under this new administration. Big corporations, in this case from Switzerland, who come here and sell this and make enormous profits in this country selling this chemical – 77 million pounds a year, average. When they make that money, and they cause taxpayers to incur $400 million a year in expense throughout the US to clean up their mess, they should be the ones that come back and reimburse them. We aren’t asking for anything else besides that. We are asking for compensation to these cities who’ve incurred this expense. The people who create the mess should pay for its cleanup. People should not be drinking water with Atrazine in it, at any level.
Graham: Steve Tillery is an attorney seeking class-action status trying to make the manufacturers of Atrazine pay to clean up the water their product contaminates. Thanks for your time.
Tillery: Thank you for allowing me to come here and speak.
Brook Wilke and his son, Charlie, visit a test
farm at The Kellogg Biological Research Station. Wilke
and other researchers are testing how well perennial
versions of popular grain crops, such as wheat, will
grow in Michigan. The test farm isn't too far from Battle
Creek, the home of the commercial breakfast cereal industry. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
John Edgerton is a part-time farmer who's growing
test plots of perennial wheat on his Michigan farm. He's
interested in whether the plants might allow sheep to graze
a field after harvest, but still produce for years afterward. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
If you had a bowl of cereal or maybe a muffin this morning, you ate flour from an annual crop. They grow one season, they die, then get re-planted again the next year. Sounds as natural as could be, but repetitive planting can wear out farmland. It can cause soil erosion and cause more water pollution. Now, some scientists are trying to coax grain crops into growing for years at a time. Shawn Allee visited researchers who are testing perennial wheat in the heart of cereal country:
Transcript
If you had a bowl of cereal or maybe a muffin this morning, you ate flour from an annual crop. They grow one season, they die, then get re-planted again the next year. Sounds as natural as could be, but repetitive planting can wear out farmland. It can cause soil erosion and cause more water pollution. Now, some scientists are trying to coax grain crops into growing for years at a time. Shawn Allee visited researchers who are testing perennial wheat in the heart of cereal country:
I’ve headed to a test farm run by Michigan State University. It’s not that
far from Battle Creek,
Michigan where cereal companies like Kelloggs got started.
Dr. Sieg Snapp shows me grain that might make into our cereal bowls
someday.
Allee: “What are we looking at on this side?”
Snapp: “We have 6 varieties of perennial wheat.”
Right now, they kinda look like spindly blades of grass. But in some ways,
this is miraculous; regular
wheat dies after harvest. These have been harvested, and now they’re
popping back up.
“We’ll harvest these this summer, and then in the fall, they’ll re-grow.
They build a deep root
system, and they’re able to come back. So, at first, they start off very
similar, but they keep
growing longer, and they re-grow after harvest. That’s the real
difference.”
Actually, that’s just the start of the difference between annual grains
like wheat and perennial
varieties.
Dr. Snapp says when farmers plant most annual grain crops, soil gets torn
up again and again from
planting and replanting. Rain can wash away exposed top-soil.
Perennial crops get planted once every few years, so they might hold soil
and they might need less
fertilizer that runs off into streams and rivers.
Snapp: “So, the roots of traditional crops including annual wheat are
usually 1-2 feet. These
root systems might be down 6 feet. They can use fertilizers more
efficiently, so they can pick
it up from deep and then move it up where we want it, into the grain.”
Allee: “And if the roots are deep enough, you might need less herbicide
to kill weeds, right?
If that perennial wheat comes up strong enough, it’s already out-competing
the weeds that
are next to it?”
Snapp: “Right, and each year it should do it better for a couple years at
least, we don’t know
how long.”
Dr. Snapp and her colleagues use the word “maybe” a lot when they talk
about perennial grains. It’s
mostly because testing these crops is slow work. That’s one reason they’re
letting some farmers run
their own small tests.
She introduces me to one farmer.
“Hi John! Come on over!”
Part-time farmer and teacher John Edgerton says he checked his test batches
recently.
“I didn’t know what to expect and I went out there and low and behold,
it’s greening up
beautifully. In fact, now, it may be a little too thick. We’ll see.”
Edgerton wants to know whether sheep can get cheap feed from leftover wheat
grass, or whether
farmers could save on tractor fuel.
“One farmer said to me, you know, if I could get three or four years of a
decent crop of
perennial wheat without having to plow, there’d be enormous savings.”
Pretty soon, another perennial wheat researcher joins us in the test field.
He’s Brook Wilke.
He tells me, all this work on perennial wheat and other grains will work
best if the final product, the
grain, tastes like what we’re used to.
Allee: “I hear you baked some chocolate chip cookies with perennial
wheat.”
Wilke: “Yeah. A big component of this work is, “’will people eat the
perennial wheat?’”
Dr. Snapp tasted Wilke’s cookies. She says the wheat tasted kinda nutty,
but good.
Dr. Snapp says maybe one day, she and other researchers will prove
perennial grain plants can thrive.
After that, maybe bread or cereal companies, like Kellogs, will run
taste-tests of their own.
Rice harvesting in Fort Bend County, Texas (Photo by David Nance, courtesy of the USDA)
The US is not farming as much land. Kyle Norris reports farmland equal to the size of the entire state of West Virginia has been taken out of production in the last few years:
Transcript
The US is not farming as much land. Kyle Norris reports farmland equal to the size of the entire state of West Virginia has been taken out of production in the last few years:
The United States Department of Agriculture surveyed farmers from 2002 to 2007.
During that time farmers stopped planting more than 16 million acres of farmland.
In some cases farmers retired. Or they just decided not to plant crops. Or sold the land to developers in sprawling areas.
Don Buckloh is with the American Farmland Trust. He says what happens to farmland should be important to people.
“They should be interested in whether good farm land is remaining available to produce the food they’re interested in eating. And then secondly just how strong is agriculture in the community as an economic force.”
While less land is being farmed, the USDA says there are more farms. The survey counted 291,000 new farms during that time. Most of those new farms are smaller operations.
Cranberry harvest in New Jersey (Photo by Keith Weller, courtesy of the USDA)
One thing we can be thankful for
this Thanksgiving is cranberry relish.
After a sour decade of collapsing prices,
the industry has rebounded with a record
season. Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
One thing we can be thankful for
this Thanksgiving is cranberry relish.
After a sour decade of collapsing prices,
the industry has rebounded with a record
season. Julie Grant reports:
In the late 1990s, the market for cranberries started drying up. Americans didn’t
seem to crave the pucker of our native berry. Some years growers were getting as
little as 8 dollars a barrel and they didn’t know if they could stay in business much
longer.
Today, they’re getting as much as 150 dollars per barrel.
Dawn Gates-Allen is fourth generation cranberry grower on Cape Cod.
“It’s been ten years of suppressed grower return for the price per barrel.”
Prices are rebounding because cranberries have gained popularity as a healthful
fruit overseas. Europe and Japan have started importing a third of America’s
cranberry crop.
But even with that new demand, you shouldn’t see a big jump in prices at the
supermarket this year: the weather has been great for cranberries and there’s a
bumper crop.
There is a concern that pharma-crops may contaminate food crops
(Photo courtesy of the USDA)
The Bush Administration wants to
put new rules in place before its term
ends. Rebecca Williams reports one group
is worried about a proposed rule they say
could leave doors open for drugs in our food:
Transcript
The Bush Administration wants to
put new rules in place before its term
ends. Rebecca Williams reports one group
is worried about a proposed rule they say
could leave doors open for drugs in our food:
The US Department of Agriculture recently proposed new rules about
genetically engineered crops. That includes crops grown to produce drugs.
It might be something like a human gene grown in rice, or a vaccine grown
in corn.
They’re being tested in the field now, and they’re often grown near regular
food crops.
Doug Gurian-Sherman is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says
there’s not enough oversight in the new rules.
“If it does take off and these things are grown year after year and widely, I
think under these kind of regulations the chances for contamination will be
you know, very good.”
He says a couple years ago, a grain grown for pig vaccine got mixed into
normal grain. It was caught just before going to market.
But Gurian-Sherman says these genetically engineered crops should be
grown indoors to prevent contamination of food crops.
A recent study showed climate change was resulting in
stronger hurricanes, and some years, Florida, with all of its
orange groves, has been devastated by those storms. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
Florida’s orange producers have
escaped any devastating hurricanes so far
this season. But in recent years, the big
storms have been worse. They’ve contributed
to a 40% decline in orange crops
in the last five years. Julie Grant reports
that has some companies looking elsewhere
for oranges:
Transcript
Florida’s orange producers have
escaped any devastating hurricanes so far
this season. But in recent years, the big
storms have been worse. They’ve contributed
to a 40% decline in orange crops
in the last five years. Julie Grant reports
that has some companies looking elsewhere
for oranges:
Matthias Guentert is president of Symrise. The company
makes flavorings for beverages and processed foods.
When Symrise was deciding where to open its new citrus
headquarters – Guentert says they considered Florida – but
then chose to open in Brazil instead. One reason: Florida’s
increasingly unpredictable weather.
“Weather has been affecting people in Florida and in the
south of the US in the last years. And when it comes to
making a decision like this, it does play into it.”
A recent study showed climate change was resulting in
stronger hurricanes, and some years, Florida, with all of its
orange groves, has been devastated by those storms.
A botanist has documented what he’s
calling the “fastest flight in nature.” Tana
Weingartner explains:
Transcript
A botanist has documented what he’s
calling the “fastest flight in nature.” Tana
Weingartner explains:
Imagine this: a You-Tube video showing tulip-shaped fungi recoiling and
launching spores like wet cannonballs.
(sound of music)
Nicholas Money is a botanist at Miami University. He and a team of
researchers have used high speed cameras to capture, for the first time, fungi
launching spores.
“Fleas accelerate at 200 g, but we’re clocking these fungi moving at close to 200,000
g in terms of their acceleration. These are astonishingly fast movements.”
Fungi cause billions of dollars in crop damage each year.
Money says knowing how these spores move around can help prevent these
losses. He also says it’ll help allergen and pharmaceutical researchers too.
Getting fuel from plants like corn
and sugar cane is not that efficient. That’s
why researchers are working on so-called
cellulosic biofuels. The process turns things
like corn stalks, wood chips, and grasses into
fuel. As Mark Brush reports, some new
cellulosic refineries are breaking ground:
Transcript
Getting fuel from plants like corn
and sugar cane is not that efficient. That’s
why researchers are working on so-called
cellulosic biofuels. The process turns things
like corn stalks, wood chips, and grasses into
fuel. As Mark Brush reports, some new
cellulosic refineries are breaking ground:
The new refineries are being built with money from the federal government. The hope is
to perfect a fuel source that a) doesn’t come from food, and b) is much more efficient
than corn-based ethanol.
The problem is it’s hard to get at the sugars inside the
plants. But the payback could be big. For every one unit of energy going in,
cellulosic ethanol could spit out about five to ten units of energy.
Brian Davidson is with the BioEnergy Science Center. He says industry officials are
hopeful, but he thinks these new refineries are just a first step.
“They believe that those technologies will be more widely applicable, but I actually
believe that we’re going to need further technology improvements to go from these first
few handful of plants, handful of bio-refineries, to make them widespread.”
Davidson says scientists still have not perfected ways to break down the plants in a
cost-effective way.
Will Allen, founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc. (Photo courtesy of the MacArthur Fellows Program)
An advocate of urban farming will
be able to do more to get locally grown foods
to communities. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
An advocate of urban farming will
be able to do more to get locally grown foods
to communities. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Will Allen founded the group ‘Growing Power’. Allen says the group tries to provide healthful and affordable food to
people who really need it. He says he’s mainly focused on growing and getting food to cities.
“Our rural areas are becoming suburban areas, and cities are getting larger and
growing out into suburban areas. And we have to figure out a way to feed people
with local food, and we need to come up with a just way of doing that.”
Allen says growing food locally and getting better food to people is key to building communities.
Allen is getting help. The MacArthur Foundation has recognized him with one of its ‘genius’ grants. He’ll get a half-
million dollars over the next five years to use as he sees fit.
One crop that Carbofuran was used on is potatoes (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA)
