csrees - The Environment Report

Using His Genius for Good

Will Allen, founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc. (Photo courtesy of the MacArthur Fellows Program)

Experts say there’s plenty of food around the world, but nearly a billion people go hungry because of poverty, politics and rising prices. One man is working to change that by teaching people how to grow healthy food, in any climate, anywhere. Erin Toner has more:

Transcript

There’s one farm in the whole city of Milwaukee, and it’s
not much to look at.

In the front, there’s a small farm stand and some grungy old
greenhouses. Out back, you’ll find turkeys, chickens and
goats – and all over the place, big piles of compost are
steaming in the cool morning air.

Will Allen runs this inner-city, non-profit farm, called
Growing Power.

We walk into a greenhouse that’s heated by compost, and
Allen pulls back a long sheet of plastic.

“I just opened up a bed and you see this beautiful
spinach growing here, and it’s Wisconsin,” Allen says.

This 59-year-old is a big guy.

He’s 6-foot-7, and ripped from his days playing pro
basketball.

Allen started Growing Power 15 years ago.

It’s a measly two acres, but it’s incredibly productive.

The staff makes compost to heat the buildings, they use
raised plant beds to maximize space, and they grow greens
and raise fish using the same water.

The farm sells a ton of food to restaurants and grocery
stores. It also gives food to local pantries, and sells fruits
and vegetables to neighborhood families at reduced prices.

“We have minorities that are eating processed foods
and getting diabetes and people aren’t living very long
because of you know the negative effects of poor eating
and poor lifestyle and so forth. So we’ve got to change
that,” Allen says.

Allen travels all over the world showing people how to
make what he’s done in Milwaukee work in other places.

The farm’s also become a training ground for local school
kids, interns and backyard farmers.

Last fall, Allen won a half-million-dollar “genius” grant
from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

He also gets invited to conferences by former presidents.

So, he’s become a sort of urban farming celebrity.

But you wouldn’t know it.

Allen says he still gets his hands in the dirt every day in
Milwaukee, and he’s always looking for ways to help
people who live here.

Growing Power’s newest project is with Rockwell
Automation, an industrial parts company in Milwaukee.

Every day, 1000 employees eat in the company’s cafeteria,
and that produces a lot of food waste.

Growing Power’s started hauling it away for free.

We’ve arrived at the loading dock of Rockwell Automation
and there’s lots of stuff in here that actually looks like its
still pretty good. There’s a couple buckets full of celery and
onions and a big trash bag full of lettuce.

When we get back to the farm, co-director Jay Salinas
starts unloading the Rockwell scraps.

“Of course a large part of it is compost, but there’s
always something in here that we can feed to the
animals, especially the chickens,” Salinas says.

Growing Power founder Will Allen says his passion for
food comes from his parents.

They made a meager living as sharecroppers near
Washington D.C.

“We fed people – our family and extended family – and
we sold food. So what I’m doing today, when people say
so how do you feel about this McArthur thing you won,
or this Ford Foundation thing or whatever you got, it’s
really my parents. They should be the recipients of
those,” Allen says.

He says it’s really getting back to the way things used to
be, when people ate healthy food that was grown or raised
in their own community.

For The Environment Report, I’m Erin Toner.

Farming the White House Lawn

Some farmers think this spot is a perfect place for a White House organic farm. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Some people think American agriculture needs a makeover. They question why we waste so much fuel moving food long distances. A growing movement is calling for farmers and everybody else to produce more locally-grown, organic food. Shawn Allee reports some people want the President to set a good example:

Transcript

Last October Michael Pollan published a letter to the President in the New York Times.
Pollan is a sort of agricultural policy gadfly. His open letter to the President was full of big, policy-wonkish ideas about how to encourage local food production. But Pollan also wrote one small suggestion. NPR’s Terry Gross picked up on it.

GROSS: “You would like the next president to instead of having a White House lawn to basically have a White House garden. The president would set an example for the rest of us by having this garden of locally-grown foods?” (laughs)

POLLAN: “Now why is that preposterous, Terry? I mean, that’s actually one of the more practical things I proposed.”

Pollan went into how the President could even share some of his veggies with food banks.

POLLAN:” So you have this powerful image of the White House feeding Americans. What could be better than that?”

Some people heard this interview or read Pollon’s article and thought, “right on” – there should be a White House farmer. One family from central Illinois was especially intrigued. Terra Brockman talked about it with her father and sister.

BROCKMAN: “Well, it’s a great idea, but why don’t we bring it down to earth and make it real?”

ALLEE: “So, basically you translated it into reality by creating a contest on a Web site. White House Farmer dot com, as I understand it.”

BROCKMAN: “Yeah, we figured it was a way that we could get it out nationally without much time or money and ask people all across the country, ‘who do you think would be a good White House farmer?’ and have people nominate their farmers.”

Now, Brockman built her contest Web site even though President Obama never even talked about the idea of a White House farmer. But she’s hopeful because the White House actually has an agricultural past. At one time sheep grazed on the White House lawn, and during World War II Eleanor Roosevelt grew a Victory Garden there.

BROCKMAN: “It’s not like this is so, so way out there. And really, whatever the President does is pretty symbolic and people do pay attention.”

People paid attention to White Houser Farmer dot com, anyway.
The site gathered around 57 thousand online votes in just a few days.
And exactly who is the unofficial new White House Farmer?
That would be Claire Strader, from Madison, Wisconsin.
Strader invited me to see the land she works.

STRADER: “We’re at Troy Gardens. It’s in a parcel of land in the city of Madison, on the North Side. I haven’t actually seen the farm for a few months because the snow’s been so deep.”

ALLEE: “Can we get closer to the farm area?”

STRADER: “Yeah.”

Strader is the head farmer at Troy Gardens. She trains city people to grow food here. She also makes the soil fertile through organic growing techniques.

STRADER: “You can just start to see now, the green flush over the whole field. That’s our cover crop of rye. It looks really good. I’m happy to see it.”
ALLEE: “Could you tear yourself away to go to DC and leave all this behind?”
STRADER: “It would be difficult to pick up and leave it behind, but it would be a tremendous honor and a lot of potential to spread the good word of organic agriculture and the positive impacts that would have on our country in the future. It would be hard to accept and hard to reject.”

Even with a White House Farmer chosen for him, President Obama still hasn’t said anything about the idea.
But Strader says she and some top contest vote-getters are trying to sway him – even if he’d pick someone else to run his garden.
Strader says she loves the idea of cucumbers and zucchinis growing at the White House… even if she’s not there to pick them.

For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

New Dishwashing Detergent Ban

Phosphorus has been banned from laundry detergents, but has not been banned from dishwasher detergents (Source: Piotrus at Wikimedia Commons)

Add another state banning the
use of a pollutant in dishwashing
detergent. Rick Pluta reports it will
help clear up environmental problems
in rivers and lakes:

Transcript

Add another state banning the
use of a pollutant in dishwashing
detergent. Rick Pluta reports it will
help clear up environmental problems
in rivers and lakes:

Well, there are dead zones in other places, including the Great Lakes.

One of the big culprits is phosphorus. It seeps into the water, and promotes the growth of
algae that chokes out other species.

Phosphorus was removed from laundry detergent back in the 1970s. But that was back
before there were a lot of automatic dishwashers, so dishwasher soap wasn’t part of the
ban.

Now, regulators are starting to catch up.

Michigan just joined at least 8 other states that have ordered phosphorus to be phased out
of dishwasher detergent.

The manufacturers aren’t arguing – some have already started eliminating phosphorus in
their products.

But there are still plenty of other ways that phosphorus is leeching into lakes, rivers, and
streams. The most common cause is agricultural fertilizers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rick Pluta.

Electricity From Factory Farms

Methane is one of the worst greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. (Photo by Bill Tarpenning, courtesy of the USDA)

Lots of people who live near big livestock farms complain
about the stench of manure. One of the by-products of all
that manure is methane gas – which can be used to create
electricity. More states are starting to offer tax breaks to
factory farms to make energy from their waste.
Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Several states around the nation are offering tax breaks to
encourage factory farms to capture the methane from their
cow manure – and to convert it into usable electricity.
Methane is one of the worst greenhouse gases contributing
to global warming.

You might think environmental groups would support the
idea. But Ed Hopkins of the Sierra Club says taxpayers
should not subsidize manure-to-energy projects.

“We see factory farms as a business. And like any business,
they should pay the costs for their pollution control
equipment – not the public.”

Hopkins says taxpayer money for manure to energy projects
will only encourage more factory farming and the other
pollution problems associated with those big operations.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

The “Enviropig” Cuts Pollution

Researcher Cecil Forsberg created the first Enviropigs in 1999. Their meat may soon be available at American supermarkets. (Photo by Julie Grant)
An Enviropig at the Arkell pig research station at the University of Guelph, Ontario (Photo by Julie Grant)
Manure runs off farm fields into waterways (Photo by Murray Borrello)
Pollution from animal farms leads to algae blooms that choke all the oxygen out of waterways (Photo by Murray Borrello)

At factory farms, cows and
pigs produce a lot of manure, and
that sometimes causes a lot of
pollution. Julie Grant reports that
one scientist says he’s got a solution:
genetically modify pigs so they produce
less pollution. But to be successful,
people have to be willing to eat
genetically modified meat:

Transcript

Murray Borrello says pig and cow poop is killing everything
in some of the water he studies. He’s a geologist and has
been researching water pollution with chemists and
biologists at Alma College in Michigan. Borrello says there’s
no fish in parts of the river – because of all the animal feces
running off of nearby farms.

“It’s very obvious. It’s this kind of brown, mucky,
murky looking substance.”

That poop is full of phosphorous, nitrogen, and other things
that cause pollution problems. It creates algae that clogs up
waterways and sucks out all the oxygen.

Borrello says some of the farms house more than
10,000 hogs. Farmers sometimes hold 20 million gallons of
pig manure in lagoons. They liquefy it and spray it on the
fields for fertilizer. But Borrello says it’s too much manure,
so it runs off the land and into the waterways.

In some places, it’s the same water is used for drinking
water. And the same rivers drain into the Great Lakes.

On the northern side of the Lakes, a Canadian scientist says
he’s found a possible solution to this pig pollution problem.

(sound of a pig barn)

It’s called the Enviropig.

Cecil Forsberg has genetically modified pigs so they produce
less pollution in their waste.

I met him at his research barn at the University of Guelph in
Ontario.

There are no windows – just a ventilation system. And,
wow, it’s hard to concentrate – the smell of pig waste is so
strong.

He introduces me to a group of Enviropigs, they’re about a year and
a half old. He says they have no detectable difference from
regular pigs.

“They have four legs, two ears, a snout, and they like to dig
in the shavings.”

But while most pigs poop out a lot of polluting phosphorous,
Forsberg has made the Enviropig into a much better
machine for digesting phosphorous.

He’s no Dr. Frankenstein. But to do it, he did use DNA from
a mouse. He says it’s considered a safe technique, but he
knows it makes people cringe.

“There’s no mouse in these pigs, except for a little fragment
of DNA.”

The mouse DNA allowed Forsberg to add a bacterial gene to
the pigs. It’s that bacteria that triggers the pig’s salivary
glands to start the digestion of phosphorous.

Forsberg says the waste from these pigs does a lot less
damage to the environment than most pigs.

“There’s a reduction in the phosphorous in the manure by up
to 60%. And that’s important because phosphorous is the
component in manure that is the first one that’s problematic.”

And it’s part of what chokes the oxygen out of the waterways –
killing fish and other aquatic species. Forsberg wants to see
Enviropigs bred on the global scale to reduce pollution from
the growing number of large scale hog farms.

Back in Michigan, water specialist Murray Borrello
says reducing phosphorous pollution from giant hog farms
will benefit water quality, but he does not think a genetically
modified pig is the answer.

“The problem is that does not address the issue of all the
other stuff that is very concentrated going into surface water
and ground water.”

Stuff, such as nitrogen and ammonia.

Borrello says a better solution is to reduce the size of hog
farms, so there aren’t so many pigs concentrated in such
small spaces.

But the Enviropig is starting to get some traction.

When Forsberg and his colleagues created the first
generation of Enviropigs, nearly 10 years ago, the question
was: could they do it?

Today, seven generations of pigs later, the question is: will
people eat it?

Until recently, the US government hadn’t allowed the sale
of genetically modified meat. But, the Food and Drug
Administration recently published guidelines for it. And
some industry analysts say you could be eating pork from
animals like the Enviropig as soon as 2011.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Tag-Teaming the Dead Zone

It is predicted that the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of the state of Massachusetts (Photo courtesy of NASA)

A scientific panel wants two
federal agencies to start working together,
to reduce pollution. Fertilizer pollution
is causing problems for the Mississippi
River system and contributing to a ‘Dead
Zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

Nitrogen and phosphorus come from fertilizers used on lawns and farm fields. The chemicals
pollute water throughout the Mississippi River Basin and down to the Gulf of Mexico. The
National Research Council has been studying the problem.

David Dzombak is an Engineering Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and helped the
council write a new report. He says the biggest recommendation is for the US Environmental
Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture to team up.

“This is a very large scale problem. It’s taken many years to develop and will take many years to
turn around.”

And Dzombak says the two agencies need to get started. The report recommends the federal
agencies work with states to restrict the amount of fertilizer that can go into streams and rivers. It
also calls for a network of experiments to filter or buffer the fertilizer runoff in badly-polluted
watersheds.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Growing Upward, Not Outward

Valcent's vertical farm has hundreds of clear plastic sheets holding pockets of plants. These hang from moving racks. (Photo courtesy of Valcent)

It takes a lot of land to grow
crops. There are concerns there won’t
be enough land to grow all the needed
food for the rapidly growing population.
That’s why some researchers and business
people are creating what they call
vertical farms. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

On the outside, it looks like a big green house. Inside,
there’s an overhead conveyer system.

It looks kind of like a dry cleaner. Hanging from the moving
racks are hundreds of clear plastic sheets. Each has rows of
pockets. In each pocket, there’s a vegetable plant.

The conveyor moves them around to make sure the plants
get enough light, nutrients and water.

Glen Kertz is president of Valcent Products, which is building
its first commercial-scale vertical farm in Alberta, Canada –
where it can be expensive to truck in fresh produce.

“A couple of hundred years ago, they couldn’t get fresh
lettuce in the dead of winter. But do they want it today?
Yes.”

Kertz and others think we could vertical farm in cities in
skyscrapers.

But Kurtz says the farm’s heat, lighting and conveyor system
all run on fossil fuels and he wants to switch to renewable
energy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

New Rules About Pharma-Crops

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 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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Weed Killer Linked to Deformed Frogs

A study published in the journal Nature suggests the herbicide Atrazine is most likely to blame for frog deformities (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Researchers have more evidence
that a weed killer is causing frogs to
be deformed. Lester Graham reports the
herbicide is used on farms across the
country:

Transcript

Researchers have more evidence
that a weed killer is causing frogs to
be deformed. Lester Graham reports the
herbicide is used on farms across the
country:

Study after study has been trying to find out why so many frogs are turning up
deformed.

This latest study published in the journal Nature suggests the herbicide Atrazine—is
most likely to blame. Atrazine is used on corn fields, sugarcane, and even
evergreen tree farms.

Jason Rohr with the University of South Florida is the lead author of the study. He
says Atrazine in water leads to more parasites, flatworms called trematodes. They
cause the deformities and deaths of frogs. But wait, there’s more.

“The amphibians seem to be getting hit with a double-whammy because they also
seem to be have an increase in susceptibility to the trematodes, if they’re exposed to
Atrazine.”

Rohr says farmers could help the frogs if they’d just switch herbicides. But Atrazine
is cheap.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Can Cow Hormones Help the Environment?

One environmentalist is arguing that hormones in cows may actually be better for the environment (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

The cow hormone known as rBST or rBGH
has taken a beating in the environmental community.
Injecting the hormone into cows makes them produce
more milk. But some people are afraid the hormone
can find its way from the cow, to the cow’s milk,
and into our bodies. The government insists that’s
not the case. Shawn Allee says one researcher
wants to change the debate about rBST – and convince
environmentalists to support the hormone:

Transcript

Before I introduce you to the researcher who supports rbst or rbgh, I want
you to understand what she’s up against.

It’s well-meaning people like Steve Parkes.

Parkes co-owns New Leaf natural food store in Chicago. He decides what’s
on the shelves.

“A lot goes into making that decision. First and foremost, is it something
I would eat myself?”

And as for milk produced with rbgh, Parkes won’t sell it.

“People have been drinking milk for thousands of years from animals
that didn’t have have rgbh in them, so, I think I’m a little more
comfortable drinking milk from a cow that didn’t have rgbh than I am
from something that is a very, very new technology.”

A lot of people distrust rbgh, and that’s changed the milk market.
For example, some retailers like Starbucks won’t buy milk from dairies that
use it. More and more dairies are asking farmers to pledge not to use the
hormone.

The trend has frustrated researcher Judith Capper.

“People aren’t questioning the science basis of it.”

Capper is with Cornell University. She argues environmentalists and
consumers should take another look at the hormone, and see it as part of the
solution to global warming.

Capper recently co-wrote a study that began with a simple observation – in a
few decades, there will be many more Americans.

“The US population will have gone up from about 300 million people to
377 million people and we wanted to look at the environment impact of
producing enough milk to feed all those people.”

That scares Capper – because producing milk can make the global warming
problem worse.

That’s because feeding cows, and the cows themselves, lead to more
greenhouse gas emissions.

“Okay, there are six major inputs and outputs in terms of carbon.”

I won’t go through six, but here are a few.

First, there’s the feed that cows eat. Tractors have to plant grain. That burns
fossil fuels. Greenhouse gasses. Then feed is trucked to the dairy farm.
More greenhouse gasses. More cows, more greenhouse gasses.

So, you want as much milk as possible from each cow.

“If you give rbst to a cow, it will produce an extra ten pounds per day,
that’s quite an increase.”

And then there’s the other greenhouse gasses. From, um, the ugly end of the
cow equation.

The manure puts off other potent greenhouse gasses. And Cows belch
methane. Cows that use rbst poop and belch, spare the atmosphere even
more carbon.

All this leads Capper to a startling conclusion.

She says if farmers gave a million cows the hormone –

“Using rbst would be like taking about 400,000 cars off the road, or
planting three hundred million trees. Those are really big numbers.”

Judith Capper says she expects scientists will challenge her research – and
she welcomes a good debate about rbgh and rbst.

She says that’s better than this vague idea that the hormone might somehow
be bad without understanding the whole story.

“Choose organic, choose rbst-free, whatever, but base it on facts and
science, not on consumer perceptions that may not be factually correct.”

But, Capper’s got her work cut out for her.

Government statistics show consumer fear about rbgh has made farmers cut
the percentage of cows injected with the hormone.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Tag: csrees

Using His Genius for Good

Transcript

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