Tag: fruit

SCHOOL CAFETERIAS EMBRACE LOCAL FOOD (Part 1)

  • Many schools are finding that food that comes from cans... (Photo by Davide Guglielmo)

More and more schools, universities and other institutions with cafeterias are by-passing processed foods from multi-national corporations. Instead, they’re buying food from local farmers. Advocates say locally-grown fruits and vegetables are fresher. They say the food tastes better, and they’re finding kids sometimes ask for apples and tomatoes instead of candy and chips. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

More and more schools, universities, and other institutions with cafeterias are bypassing the processed foods from multi-national corporations. Instead, they’re buying food from local farmers. Advocates say locally-grown fruits and vegetables are fresher. They say the food tastes better. And they’re finding kids sometimes ask for apples and tomatoes instead of candy and chips. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:


(Sound of cafeteria)


In this cafeteria, there are displays on the wall asking, “What is local food?” and answering, “Foods grown and raised where you are.” Well, that makes sense, but there’s more.


“Then when you get into the lines…”


Sociology professor Howard Sacks is director of Kenyon College.


“We have these menus that talk about all the things that are being served here and it tells exactly where they come from. So the pasta alfredo with tomato and basil features noodles produced by Mrs. Miller’s noodles in Fredericksburg, Ohio, and the cream is by the Broughton Dairy in Marietta, Ohio. As you can see this is about thirty lines long and it shows about thirty different local producers.”


As recently as the late 1990’s, only a handful of colleges and universities had programs to buy locally-produced foods for their cafeterias. Today, more than two hundred are looking for local farmers for their produce, dairy, and meat products. Most of those schools, such as Kenyon, Yale University, and the University of Wisconsin among the nation’s most expensive and elite.


But even some struggling public school districts are making it a priority to buy local foods. Ray Denniston is Food Services director of the Johnson City School District in the Catskills region of New York. He says a few years ago they served produce that had been shipped from California or Mexico, or they just opened cans.


“So your fruits and vegetables, kids weren’t taking them; it wasn’t a quality item. I’m not going to say we didn’t worry about it, but it got less attention then the other items on the trays. And now that’s changed. So, instead of getting a canned green bean, which I might as well put sawdust out there as far as nutrients, instead of that, now we would have fresh broccoli.”


Denniston used to sit in his office and look at price quotes from food distributors. Now he visits farms and negotiates the best prices for local products he can find in season. He says the change started with a few tomatoes.


“When I first met with Frank, the farmer, he stopped down and dropped off just some tomatoes. And the staff had some, we had some in the cooler and we brought some out and we cut them and there was a taste thing, and they said, ‘Don’t ever get any others but his.’ I mean, they were just so much sweeter, juicier, wonderful tomatoes and then it just kept going.”


Then came the rich green colored broccoli. It was a big change from what they offered their kids before.


Other schools say students love the taste of milk from local farms that don’t give their cows antibiotics. Johnson says cafeteria workers are excited by the fresher vegetables and meats. They like talking with the students about the food, and they like cooking again. Many schools don’t even have kitchens anymore; they only have heating trays for pre-packaged foods.


Deb Bruns is with the California Department of Education. She says those heated meals often don’t taste very good and she says they send the wrong message to kids.


“…that lunch is a time to grab something processed and hurry through it and get out to recess, and it doesn’t matter what we tell them in the classroom about nutrition if we’re not modeling that in their dining experience then we’re just missing such an opportunity to really teach them where their food comes from.”


Many schools start these programs because of nutrition and obesity concerns. By serving fresh, local food, the nutrition lessons continue when the kids line up in the cafeteria. Some schools say prices from local farms are actually lower then national distributors, but they often end up spending more money on fruits and vegetables. That’s because – believe it or not – kids are eating more broccoli, apples, and tomatoes.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

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Urban Vegetable Farm Takes Root in Brownfield

  • Just outside the Greensgrow compound (photo by Brad Linder)

A farm is a strange thing to see in the middle of a gritty, urban area.
But the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder recently visited a small
farm on what used to be a polluted site in an industrial neighborhood:

Transcript

A farm is a strange thing to see in the middle of an gritty, urban area.
But the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder recently visited a
small farm on what used to be a polluted site in an industrial
neighborhood:


One of the first things you notice about this one-acre plot in
Philadelphia is how out of place the farm looks. About a block away is a
busy interstate highway that jams up with rush hour traffic twice a day.


The farm itself is surrounded by rowhouses, a steel galvanizing plant, and
an auto detail shop.


Chino Rosatto runs the auto shop. About 8 years ago, he first met his new
neighbors – a small group of farmers.


”It was weird at first, you don’t see no farm in the city.”


But Rosatto says he got used to the farm started by Mary Seton Corboy
pretty quickly.


“It was an empty lot. Nothing there. Just fenced up, and that was it. She
came up, did something with it.”


Before it was an empty lot, this city block was a steel plant. In 1988
the building was demolished, and the EPA declared the site hazardous.


It was cleaned up, but Rosatto says it was nothing but concrete slabs
until Mary Seton Corboy and her small group of volunteers came and started
the farm they call Greensgrow.


Corboy moved to Philadelphia from the suburbs nearly a decade ago. With a
background as a chef, she’d always been concerned about how hard it was to
find fresh produce. So she decided to grow it herself.


“The question that just kept coming up over and over again was, is there
any reason why you have to be in a rural area to grow food, given the fact
that the market for the food, the largest market for the food, is in the
urban area?”


Corboy says usually food travels an average of 1500 miles from its source
to wind up on most Americans plates. And she says when it comes to flavor
– nothing is more important than how fresh the food is.


“If you eat strawberries that are commercially available,
you have no taste recognition of something that people 40 years ago would
say is a strawberry, because of the refrigeration, because of the way they
are picked underripe, because of the things they are sprayed with to give
them a longer shelf life.”


Corboy says her first choice for a farm wouldn’t have been an abandoned
industrial site. But the rent was cheaper than it would be at almost any
other spot in the city.


And even though the EPA and scientists from Penn State University
confirmed that there were no toxic chemicals left, Corboy doesn’t plant
anything edible in the ground.


She grows some plants in greenhouses. Others are planted in raised soil
beds. And she grows lettuce in PVC pipes that deliver nutrients to the
plants without any soil at all.


Corboy still regularly sends plant samples out for testing. The results?


“At one point Penn State sent us back a report, we talked to
them on the phone about it, and they said your stuff is actually cleaner
than stuff that we’ve seen grown on farms. Go figure that. We feel very, very comfortable
with the produce that we grow. Because, you know, I’ve been living on it
myself for 8 years.”


And restaurant owners say they’re happy to buy some of the freshest
produce available.


Judy Wicks is owner the White Dog Cafe, a Philadelphia
restaurant that specializes in locally grown foods and meat from animals
raised in humane conditions. She’s been a loyal Greensgrow customer for 8
years.


“As soon as we heard about Greensgrow, we were really excited
about the idea of supporting an urban farm on a brownfield – what a
dream! To you know, take an unsightly, unused block, and turn it into a
farm. It’s just a really exciting concept.”


Wicks says she’s never had a concern about the quality of the food,
because of the care taken to prevent it from touching the soil.


In addition to its restaurant business, Greensgrow sells fruit and
vegetables to Philadelphia residents at a farmer’s market twice a week.
The farm also operates one of the only nurseries in the city, which begins
selling plants this spring.


Mary Seton Corboy says running the farm has taught her a lot about food,
the environment, and waste. She says she doesn’t look at empty lots the
same way anymore. She’s learned to squeeze fruits, vegetables and flowers
out of every space of this city block. And she sees value in the things
other people throw out.


On a recent night Corboy was driving home with her farm manager Beth Kean,
and they spotted a pile of trash beside a building.


“But what they had dumped were all these pallets. And Beth
was with me in the car, and we both turned and looked at them and went,
Look at those pallets! Let’s come back and get them, they’re in great
shape!”


Urban farming is tough. Corboy originally had lofty goals for her farm.
Greensgrow was going to be a pilot project, something she’d expand to
include 10 farms throughout Philadelphia.


8 years later, Greensgrow is still anchored on its original one-acre site.
But by keeping her costs low and selling to loyal customers, Corboy sold
200-thousand dollars worth of produce last year. That was enough to make
2004 the farm’s first profitable year.


For the GLRC, I’m Brad Linder.

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Winemakers Bugged by Asian Beetle

  • The Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle was introduced in 1916 to control aphids. It has since established populations around the country. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Many people in North America have already met the multicolored Asian lady beetle. It looks like an ordinary ladybug, but it has some bad habits. It stinks, it bites and it invades homes when the winter approaches and stays there until spring. And not only is it a pest in our houses, it has decided that it likes wine too. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Victoria Fenner has the story:

Transcript

Many people in North America have already met the multicolored Asian lady beetle. It
looks like an ordinary ladybug, but it has some bad habits. It stinks, it bites and it
invades homes when the winter approaches and stays there until spring. And not only is
it a pest in our houses, it has decided that it likes wine too. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Victoria Fenner has the story:


Ann Sperling goes out to the vineyards every day to check for bugs. She’s the vintner
with Malivoire Winery. Malivoire is a small organic winery in the Niagara Peninsula in
Southern Ontario, just north of the New York State border. There’s one kind of bug in
particular that Ann is hoping she doesn’t see – the multicolored Asian lady beetle.


It was introduced to North American in 1916 to control help aphids on plants. In 1988 in
Louisiana, the ladybug population suddenly started to grow. Scientists still don’t know
what happened to make them reproduce so fast at that time. But in only six years, it
spread as far as the northern states and southern Canada.


The spread of the bug has been very bad for the grape and wine industry. Sperling is
nervous about these ladybugs because she was caught by surprise a few years back. She
didn’t know anything about the problems they would cause to her wine at the time.


“Typically there is a certain number of insects including wasps and things like that that
are harvested with the fruit and it doesn’t cause any problems in the processing. And in
2001 there were these Asian lady beetles and they infected, or affected, the flavor of the
wine, so that there were many wines from that vintage throughout the Niagara peninsula
that had the characteristic flavor and were not saleable.”


The big problem is that Asian ladybugs are the skunks of the insect world. Just like
skunks, they give off a bad smell to discourage predators. And they release a sticky
brown substance from the joints in their body when they’re stressed and they make a real
mess.


At harvest time, there’s a lot of commotion in the vineyards. That’s when the bugs get
really upset, and they leak all over the grapes. They also hang on to the grape clusters
and are pressed into the wine along with the fruit. Sperling says they had to dump half of
their 2001 vintage because it had a bitter taste and a bouquet of raw peanuts.


Because of this, the multicolored Asian Ladybug has become a big problem for wineries
in the Great Lakes region and in the Midwest. It’s such a pressing problem for the wine
industry that the Ontario Grape Growers Association has set up a special task force to
figure out what to do. Gerry Walker is heading up the task force. He says the ladybug
isn’t a problem this time of year, but the populations are being monitored to head off
potential problems during the harvest season.


“First of all, the bug usually is outside the vineyard for most of the season. It’s usually
located in soybean fields or forested areas. It has a wide host range in terms of what
aphid species it will feed on. It primarily feeds on aphids during the growing season,
populations build up and at the end of the growing season when cool temperatures occur
it cues the bug to look for hibernating wintering sites and also to fill up on sugars in order
to hibernate. And so they move to the vineyards as the grapes begin to ripen.”


Asian ladybugs are found across most of the southern part of North America –
everywhere that there is an aphid population.


And there is a connection between soybean fields and vineyards. Here’s why – aphids
like to eat soybeans, and the multicolored Asian ladybeetle likes to eat aphids. When the
soybeans are harvested, the beetles look for new food and move to the vineyards.


Mark Sears is an environmental biologist at the University of Guelph. He’s beginning a
study to find out the movement patterns of the ladybug. He says we can’t get rid of them.
All we can do is control them.


“This beetle’s been here long enough that there’s no way we’re going to eliminate it. We
just want to suppress its numbers so that it isn’t a problem, in this case, in the vineyards.
If we do a good job of suppressing aphids – we’re not going to eliminate them either, but
if we keep them at lower numbers then there’s less food available for beetle populations,
there will be fewer of them to move to vineyards. And therefore we should be able to
contain the problem, not the insect itself.”


Ann Sperling is one of many winemakers who’s happy to see that this major study of the
ladybug is being done. But the invasion of 2001 was also a valuable learning experience.
Sperling says they’re ready if it happens again. Malivoire Winery has bought a shaker
table to dislodge the bugs from the bunches of grapes. They’ll also hire more people to
sort the grapes by hand.


Some people in the wine industry don’t like to talk about the multicolored Asian ladybug.
They’re afraid of tainting the reputation of their wines. Ann Sperling agreed to talk about
it because she thinks there wouldn’t have been as much damage to their 2001 vintage if
they had been better prepared. They haven’t had any big problems since then.


If another large invasion happens now, Malvoire Winery is ready. Ann Sperling hopes
other wineries will learn from their experience.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Victoria Fenner.

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Mite Zapper Might Help Bees

Beekeepers in the Midwest and elsewhere are turning to innovative ways to protect their hives from tiny, blood-sucking mites. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, farmers depend on the health of commercial honeybee colonies:

Transcript

Beekeepers in the Midwest and elsewhere are turning to innovative ways to protect their hives
from tiny, blood-sucking mites. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports,
farmers depend on the health of commercial honeybee colonies:


Apples, cherries, and cucumbers are among the crops that depend on bees for pollination. But in
the mid-80’s, a parasite called varroa wiped out wild honeybees in the U.S. And the mites have
also taken a toll on commercial colonies as well.


The problem is especially serious in California. Almond growers there have had difficulties in
the last few years getting enough bees to pollinate their half-million acres of almond trees. But
Zachary Huang, a honeybee researcher at Michigan State University, says beekeepers in the
region still have about twice the number of bees needed to meet farmers’ demands.


“It’s not so bad yet that we’re having trouble getting bees to pollinate our fruit trees.”


Chemicals have been developed to kill the mites. But so far, they’ve proved only partly effective,
or the mites become resistant. Huang has patented a device called the “mite zapper” that kills the
parasites in the hives. He hopes to be able to market it to beekeepers next year.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

Related Links

Study Ranks Pesticide Residues on Produce

A report from an environmental group says peaches, strawberries, nectarines, and apples are more likely to be contaminated by pesticides than other produce. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports, the non-profit group says washing produce doesn’t eliminate pesticide residues:

Transcript

A report from an environmental group says peaches, strawberries, nectarines, and apples are more
likely to be contaminated by pesticides than other produce. As the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports, the non-profit group says washing produce doesn’ t
eliminate pesticide residues:


The Environmental Working Group tracked results from pesticide tests done by the U.S.
Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration between 1997 and 2001. Those
tests track almost 200 pesticides on fruits and vegetables.


The EWG has issued a shopping guide with a list of the twelve most contaminated foods,
including bell peppers, celery, and potatoes. Also listed are the twelve safest foods, including
asparagus, avocados, and mangoes.


EWG President Ken Cook says he doesn’t want to discourage people from eating fresh produce.


“There is a way to look at the pesticide residues on these crops and make a decision about how
often you eat them or, when you have a chance, whether you can shop instead for organic choices
or select fruits and vegetables that have lower residue levels.”


The FDA says the consumption of pesticide residues is not dangerous, but Cook points out that
the government is constantly updating food regulations.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.

Apples Alone Not Enough for Many Orchard Owners

  • Apples have become just part of the attraction to going to the orchard. Most offer carnival-like attractions to draw big crowds. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The fall season brings with it celebrations of the harvest. Pumpkins and gourds show up at the grocery store. And for many families, fall means a trip to the apple orchard. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham observes that often that traditional celebration of the harvest just ain’t what it used to be:

Transcript

The fall season brings with it celebrations of the harvest. Pumpkins and gourds show up at the
grocery store. And for many families, fall means a trip to the apple orchard. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham observes that often that traditional celebration of the harvest just ain’t
what it used to be:


When I was a kid, autumn meant going to the apple orchard. There was a old barn there. I don’t
think it had ever been painted and the wood planks were weathered gray.


The barn smelled of apples, of course, but not just the fresh ones. There was also the sweet-sour
smell of apples fermenting on the dirt floor, rejects that didn’t make it to the bushel baskets for sale.
Bees were always hovering over the bruised and brown skin of the slightly rotting fruit.


After my Dad paid the old guy who owned the orchard I would ask for one of the newly picked
apples. That first bite of the hard, sweet little apple would bring such a rush of flavor reminding me
of the autumn before. This was harvest, the essence of fall for me. This was the celebration, the
taste of that apple. Today, it’s a different story.


(sound of train and crowds)


Today, a trip to the apple orchard is much like a trip to a carnival. A little train circles the orchard,
kids crawl through a rainbow-colored inflatable worm, there’s a corral of little tractors that the kids
pedal in circles, draft horses draw wagons through the fruit trees, and, oh, yeah, the orchard sells
apples.


I wondered if some of the folks my age or thereabouts longed for the simpler times when
celebrating fall meant that first bite of apple. I wondered if they thought the kids today,
mesmerized by gimmicks, games and glitz might be missing something.


“Well, when we were little, we didn’t have anything even like this. It was just the apple cider and
the doughnut. So, now you have this wonderful place with the pumpkins and the train rides and the
skeletons and the doughnuts and all the fun things to bring the grandkids and the kids too. I think
it’s a lot more fun now and they appreciate it more. We do this as a family, so it’s being together
as a family.”


“Well I think its good for the kids who live in the city to get out and walk around and get some
fresh air out here in the country.”


“I mean with our grandchildren, I mean it’s just been beautiful. The atmosphere is nice and I mean
it’s just lovely. That’s all I can say.”


Well, okay, so, I guess the visitors to a place like this would be enthusiastic or they wouldn’t be
here, right? But, what about the owners? I mean, here they are, growing a good product, working
through the year to produce this fruit and they’ve had to resort to this circus to get people to come
in? What’s wrong with just selling apples?


I figured Michael Beck, one of the owners of this orchard would understand what I was asking
about.


“Our return on fruit in the wholesale sector was horrendous and it’s still is horrendous for other
growers. So we wanted a way to actually profit from our fruit and selling retail, and doing fun
things for people at a farm was the best way to get that crop moved.”


“Now, to a person, everyone I’ve asked thinks this is great and so much better than when they
were kids. But, I’m wondering, you know, for me, the apple was the big celebration. And a little
bit of cider, maybe if you’re really lucky a caramel apple. Do you think the kids today are so
wrapped up in the carnival aspect that they miss that kind of celebration of the harvest?”


“Well, I don’t know. We sure do sell a lot of cider and caramel apples and apples and I see a lot of
families taking home apple products. And, I think they still get the enjoyment of the good food plus
we offer that fun atmosphere.”


Alright, so he’s still selling apples, and he’s making a buck. That’s admirable considering the
competition of imported apples. But surely there’s someone who remembers the simpler days of
being happy just because of the taste of that crisp bite of apple. Somewhere.


I did find someone, finally. Tom Kilgore was standing, waiting for the return of the train. He sort
of had that look of someone who was, well, trying to be patient. You know, a parent or a
grandparent who was sacrificing a beautiful day to make someone else happy.


“People like fresh apples, so they’ll go to an orchard and get the fresh apples without this stuff.”


“So, you could take it or leave it?”


“I could leave it, yeah. I came because of the grandkids, so, that’s the only reason I’m here.”


Kilgore says back home he just goes to a quiet little orchard to buy his apples and maybe sip some
cider. But, you know, as I was strolling around the grounds reading the signs that directed RV
traffic – RVs! At an apple orchard. As I was looking around, it dawned on me. For most of the
people here, this was more about family than it was about fruit. Maybe the carnival atmosphere of
today’s apple orchard will be the precious memories of autumn for these kids when they’re my age.
Maybe.


For me, (sound of apple crunch), I’ll stick with that first bite of apple.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium. This is Lester Graham.


(“Wow, sweet.”)

Climate Change Affecting Backyard Wildlife

A recent study in the scientific journal Nature suggests the effects of global warming can be seen in people’s backyards. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

A recent study in the scientific journal Nature suggests the effects of global warming
can be seen in people’s backyards. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


The study compiles data from scientific papers on climate change and from personal
nature recordings from people all over the world. It finds that plants and animals
appear to be changing their behavior in response to increases in the average global
temperature over the past century.


Michigan State University researcher Kim Hall contributed to the report. She says
for many species, spring events are happening about five days earlier every ten years.


“Those include things like the first arrival dates of birds when they’re migrating into
their summer habitat. Also, sounds, like the first calls of frogs and toads when they
begin the breeding season in the spring. And there’s a lot of different things
related to the timing of plants, such as the first time they bloom in
the spring or when fruits arrive.”


Hall says it isn’t known how earlier springs will affect the environment. But she says they
could spell trouble for many species if food supplies and habitats are not protected.


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

Researchers Study Migrant Labor Force

In the last three decades, Mexican produce workers have become more important to the economy of the Midwest than ever before, but most of the people who buy and eat fruits and vegetables rarely hear about them. Now, researchers in the region are beginning to take a closer look at the lifestyles of some of these workers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty has more:

Transcript

In the last three decades, Mexican produce workers have become more important to the
economies of the Great Lakes region than ever before, but most of the people who buy
and eat fruit and vegetables rarely hear about them. Now, researchers in the region are
beginning to take a closer look at the lifestyles of some of these workers. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nora Flaherty reports:


Many of the workers who pick and pack tomatoes in the Great Lakes region aren’t from
the region. In Canada, thousands of them are workers brought from Mexico as part of
Canada’s Foreign Agriculture Resource Management Services program. These workers
come from Mexico for 4 to 6 months a year, and can make in an hour what they would
make in a day at home, but the work in Canada is hard, and the days are long.


Deborah Barndt is a professor of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto:


“Often it’s an 11 hour workday, 6 and a half days a week because they’re here primarily
to make money to support their families back home, and they have no other responsibilities,
no other commitments, no community or family connections.”


Barndt says that workers in Canada make minimum wage. They get
insurance and Canadian pensions, but don’t qualify for unemployment. She also says that
their numbers have increased, as Mexico’s economy has worsened.


For the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium, I’m Nora Flaherty.

Apple Growers Trim Pesticides From the Farm

  • Bill Erwin and a number of other Michigan apple growers are involved in a huge project to reduce pesticide use in orchards. Erwin says he's among those who will continue the practice.

No one likes the idea of pesticides in baby food. But nobody likes the idea of a worm in an apple either. So apple growers have been involved in a three year project to reduce pesticides, but still turn out a crop that’s not plagued by insects. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

No one likes the idea of pesticides in baby food. But nobody likes the idea of a worm in
an apple either. Apple growers have been involved in a three year project to reduce
pesticides, but still turn out a crop that’s not plagued by insects. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Gerber makes baby food. A lot of those little jars of fruit use apples in the mix. A few
years ago the Consumers Union, an arm of the magazine Consumer reports, called for the
end of the use of many of the pesticides that end up in children’s food. And the
Environmental Working Group issued a scathing report on pesticides in kid’s food. Like
other baby food makers, Gerber knew it had to do something. It started with improving
methods to wash off or peel off pesticide residue on apples. But, there was only so much
that could be done in the plant.


Todd DeKryger is with Gerber Baby Foods. He says Gerber’s plants did what they could
to get rid of pesticide residue, but it wasn’t enough.


“Our customers were telling us, ‘We don’t want residues in the products we buy from
Gerbers.’ We turn around and tell our growers ‘We need a product without pesticide
residues.’ And it’s really been amazing how they have really bought into that whole idea
of providing a product. You know, and they say ‘Hey, look. We fed our kids Gerber and,
uh, yeah, okay, this makes sense. Now, how can I help?'”


Gerber got some help from a firm based in North Carolina. The Center for Agricultural
Partnerships contacted Gerber at its main plant in Michigan as well as Michigan State
University’s Extension Service and apple growers. They had money to pay for
publications and free consultants for three years for growers who wanted to try a way to
control bugs in the orchards called ‘Integrated Pest Management’ or IPM.


Larry Elworth is with the Center. He says IPM. has worked for other types of fruit
growers, but expertise was needed for the particular climates and growing conditions in
Michigan’s apple orchards to make IPM effective.


“It’s become a way of managing pests that gives growers way more information to use so
they can actually outsmart the insects rather than always relying on a chemical as the way
to control them.”


(apple picking sound)


That all sounded good, but no one had tried it in the apple orchards on a large scale.


“Well, our main concern was whether it was going to work or not.”


Bill Erwin operates Erwin Orchards and Cider Mill.


(sound of rolling apples)


Apple pickers are plucking fruit and gently rolling the apples into a big wooden crate for
shipping to retailers. Erwin says it seemed risky to change farming methods in the
orchards.


“We’ve been used to the chemistries. We’ve been used to the program and, uh, we
weren’t sure that using lighter chemistries was going to work and we weren’t sure that we
were going to be able to control the bugs.”


Erwin says pesticides are reliable. They kill bugs. The fruit looks good. And the orchard
is nice looking in that there’s no wildlife, bugs, birds or otherwise in the area for very
long. But Erwin says all the beneficial insects, such as ladybugs and spiders that eat bugs
that ruin fruit were also gone. Erwin says he noticed something else that bothered him –
humming bird nests – but no baby humming birds.


So, Erwin and a lot of other Michigan apple growers gave Integrated Pest Management a
shot. Erwin says they found using tactics such as mating disruption of pests works. The
worm in the apple is actually the coddling moth’s larvae which burrow into the fruit.
Apple growers used the female coddling moth’s pheremones against the insect. By
saturating the orchard with pheremones, males didn’t know which way to turn to find a
mate. No mate, no eggs. No eggs, no worm in the apple. And Erwin says he noticed
something else.


“Now we find humming birds. We find little baby humming bird nests everywhere in this
orchard. We see bluebirds out here. You never used to see those. And, so, we know we’re
doing something good with the environment and that makes us feel good about this
program. They’ve taught us something and it’s gonna be something we’re going to keep
going with.”


And it appears the results are good.


The Center for Agricultural Partnership’s Larry Elworth says the three year project was a
success.


“Growers had at least as good if not better quality apple crops than they had before. Fewer bites
from insects chewing on the surface. A lot fewer worms that had burrowed inside the
apples which gave them a higher quality crop and they actually got more revenue for
their crop than they’d been getting before. And they were also able to reduce their overall
costs for controlling insects.”


Gerber Baby Foods is relieved. By getting orchards closer to its plant to reduce pesticide
use, it’s ensured a local supply of apples. Otherwise, it meant trucking in fruit from
farther away and paying more for fruit that met consumers’ demands for pesticide free
baby food.


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

Farming in Age of Global Warming

For years, scientists have been studying what will happen to our environment in the age of global warming. A recently released report draws some conclusions about what may happen in the farm fields. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:

Transcript

For years, scientists have been studying what will happen to
our environment in the age of global warming. A recently
released report draws some conclusions about what may
happen in the farm fields. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Bill Cohen reports:


More carbon dioxide in the air will bring larger crop yields, says
plant ecologist Peter Curtis of Ohio State University. He and other
OSU scientists have just finished reviewing 159 studies from the past
20 years on global warming. Their conclusion – by the end of this
century, some plants will produce more grain.


“Corn, for example, about 5%, wheat we’re lookin’ at about 15%, barley
a little bit more – maybe 18%, soybeans at around 20%, and then rice
all the way up around 40%.”


More food, says Curtis, but it might be less nutritious. That’s the
downside his study is predicting if global warming continues – the
crops will contain less nitrogen and that may mean less protein for the
humans, cows, and pigs that eat it.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Cohen in Columbus.