Rising energy prices for natural gas have been hurting homeowners. Now, economists say 2006 is going to be a rough year for farmers as well. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner explains:
Transcript
Rising energy prices for natural gas have been hurting homeowners. Now, economists say 2006
is going to be a rough year for farmers as well. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner
explains:
At the American Farm Bureau’s annual convention, agriculture economists predicted a 10 percent
drop in farmers’ income this year. Rising energy prices can affect a farmer’s ability to borrow
money, and they make nearly everything on a farm more expensive – fertilizer, fuel for
machinery and irrigation.
Keith Collins is chief economist for the USDA.
“As we look out to 2006, the general forecasts are for slightly higher diesel prices and for higher
natural gas prices which is the main component in nitrogen fertilizer, the most important fertilizer
that farmers use.”
Collins says to address the problem, the USDA is targeting grants and loans to energy production
and conservation projects in rural areas. The agency is also developing tools for producers to
evaluate and improve energy efficiency on their farms.
These ear tags are becoming a thing of the past as states try out high-tech identification chips. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
The federal government is phasing in a national identification tracking system for livestock to help trace and curb threats, such as Mad Cow disease and even bio-terrorism. One state is even advancing what it calls micro-chip, injectable social security numbers for livestock. But many farmers worry that Big Brother may be moving into the barn. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak reports:
Transcript
The federal government is phasing in a national identification tracking system for livestock to help trace and curb threats, such as Mad Cow disease and even bio-terrorism. One state is even advancing, what it calls micro-chip, injectable social security numbers for livestock. But many farmers worry that Big Brother may be moving into the barn. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak reports:
The Gingerich Farm isn’t hard to find. Its fields are speckled with hundreds of black and white Holsteins. Dairy farmer Earl Gingerich Jr. takes us inside one of the barns for a closer look at some of his babies.
“These are a little noisy over here since we just moved ’em. Some of them tend to bellow…”
Gingerich is rather fond of the five hundred cows on his Western New York farm, and he doesn’t mind the hard work that goes along with them. Seven days a week, in good weather and bad. For him, Gingerich says it’s all about the cows.
“When you get up and you see the animals that are in the background and they’re waiting for you to take care of them and they need you, it’s like having a pet around, and taking that animal and yougrow her up to be a full-size, adult animal, you know why you’re doing it.”
So, Gingerich says anything he can do to protect his herd is a good idea. He takes part in the state’s voluntary vaccination program. Bright orange tags, each bearing a bold black number, are evidence of that. They dangle from the cows’ ears as they flick away barn flies while chewing the newest cut of hay.
(Sound of mooing)
But these tags will soon be obsolete. By 2009, the Department of Agriculture’s national animal identification program will require a standardized tracking system for every livestock animal in the United States.
Bruce Akey is an Assistant Veterinarian for New York state. He says the system will be able to trace the movements of animals backwards and forwards.
“Whether they’re sold to someone else on an individual basis, or they go to livestock markets, or go to slaughter plants, or anything like that, those movements can be recorded at those points at which they pass into commerce, and those movements can also be recorded in a national database.”
It’s the integrity of that database that is one major concern for many farmers and their advocates. They say animal rights extremists or terrorists could also get access to the information on the database about farms.
Farmers worry they could learn about chemicals and medicines used at the farm, and use it against them. Dairy farmer Earl Gingerich knows first-hand what can happen. Someone used a batch of antibiotics to contaminate ten thousand pounds of milk on his farm.
“We did have on a recording, which we couldn’t trace, and it said something to the effect of, ‘This should teach you a lesson now.'”
One microchip ID method being advanced in New York and other states is heightening bio-security concerns. The radio frequency chips can are embedded in ear tags or injected under the animals’ skin.
The stored data is read by large panel scanners at auction barns or hand held models, available to anyone. The cost is also still a big question. Maybe a few dollars for each chip and about five thousand dollars for large readers.
Peter Gregg is spokesman for the state’s Farm Bureau. He says they support a national tracking system, but Gregg says the government will have to make it secure – and pay for it.
“You know, we are operating on too slim of margins as it is to be able to pick up the tab for a program like this, and the other aspect is that we would have to make sure that there is protection of private rights.”
State veteranarian Bruce Akey says the government is listening to those concerns. He says they’re working to make the program cost-neutral or at least share costs with farmers. And Akey says Congress is hearing arguments that a private entity, such as a cooperative, should be allowed to manage the database. Advocates say they prefer that to the government being in charge of private information. But Akey says either way, there has to be a dependable way to track animals.
“It may seem a little like 1984, but it’s the state of technology, it’s the state of the marketplace – on both a national and an international scope,” said Akey. “That along with the fact that we now have diseases like Mad Cow disease and other food safety issues that more and more consumers are demanding that we be able to trace these animals and address the source of the problem.”
For now, states are rushing to comply with the first phase of the national ID program. By March of next year, every livestock and poultry farm in the country must be located and assigned a premises identification number. Then, each and every farm creature – be it cow or horse, elk or fish – will get its very own animal social security number.
Beech bark disease often causes the tree's bark to become scaly. (Photo courtesy of Michigan DNR)
Researchers might have a partial solution to the problem of beech bark disease. The disease has killed millions of beeches in the northeast and is advancing on the woodlands of the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton has this report:
Transcript
Researchers might have a partial solution to the problem
of beech bark disease. The disease has killed millions of beeches
in the Northeast and is advancing on the woodlands of the Midwest.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton has this report:
Beech bark disease happens when an insect infests beech trees. Then the
trees are killed or crippled by an opportunistic fungus. Where the
disease has struck, researchers found one to five percent of the trees had
natural resistance to the insect.
Jennifer Cook is a USDA Forest Service researcher.Her experiments found that seeds from two resistant parent trees produced progeny that are also resistant. That could set the stage
for reforestation and even pro-active plantings.
“People can plant them before the disease gets there and
therefore lessen the impact on their forest lands.”
Cook says if you’ve got a big beautiful beech tree you want to save, you
can scrub the tree’s bark with insecticidal soap once a year. Of course
it would be impossible to scrub every beech tree in the forests.
The Asian Longhorned Beetle rapidly kills hardwood trees and had plagued Chicago for some time, but officials now report that progress is being made in the fight against the beetle population. (Photo courtesy of the Michigan DNR)
The City of Chicago and the U.S. Department of Agriculture
are celebrating a small victory in their battle against an invasive pest. The Asian Longhorned Beetle arrived from China in packing materials and is responsible for destroying thousands of hardwood trees in North America. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has more:
Transcript
The City of Chicago and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are celebrating a small victory in their battle against an invasive pest. The Asian Longhorned Beetle arrived from China and is responsible for destroying thousands of hardwood trees in North America. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has more.
Chicago saw its first Asian Longhorned Beetle back in 1998. USDA and Chicago officials quickly destroyed more than fifteen hundred trees to stop the infestation. They also slapped a quarantine on the historic Ravenswood neighborhood, which prevented residents from removing tree cuttings from the area.
Now officials are lifting those restrictions, saying no one’s seen the bug in the area’s stately tree canopy for nearly two years. Joe McCarthy is the City of Chicago’s chief forester. He says a beetle hotline and a diligent press made the difference.
“There’s so much coverage of this thing, that the beetle is on TV, out in the papers, on front pages. And that’s how all the main infestations were found in the Chicago area.”
McCarthy points out that another Chicago neighborhood is still under quarantine.
The USDA is also fighting the Asian Longhorned Beetle in New York City and parts of New Jersey.
Crows are roosting in huge groups in cities all over the country. The USDA is trying to find ways to get them to go back to their natural habitat. (Photo by Paige Foster)
Flocks of crows are nothing new in most cities. In the fall and winter months, crows forage for food during the day and roost in city trees at night. The birds like cities because they’re safe and comfortable. The residents generally don’t like the crows, though. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Skye Rohde
reports:
Transcript
Flocks of crows are nothing new in most cities. In the fall and winter months, crows forage for food during the day and roost in city trees at night. The birds like cities because they’re safe and comfortable. The residents generally don’t like the crows, though. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Skye Rohde reports:
(sound of crows)
There are a lot of crows here. About 63,000 of them are in the city. The trees are thick with them. At dawn and dusk, so is the sky. Bird feces coats city sidewalks and parked cars. Amy Emedon lives in town. She’s used to the crows.
“They make a lot of noise at night, or in the morning they kind of wake you up. But other than that, they don’t really bother me that much. They’re kind of gross, because their poop’s all over the place and they’re so loud and there’s so many of them. Like sometimes you can’t even see, like, the sky. It reminds me of that movie ‘The Birds.'”
Crows have been wintering in Auburn, New York for more than 100 years. Written records from as early as 1911 describe a very large roost downtown. Auburn has the largest crow roost in the state. This winter, city officials hired the U.S. Department of Agriculture to haze the crows.
(sound of distress calls and pyrotechnics)
Hazing means the eight USDA scientists drive around town using recorded crow distress calls, pyrotechnics and laser pointers – anything that will upset the birds and drive them out. Sometimes this includes shooting the birds, but not in New York state. Richard Chipman is the New York state director of the USDA’s wildlife services project. He says the idea is to move the birds to a more “natural” habitat.
“The goal is not to just relocate these birds and cause somebody else problems. The goal is to try to relocate them to a low-impact area to improve the quality of life of folks here in the city.”
The only problem with this plan is that the crows really like being in cities. The birds are smart. They’re communal. They recognize that they’re safer downtown than out-of-town. Kevin Mcgowan is an ornithologist at Cornell University who has studied crows for 16 years. He’s heard of large crow roosts in cities across the nation, ranging from 100 birds to two million. Mcgowan says it’s usually warmer in cities. Crows like that. And they like the big trees and streetlights.
“I think the lights is a big deal. Crows are scared of things that go bump in the night because those things eat them. And that’s pretty much great horned owls, okay? Great horned owl is probably the single scariest thing to a crow, because they come in at night when crows can’t see and owls can. And owls eat a lot of crows.”
Mcgowan says crows started settling in U.S. cities in much larger numbers in the 1970s and 1980s, after a change to the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
“In – I believe it was 1972 – there was an amendment to the act that afforded crows protection for the first time. What that meant was now you couldn’t just shoot crows anytime you wanted to. You had to do it under the direction of a state hunting season, which had regulations.”
As a result, people changed their behavior. They didn’t shoot crows as much, so the crows became less scared of them and moved closer. In other words, crows have realized that cities are safer habitats than their “natural” environment. Mcgowan says he’s seen it before.
“You have a big predator that scares away the smaller predator that’s the one that really bothers you, then it behooves you to hang around the big predator. Happens all the time around people. There are lots of things that come in to be around people because they’re relatively safe there.”
Whether the USDA can break that pattern in cities like Auburn remains to be seen. Scientists have surveyed this city and harrassed the remaining crows. But they might have to return next winter to do the same thing again. And Auburn officials, like those in other crow-filled cities, might need to consider changing those things that attract crows in the first place, rather than just focusing on scaring the birds away.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Skye Rohde.
Feral pigs have become a nuisance in Wisconsin, and DNR officials fear that if their numbers do not decrease, they will do a significant amount of damage. (Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin DNR)
Ag officials are tracking a big pig problem across Wisconsin. Since 1999, growing numbers of feral swine have appeared across the state. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull reports, officials now fear the spread of the wild pigs:
Transcript
Ag officials are tracking a big pig problem across Wisconsin. Since 1999, growing numbers of feral swine have appeared across the state. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull reports, officials now fear the spread of the wild pigs:
The woolly porkers have appeared in 23 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties. They’re damaging crops, digging out ground-nesting birds, and killing small deer. They may also cary pseudorabies and swine brucellosis, threatening domestic pigs.
Wayne Edgerton is agricultural policy director of Minnesota’s DNR. He says the problem could easily spread into his territory.
“They can certainly walk across the ice, so this time of the year they can come across to Minnesota. And I’ve heard they’re actually good swimmers. So even in summertime, they could get their way over to northern Minnesota.”
Some people have speculated that Minnesota’s intense winters would kill off any feral swine crossing the border. But Tim DeVeau, a veterinary medical officer of the USDA, says that’s unlikely.
“As long as they’ve got food, and they’re gonna put fat on, they’ll be well-insulated.”
DeVeau adds that in order to keep wild pigs’ numbers under control, at least 75% of the population has to be destroyed every year. He says that’s not happening.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brian Bull.
It can be tough deciding whether to buy organic foods at the market. Organic produce often costs more, sometimes doesn’t look as nice, and can compete with locally-produced products that might be raised organically but don’t carry the government’s certification. As part of an ongoing series “Your Choice, Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant looks at what you’re getting when you buy the organic label:
Transcript
It can be tough deciding whether to buy organic foods at the market. Organic produce often costs more, sometimes doesn’t look as nice, and can compete with locally-produced products that might be raised organically but don’t carry the government’s certification. As part of an ongoing series called “Your Choice, Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant looks at what you’re getting when you buy the organic label:
(sound of supermarket)
Elizabeth Culotta is shopping around the natural and organic food section of the Acme Supermarket in Kent, Ohio. She’s glad there are now standardized stickers on the fruits and vegetables that say “USDA Organic” because it makes it easier to judge what’s grown without pesticides.
EC: “It matters to me, because I feel like organic produce is grown in a way that is better for the global environment. So it matters to me in a global sense. I’m not actually a person who that is worried about the health aspects of pesticides.”
JG: “If the prices were comparable, would you buy organic over conventional?”
EC: “Sure. Sure. Definitely. If you look at these organic cherry tomatoes, they look great. But they’re $3.99 a pint.”
JG: “Let’s go look at the conventional.”
EC: “Here’s some grape tomatoes. A little different. And they are… $1.49 for a pint. So that is less than half the price.”
One reason organics cost more is the price farms pay for USDA certification. It’s an involved process…
(farm sound)
Mick Luber inspects farms for the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association. His group is approved by the USDA to certify farms as organic. This morning he’s visiting Larry Luschek’s farm in Ohio. Until a couple of years ago, cabbage, collards, or other produce claiming to be “organic” could be certified by any number of organizations. But, now the USDA has established guidelines everyone must follow. Luber says that actually hasn’t changed his inspections much.
(sound in fields)
Out in the fields… he sticks a metal probe in the ground and pulls out a soil sample… the soil structure looks right.
ML: “See that little white stuff there? That’s bacteria in the soil. It means the soil is alive. And you also look for earthworm activity.”
JG: “What would any of that mean for certification?”
ML: “Means soil is alive. That’s what the whole organic thing is about is alive soil. You’re not just using NPNK to produce your plants. You’re using the soil as a living organism.”
JG: “NPNK is?”
ML: “Nitrogen-potassium-phosphorous. A living soil is a living soil, it actually produces a lot of those things itself…”
In addition to the soil, Luber checks the equipment for oil leakage, the barrels used to clean produce, and everything else he can think of to bring back to an inspection committee.”
(kitchen sound)
He sits at Larry Luschek’s kitchen table for more than an hour, asking where Larry buys his seeds and checking his receipts. There’s a lot of paperwork involved in getting the USDA’s organic certification.
Not everybody thinks it’s worth the hassle.
(market sound)
At the North Union Farmers’ Market in Cleveland, Mark Welton and his teenage daughter are selling rhubarb. Welton owns a three-acre farm…
MW: “We do everything organically with no herbicides, pesticides, lot of composting, cover cropping, crop rotation. You know, things like that.”
Welton used to certify his farm organic. But he stopped once the USDA national standards went into effect.
MW: “I just didn’t feel I needed to keep it going anymore. And it was getting expensive. It was getting expensive to stay certified. I said, I haven’t changed my practices, I’ve been doing it twenty years that way. I just felt now was the time just to say… okay, I’m done.”
Welton says people at the market know him and trust that he’s not using chemical-laden seeds or spraying things like NPNK on his fields. He says they can visit his farm if they want to check for themselves.
Farmer Bruce Cormack thinks that’s a lot more important than the USDA organic label. He wonders if huge organic farms on the west coast are really
earth friendly…
BW: “I mean, I think the organic certification is supposed to be, as far as environment, less impact and better for everybody but when you have 800 horsepower tractors and shipping 4,000 miles it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t see how that is not impacting the environment.”
Shoppers at the farmers’ market know they’re paying more than the average price for produce. They don’t seem to mind because it’s fresh and locally grown. But not everyone has the time to get to the farmers’ market, let alone drive out to the farm to make sure it’s organic.
(supermarket sound)
Back at the supermarket, Elizabeth Culotta is glad the federal government has standardized what it means to be an organic farm…
EC: “Yes. I mean I think that makes it simpler for someone like me to go into a grocery store and if I can find something that says organic, then I can probably be pretty sure that that’s probably going to meet what I want. As opposed to having to parse the label and trying to figure out from the ads who is exactly doing what.”
The USDA organic label does let people know how the food was grown and processed. It does not tell them whether it’s good for the planet. That’s something shoppers still have to figure out for themselves.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.
The Bush Administration has been under a lot of pressure from environmentalists, hunting groups, and state agencies to do something about wetlands protection. On Earth Day, President Bush responded by announcing a new initiative that he says will take wetlands protection to a higher level. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush takes a closer look at the President’s latest proposal:
Transcript
The Bush Administration has been under a lot of pressure from
environmentalists, hunting groups, and state agencies to do something about
wetlands protection. On Earth Day, President Bush responded by announcing a
new initiative that he says will take wetlands protection to a higher level.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush takes a closer look at the
President’s latest proposal:
In the last thirty years, urban sprawl and farming have destroyed millions of
acres of wetlands. Because of that, the past two Presidents called for a
policy of “no net loss of wetlands.” The current Bush administration says it also
supports that goal. And says it wants to go a step further.
On Earth Day, the President unveiled his latest plan to protect and restore
wetlands.
“The old policy of wetlands was to limit the loss of wetlands. Today, I’m going to
announce a new policy and a new goal for our country: instead of just
limiting our losses, we will expand the wetlands of America.”
(Applause – fade under)
The Bush administration says its policy will restore, improve, and protect a
total of three million acres of wetlands in the next five years. In his speech, the
President gave a general outline of the plan, saying he’s going to increase support for a
number of programs already in place.
Ben Grumbles is an Assistant Administrator at the Environmental Protection
Agency. He heads up the water and wetlands programs for the EPA. He says
the President has called on many agencies to implement the new plan:
“The heart of the President’s new goal and commitment is to use
collaborative conservation-based programs to gain three million acres of
wetlands and to do so through USDA, Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, conservation programs and
partnerships with the private sector.”
While environmentalists approve parts of President Bush’s new plan, many of
them say it’s the wrong first step to take. Julie Sibbing is a wetlands
policy specialist with the National Wildlife Federation.
“Although it’s a great thing that they’re going to get a million acres of
wetlands restored, and a million acres enhanced, and a million acres
protected, it’s only a drop in the bucket compared to what’s currently at
risk due to their policies on protecting wetlands under the Clean Water
Act.”
And that’s the main criticism – environmentalists and some hunters say the
Administration is not doing its job in enforcing current federal laws. Laws that protect
rivers, lakes, and wetlands – and worse – they say the administration has
actively weakened laws that protect millions of acres of smaller, isolated
wetlands. These critics see this latest announcement by the Bush Administration
as an attempt to shore up its dismal record on the environment in general…
and on wetlands in particular.
The National Wildlife Federation’s Julie Sibbing says the Administration
would make better use of taxpayers’ money by reviewing some of its policies
and protecting wetlands that already exist:
“It’s just too hard to build new wetlands for us to ignore protecting what’s
there right now. We love the programs that restore former wetlands, but the
most important thing is to try to protect those wetlands that we still
have.”
Officials in the Bush Administration say they are serious about enforcing
the law. And they say they are protecting wetlands. They say they’re just
taking a different approach.
In his speech, President Bush said good conservation will
happen when people don’t just rely on the government to be the solution to
the problem, saying more people should look to private sector land trusts
and voluntary efforts by landowners to get the job done.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.
Snails that can grow up to seven inches long have federal health officials cracking down on schools, pet shops and “pet swap meets” across the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Snails that can grow up to seven inches long have federal
health officials cracking down on schools, pet shops and ‘pet swap meets’
across the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Giant African Land Snails are a non-native species known to rapidly eat plants and
possibly spread disease. It’s illegal to possess the snails in the U.S. Federal and state
officials have seized more than 1000 of the snails from schools, pet shops and homes
in Wisconsin over the last few months.
Now, the warnings are going out across the region. David Robinson studies mollusks for
the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He says the snails are not likely to survive an upper
Midwest winter. But Robinson doesn’t want the snails getting into warmer states and
their farm fields.
“There is always a possibility of someone taking a snail down south… very often when
people get tired of a pet…and this applies to any kind of pet… very often the temptation is
to release it to the environment.”
So far, government officials are not levying fines against anyone for
possessing the giant snails, contending most people don’t know about
the potential risk.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.
States around the region are taking measures to protect against terrorism against agriculture. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Maria Hickey reports on a pilot program that will begin tracking the food supply:
Transcript
States around the region are taking measures to protect against terrorism against agriculture. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Maria Hickey reports on a pilot program that will begin tracking the food supply:
States record the number of livestock and the amount of grain grown in each county. But it’s not clear which farms are raising the meat and produce. As a food security measure some states want to keep track of animal and produce movement. In Illinois, Department of Agriculture Director Chuck Hartke says a satellite tracking system will allow the state to pinpoint food producers, grain elevators, food processing facilities and distributors as well.
“Right now we don’t know exactly where things are going, and how much, so this tracking
system is a first step in identifying our resources in a given county and then we can do it
statewide.”
A computer program will allow the state to develop disaster plans. That will help the state deal with terrorism, diseases such as mad cow and natural disasters. If the one-county pilot program works, the project will be extended statewide in Illinois. Other Great Lakes states are looking at similar programs and trading notes on what works.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium I’m Maria Hickey.
