Tag: farming

Organic Meat Hard to Find

  • Organic steak is hard to find, partly because so few slaughterhouses are certified organic. (Photo by David Benbennick, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef. It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices. But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.
Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:

Transcript

Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef.

It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices.

But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.

Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:

Dennis and Emily Wettstein turned their Illinois farm organic a while ago, mostly because conventional farming wasn’t practical for them.

“All the money seemed to go to pay for the fertilizers and the chemicals. And then I was more or less allergic to the chemicals. And so we were interested in getting away from that, especially if we were going to raise a family out here.”

The Wettsteins didn’t just raise grain organically – they kept chemicals and hormones out of their cattle.

“We started raising meat for ourselves and our families. Then, pretty soon, just word of mouth, friends and neighbors wanted meat.”

And, they found people who’d pay top dollar for their meat.

“We sell at the Oak Park farmers market.”

That’s just west of Chicago.

“Right. The Oak Park market managers, they are working on all the farmers to go towards organic.”

And that worked for the Wettsteins – they had USDA certified organic chicken.

“There’s one other meat vendor there – it’s not organic. So, we have no competition. We feel that, with that label on there, we can set our price to where we can make a profit.”

But Emily Wettstein says that term – organic – gave them trouble when it came to beef and other meat.

“We were getting a little bit pressured from other people, ‘Well, you can’t call your item organic. You don’t have a processing facility with the term of certified organic.'”

Here was the problem: For meat to get labeled USDA certified organic, it’s gotta be certified from the farm to the slaughterhouse.

The Wettsteins had someone to process organic chicken, but they were out of luck with pigs and cows.

There was no certified slaughterhouse for beef or pork in Illinois.

So, the Wettsteins and some relatives prodded meat lockers to get certified.
There was one taker.

“I’m inside a meat locker that’s about a fifteen minute drive from the Wettstein farm. It’s owned by Scott Bittner, and I’m here to understand what organic certification means for his business. How do I put this, there’s a headless, hoofless, skinless cow hanging from your ceiling. Where are we exactly?”

We’re on the kill floor. We had seventeen, eighteen cattle today. Seven of those were organic.

So, walk me through how you have to treat that organic cow differently.

It’s the first thing we did this morning – that’s one thing. Other than that, it’s segregating it in the cooler from the non-organic product and then processing it at a later time, which, again, you have to do first thing in the morning.

So, the basic idea is segregation?

Yeah, it is. The whole way through. Exactly.

Bittner’s simplifying things, but not much.

He has to clean or swap equipment between batches of organic and conventional meat.

There are rules on the kinds of chemicals he can use. And he hires a certification company to monitor his paper work.

Bittner says overall, it’s easy, and he’s surprised more slaughterhouses haven’t done it.

“Here we’re doing all our fabricating – grinding sausage, ground beef. Cutting some chops, ribs.”

“How does it feel to be the only guy who can process an organic side of beef?”

“I want to keep it quiet – I don’t want too many people to get started doing what I’m doing because it’s nice. I get two or three customers every year that I didn’t have before. When you go to bed at night and think about this economy being the way it is, every little bit helps.”

Bittner says farmers drive animals up to four hours to slaughter their animals here.

He says he’s proud of his work but can’t take too much credit; he knows he’s got a local organic slaughtering monopoly going.

That might change some day, but for now it’s reason enough to keep his knives sharp.

For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Farmland Goes Idle

  • 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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

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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

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:

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.

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Global Trade in Frog Legs Bad for Frogs

  • At least 200 million, but maybe as many as one billion frogs are eaten every year (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Frog legs are showing up on more menus all over Europe and North America. Biologists say this is just more bad news for frogs. Frogs are already in serious trouble from habitat loss and a fatal disease caused by a fungus. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

Frog legs are showing up on more menus all over Europe and North America. Biologists say… this is just more bad news for frogs. Frogs are already in serious trouble from habitat loss and a fatal disease caused by a fungus. Rebecca Williams reports:

It’s hard to know exactly how many frogs we eat. Only a fraction is reported in global trade numbers. So, at least 200 million but maybe as many as one billion frogs are eaten every year.

Ian Warkentin has been looking at our appetite for frog legs. He’s the lead author of a new study in the journal Conservation Biology.

He says some frogs are raised for food. But most of the frogs are taken from the wild.

“There was a harvest in North America and a harvest in Europe that depleted those stocks. The source then became India and Bangladesh and now we’re moving to Indonesia and Southeast Asia. And our concern is, well, we’re just going to harvest them to the point where there no longer is a viable harvest any more.”

He’d like to see better oversight on wild frog harvests, and more commercial frog farming. But, until that happens, he says you might want to take a pass on the frog leg platter.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Usda Kills Wildlife

  • USDA Wildlife Services Killed 90,000 Coyotes in 2007 (Photo courtesy of Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

More than a hundred environmental
organizations want the incoming head of
the US Department of Agriculture to stop
killing wildlife. The agency has an office
that kills wild animals to save livestock.
Jennifer Szweda Jordan has more:

Transcript

More than a hundred environmental
organizations want the incoming head of
the US Department of Agriculture to stop
killing wildlife. The agency has an office
that kills wild animals to save livestock.
Jennifer Szweda Jordan has more:

The Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, and dozens of other groups signed on to a letter to Tom Vilsack. Vilsack is President-elect Obama’s pick for Agriculture Secretary. The environmental coalition is upset about the department’s Wildlife Services Agency. That agency removes or kills animals that threaten crops, farm animals, or cause other nuisances. Wildlife Services agents reported in 2007 that they killed more than two million animals, including 90-thousand coyotes, sometimes through poisoning.

Tom Vilsack did not return a call seeking comment about the letter.

The environmental groups say the poisonings and killings disrupt the balance of nature, and can leave persistent chemicals behind.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

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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)

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

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:

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.

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New Standards for Organic Fish

  • Farmed fish, such as salmon, eat a lot of wild fish that happen to swim into their pens. And that means they could be eating over-fished species. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish & Wildlife Service)

To be labeled organic, animals
have to be fed all organic food. But
under the new proposal that won’t be
the case for fish. Julie Grant reports
that in the recommendations for organic
fish, the standard is much lower:

Transcript

To be labeled organic, animals
have to be fed all organic food. But
under the new proposal that won’t be
the case for fish. Julie Grant reports
that in the recommendations for organic
fish, the standard is much lower:

Some fish is raised in huge net-pens in the ocean. Farmed
fish, such as salmon, eat a lot of wild fish that happen to
swim into their pens. And that means they could be eating
over-fished species.

New recommendations by the National Organic Standards
Board would go ahead and allow farmed fish to eat up to
25% wild food – as long as it’s not from endangered species.

George Leonard is director of aqua-culture with the Ocean
Conservancy. He says these standards would weaken the
organic label.

“You don’t change the organic standard to be consistent with
current practices, you hold the organic standard steady and
you allow or you incentive the industry to change their
practices to reach that standard.”

The new “organic fish” recommendations still need final
approval from the USDA.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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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

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:

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.

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Saving Nation’s Seed Supply

  • Multinational corporations started taking control of seeds around thirty years ago. Now, ten corporations own over half the world’s commodity seed supply. (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)

Some small gardening businesses
are noticing more customers want organic
and heirloom seeds. Experts think that
trend might be important for the world.
Kinna Ohman reports they believe
those seeds might be the hope of future
food supplies:

Transcript

Some small gardening businesses
are noticing more customers want organic
and heirloom seeds. Experts think that
trend might be important for the world.
Kinna Ohman reports they believe
those seeds might be the hope of future
food supplies:

John Meshna points to a half empty rack of vegetable and flower seed packets in his
store.

“We’ve emptied this thing at least a half a dozen times this year. I thought maybe
we’d have a rush in the spring and that’d be the end of it. And it looks like it’s
going to be going through the winter.”

Meshna owns and runs DirtWorks – a green garden supply business in New Haven,
Vermont. He’s been selling organic and heirloom garden seeds for more than twenty
years. Heirloom seeds come from vegetables that have almost disappeared. And Meshna
thinks people want those types of seeds more and more because they’re worried about our
food supply.

“People call us just to make sure sometimes before they order, now, ‘these are really
organic seeds, right?’ Yeah, it says it right on the label. It’s gonna make you very
happy when you get that package.”

And it’s making certain experts happy too.

Hope Shand is the research director of Etcetera Group. It’s an organization that’s
concerned about corporate control of the food supply. Shand says when more home
gardeners and small farmers grow plants from organic and heirloom seeds, that helps
keep variety in the world’s food supply.

“This is an incredibly important service. People, gardeners, small farmers, urban
gardeners, are conserving, and saving seed diversity. No one else is really doing that
job.”

Hope Shand says multinational corporations started taking control of seeds around thirty
years ago. Now, Shand says, ten corporations own over half the world’s commodity seed
supply. And she thinks that’s risky.

“The seed is the first link in the food chain. Whoever controls the seed literally
controls the world’s food supply. We can’t afford to have the level of vulnerability
and dependence that that entails when we have a handful of multinational seed
companies controlling the world seed supply.”

(sound of watering)

“I’m growing greens without heat.”

At a small organic nursery in Hinesberg, Vermont, Julie Rubaud is one of those who
wants to get these seeds and plants to more people. For her, it’s not just preserving a
strain of a vegetable, it’s trying to match up those plants with the right gardener.

Rubaud grows close to eight hundred varieties of organic and heirloom plants for her
customers. She says that helps her connect people with the right plants for their gardens
and tastebuds.

“I always start out asking, ‘how much room do you have?’ And then I ask them
how they like to eat tomatoes. It’s nice to be able to cater everyone’s garden plan to
their individual needs because we have so many varieties.”

And if next year’s anything like last year, Rubaud will have at least forty varieties of
organic tomato plants ready for new gardens by next spring.

She wonders – with the economy the way it’s been – if one plant might do exceptionally
well.

“There’s Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter Tomatoes. Have you heard of that
one?” (laughs)

Radiator Charlie’s tomato has been around since the 1940s. You probably won’t find it
at the big-box discount-store gardening department. It’s one of those colorful, hardy,
productive plants that many people think will help bring back variety to our food supply.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

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Prop 2 to Give Animals More Leg Room

  • By 2015, Proposition 2 in California forces farms to make sure the animals are given enough room to move around. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

Voters in California are drawing
a line in the sand when it comes to the
factory farming of animals. They overwhelmingly
approved a ballot measure to ensure that
hens, calves and pigs are treated more
humanely. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Voters in California are drawing
a line in the sand when it comes to the
factory farming of animals. They overwhelmingly
approved a ballot measure to ensure that
hens, calves and pigs are treated more
humanely. Julie Grant reports:

Right now, in most states, calves raised for veal, pregnant
pigs, and hens that lay eggs are caged so tight they can
barely move.

By 2015, Proposition 2 in California forces farms to make
sure the animals are given enough room to move around.

Michael Markarian is a vice president with the U.S. Humane
Society, which spent millions to get the issue approved.

“You cram these animals into cages barely larger than their
bodies. They’re practically immobilized their entire lives. I
mean, what could be more basic than giving an animal some
freedom of movement?”

Opponents of the issue say this will cost farmers and
consumers. We’ll see more imports from countries that don’t
have these kinds of laws.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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