Streamside Forests Play Role in Pollution Cleanup

Scientists have known for years that streamside forests help stop certain pollutants from entering the waterway. But new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that those forests have added benefits. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:

Transcript

Scientists have known for years that streamside forests help stop
certain pollutants from entering the waterway. But new research
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
shows that those forests have added benefits. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:


Steams that flow through forests tend to be wider and slower than those
that flow through meadows or urban areas. Scientists say that creates
an environment that can actually help clean up a polluted waterway.


Bernard Sweeney is the director of the Stroud Water Research Center in
Pennsylvania. He says their research points to a direct relationship
between woods and water.


“You put a forest along a small stream, it creates a more natural and
wider stream channel; that in turn provides more habitat, more
available ecosystem which in turn enables a stream to do more work for
us like processing nitrogen and organic matter.”


Sweeney says government programs that offer incentives to create
natural streamside buffers should do more to specifically encourage
reforestation. He says grass buffers don’t have the same cleansing
effect on waterways.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.

Related Links

AIR CLEANERS EFFECTIVE AT REMOVING VOCs?

Home air cleaners are good at getting rid of dust and dander, and some manufacturers claim they remove harmful gasses too. Now researchers are taking a closer look at that claim. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Skye Rohde reports:

Transcript

Home air cleaners are good at getting rid of dust and dander from the air, and some
manufacturers claim they remove harmful gasses too. Now researchers are taking a
closer look at that claim. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Skye Rohde reports:


Researchers at Syracuse University evaluated 15 different types of air-cleaning units in
their two-year-long study. They tested the units’ ability to remove 16 types of volatile
organic compounds, or VOCs. VOCs are chemicals that can cause eye and skin
irritation, and others are considered carcinogens.


The researchers found that none of the air-cleaning units removed all the VOCs they
tested. Jianshun Zhang was the lead researcher on the project. He says VOCs are
everywhere:


“Building materials, household products such as cleaning agents, wax, printers, copiers
and computers… there are many sources of volatile organic compounds.”


Zhang is calling for an established procedure to evaluate air cleaners’ effectiveness. He
says that until air-cleaning units improve, the best way to get rid of VOCs is to open
windows and use fans in your home.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Skye Rohde.

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.

Related Links

Soap Makers Revive History and Family Farms

  • Kim Brooks makes a batch of her Annie Goatley Hand-Milled Soap in her kitchen. (Photo by Tamar Charney)

For many of us, soap is just another mass-produced product we buy at the local supermarket. But in recent years, all-natural handmade soap has been showing up in galleries, gift boutiques, craft shows, and farmers’ markets. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney has more:

Transcript

For many of us soap is just another mass-produced product we buy at the local supermarket.
But in recent years, all-natural handmade soap has been showing up in galleries,
gift boutiques, craft shows, and farmers’ markets. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Tamar Charney has more:


Kim Brooks’ home smells clean – like lemon, rosemary, citronella and well,
soap. The smell’s so pervasive that it wafts onto the school bus with her
12-year-old son, prompting taunts. His response to the kids teasing is he smells
like profit. See, his mom is a soap maker.


“I think I need to make some goats and oats with a dab of honey. So we’ll take oatmeal…
then I also want to add a little fragrance to this…”


(bottles clinking)


She makes 30 different types of bars for her Annie Goatley line of homemade soap.


“My soap is hand-milled, so what that means is I take olive oil, palm oil and coconut oil
and then I melt it down and add the lye and it saponifies, and then I make a base that
comes out in big chunks of hard soap and then I take these big chunks…”


It takes about two months from the time she starts a batch of soap until she
has a finished bar.


Kim Brooks started her business last June. She says she’s one of those
people who’d buy handmade soap any time she saw it. She says it was an
inexpensive way to feel like she was pampering herself. Eventually she
learned how to make it.


“There is a group of people that whenever they go to a craft show they buy soap. It’s
odd to think of it, but there is actually a culture of people that seek it out.”


Enough that Brooks says she can make soap seven days a week and still have trouble keeping up
with demand.


“As long as people get dirty, there’s always a market isn’t there?”


Patty Pike is another soap maker. She lives near Rogers City in northern Michigan. And she runs
an e-mail list for soap makers all across the state. More than 170 people are on the list.


“There are many women who are at home, either by choice or otherwise, and they are looking for
something to do to keep busy or to have a home-based business.”


She says for some, soap making is a creative outlet or a craft. For others,
such as Patty Pike herself, soap is a way to beef up a family farm’s bottom
line.


She raises goats, cattle, and chickens for show and for meat. And
soap was a way to make some money off the extra goat milk.


If you drive around rural communities you’re likely to see hand-lettered signs for soap outside
family farms.


In recent years, there’s been a renewed interest in how things used to be back before soap became
a mass-produced product advertised on TV.


(sound of soap ad)


At The Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, crowds of people who
grew up humming the ads for Dial, Zest, and Irish Spring show up to watch soap making
demonstrations.


Jim Johnson is with the Henry Ford. He says in colonial times, soap was just something everyone
made at home.


“As we move towards the whole convenience thing… this starts really at the end of the 19th
century and takes off at that point. By the time you get to the other side of Depression, the other
side of World War II, homemade soap is something only of folklore at that point.”


He says with the back-to-land and natural foods movement in the 1960’s and 70’s there was a
return to handmade, homemade soap. Since then, it has bubbled up from being a counterculture
interest to a more mainstream one.


One that’s been encouraged by the slow food movement, interest in organic products, and even
the popularity of how-to shows on television.


“It may be just sort of a whim or a hobby trying to make a connection to the past, other times they
might attempt it for practical purposes, you know, where they want something that they’ve done
with their own hands and they know what’s in it.”


And for a lot of people that itself is rewarding.


Kim Brooks takes a break from stirring a big pot of soap and she goes out to feed her goats and
chickens.


(barnyard sounds)


Like many of her customers, she has discovered she gets a certain satisfaction making things
herself or from buying things from someone she knows or at least has met.


“You know, we have heard so many things about ‘well this has been put in our
foods or that has been put in our foods’… and ‘this is a cancer-causing agent’ and you know, ‘this
is safe’ but then later on we find out well it’s not really safe. And I think that just as a culture
we’re really trying to get back to more of the natural products. I think handmade soaps go right
along with that.”


And she thinks people may be realizing they value things more when they’re made by people, not
machines. Handmade soaps might be all the rage at craft shows, gift boutiques, and farmers’
markets, but even soap manufacturers have caught onto the trend. In the aisles of many
supermarkets and drug stores, more and more soaps are showing up that look handmade even
when they’re not.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.

Related Links

Brewing Greener Beer

It takes a lot of water and a lot of grain to brew a good beer. And once that beer is made, there’s a lot of spent material and water left over. This excess is usually just considered waste. But two guys in the Great Lakes region decided to start a brewery that would focus on reducing pollution and waste and then re-using whatever was left over. They wanted to show how helping the earth could also help business. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports:

Transcript

It takes a lot of water and a lot of grain to brew a good beer. And once
that beer is made, there’s a lot of spent material and water left over. This
excess is usually just considered waste. But two guys in the Great Lakes
region decided to start a brewery that would focus on reducing pollution
and waste and then re-using whatever was left over. They wanted to
show how helping the earth could also help business. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports:


(ambient pub noise)


It’s a busy summer night at The Leopold Brother’s of Ann Arbor
Brewery. People have shown up to unwind after a long week. Some are
here to listen to the live band. Others to play a rowdy game of Pictionary
in the beer garden.


But mostly, people are here to drink the beer.


Brothers Scott and Todd Leopold own and run the brewery. A family resemblance is
obvious between the brothers.


But their roles in the business are totally different. Todd Leopold brews the beer. He’s a
big, friendly guy who seems at home in a comfortable-looking pair of old
overalls. Todd went to the Siebel brewing school in Chicago and got hands-on
training in four different German breweries. He uses techniques he learned over there in
his own facility.


His brother Scott Leopold is an environmental engineer, educated at
Northwestern and Stanford. Scott spent years helping big companies
save money by using environmentally sustainable business techniques.


But four years ago he decided to put his money where his mouth was.
One night, at a bar in Colorado, the two brothers came up with the idea
to combine their talents and start the world’s first zero-pollution brewery.


They wanted to build the model, then show people that it could really work.
Their idea was met with some skepticism by family and friends. Simply put, they
thought Scott and Todd were nuts. And Scott says they weren’t all wrong.


“Most of the entrepreneurs who are out there will tell you if they knew what they were
getting into before they got into it…they probably wouldn’t have done
it. We might not be alone in that.”


But so far the idealistic business venture has proved to be a success. Scott and
Todd have reduced the volume of a typical brewery’s waste by 90 percent.


To accomplish this, Scott and Todd designed a brewery where every detail was taken into
account to conserve resources.


“What we wanted to do was put science ahead of marketing…to ensure that anyone could
look within our production processes to ensure that it would stand up to the rigors of
science within the environmental engineering world.”


(ambient sound of brewery)


In the brewhouse, stainless steel machines gleam like they’ve just been washed. They’re
not brewing today… that only happens about once a week. But the factory computer is on
and its small, colorful graphics are showing everything that’s happening in the facility.


The computer helps cut down on the brewery’s waste by tracking and regulating all
energy and water use. So there’s always an accurate record of what was
produced versus how much of the raw materials and energy was consumed.


Todd Leopold says this helps him brew better beer.


“When you know everything that’s going in and everything that’s going out, if suddenly
that changes or there’s a spike you know there’s a problem and you’re able to track it
down. So it’s really helped me run a much tighter ship.”


All the other devices in the brewhouse are specially tailored to reduce waste. In fact,
they’re so efficient that Leopold Brothers generates 25 percent less solid waste residue
and buys 25 percent less grain than most small breweries.


That means they’re saving money.


Scott Leopold says their profit margins are nearly a quarter higher than they would have
been if they hadn’t made the investment in better equipment early on. But even with all
the complex equipment, there’s still some spent grain and water left over.


It’s all put to good use. The used organic malt and hops make great food for
animals at organic farms. Excess water from the brewing process is used in the
greenhouse in the back.


Pots of basil for the menu and moonflowers for the beer garden grow in there.
Conservation even extends beyond the brewhouse to the brewery’s decor.


Fat vinyl green tubes with zippers up the sides snake across the ceiling. They’re part of a
more energy-efficient heating and cooling system. And old doors hammered together
make up the bar.


The Leopold Brothers pay the same attention to detail when it comes to marketing their
product. The labels are made from vegetable-based inks. And they use recyclable
cardboard boxes as packaging.


But the brothers want to have an impact on brewing beyond just their own facility.


Todd says they have to start off small.


“We’d love to see the larger, world class…well, not world class, but world size breweries
that distribute their beer internationally to adopt some of the things that we do. It’s just
very difficult to infiltrate the corporate culture as opposed to where there’s one or
two owners. You sit down with them, have a beer, and say this is how you need to do
things. It’s much easier to have an impact on that level, I believe.”


Scott and Todd Leopold say the big breweries have adopted some conservation
techniques simply to save money…but they still generate a lot of waste water.


Scott thinks they could reduce the amount by introducing new machinery and changing
their cleaning techniques.


But U.S. Environmental Protection Agency environmental scientist Erik Hardin says the
big breweries will have to be shown that trying more new things will help the bottom
line.


“With most any big business, pollution prevention steps seem to be incorporated after the
people in charge have been convinced thoroughly that these things can actually save them
money.”


And the Leopold Brothers say that is the exact mission of their brewery …to show, by
example, that sustainability means profitability.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie
MacDowell.

Related Links

War’s Lasting Harvest

President Bush has declared that the war in Iraq is over. But from the vantage point of his garden, recent National Guard retiree and Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator, Tom Springer, wonders what the lasting harvest of this conflict will be:

Transcript

President Bush has declared that the war in Iraq is over. But from the vantage point of his
garden, recent National Guard retiree and Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator, Tom
Springer, wonders what the lasting harvest of this conflict will be:


When I retired from the Army National Guard last December, I was looking forward to having
more free time. To commemorate my 22 years of service, I decided to plant my biggest vegetable
garden ever.


But even with more leisure time, I still hate to pull weeds. So I’ve covered my garden with
newspapers and straw. After the fall rains, I’ll till this organic matter back into the soil to prepare
for another growing season.


However, my usually peaceful garden conceals a litany of troubles. That’s because the
newspapers I’m using for a weed barrier read like an almanac of the recent war. Beneath my
cherry tomatoes, there’s breaking news of the early fights for Umm Qasr and Basra. Under the
green peppers, I can follow the 7th Marines on their river campaign up the Tigris and Euphrates.
Near my Spanish onions – and I’m sure the Spanish prime minister would approve – Saddam’s
statue falls to a cheering crowd in Baghdad.


Yet this guns-and-butter irony is a bit unsettling. Like many Americans, I am still ambivalent
about the war. Initially, I was against it. Then once it began, I believed the best course was to
win decisively. And as a veteran, I deeply respect the American men and women who so ably
proved themselves in Iraq.


Regardless of your viewpoint, on this much we can agree: Those who fought the war have seen
horrors and faced dangers that we civilians can scarcely imagine. Here, at home, the war may
already be old news. But for our returning veterans, its impact will last a lifetime.


I think about that as I read my garden newspapers. I think about how the sun and rain will
transform this violent news into food for the plants and nourishment for my body. And I think
about the life-changing nature of war – how it leaves some people broken, but gives others a new
sense of purpose and vocation.


Without question, our veterans deserve all the parades, yellow ribbons and happy homecomings
we can give them. But after the brass bands die down, I hope our newest heroes find something
equally valuable. I hope they find quiet, blissful places where they can heal their jangled nerves.
I hope they find a peaceful garden, where the fears and angers of war will melt away beneath the
cloudless skies of summer.


Tom Springer is a freelance writer from Three Rivers, Michigan.

Organics Hitting Mainstream Markets

A new report shows a shift in how organic foods are sold in the United States. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:

Transcript

A new report shows a shift in how organic foods are sold in the United States.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports.


More people purchased organic food in conventional supermarkets than any
other venue in 2000. That’s according to a study by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture.


It’s part of a trend of an increasing demand for organic food in the
United States. The study shows that sales of organic products increased
each year in the 1990’s. The USDA’s Kathy Greene says it represents an enormous
change in the 50-year history of organic food sales.


“Conventional grocery stores know there’s consumer interest and they
also don’t want to be left behind. It’s a very fast-growing sector and
for a lot of products we haven’t met demand yet.”


Greene says organic food is more likely to be sold in large urban areas
and college towns. The USDA study reports that almost two-thirds of
Americans buy organic food at least occasionally. But fewer than 5% buy
it on a regular basis.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.

Creating Healthier Red Meat

While red meat has taken a beating in recent years from the health industry, a number of studies now indicate that it’s also possible for even red meat to have some health benefits. Scientists and farmers have found ways to put certain important fatty acids in chicken and pig diets. Now chicken, pork, and even eggs can have lower than average cholesterol. An organic farmer from Northern Illinois is participating in a study that’s trying to get beef to catch up to its healthier counterparts. If he succeeds, farmers across the Great Lakes might start varying their grain crops. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Simone Orendain reports:

Transcript

While red meat has taken a beating in recent years from the health industry, a number of studies now indicate that it’s also possible for even red meat to have some health benefits. Scientists and farmers have found ways to put certain important fatty acids in chicken and pig diets. Now chicken, pork and even eggs can have lower than average cholesterol. An organic farmer from Northern Illinois is participating in a study that’s trying to get beef to catch up to its healthier counterparts. If he succeeds, farmers across the Great Lakes might start varying their grain crops. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Simone Orendain reports:

It’s feeding time on this sunny winter morning at Joel Rissman’s organic farm. Sixty head of cattle converge on the troughs that line the fence of their Northern Illinois cattle pen. The young cattle bob their heads in and out of the troughs that hold a mixture of pungent, sour hay and grain. They’re eating silage mixed with haylage.

“Think of sauerkraut, it’s along the same lines of sauerkraut.”

The dull yellow mixture of alfalfa hay and silage is made up of sorghum, cowpeas and soybeans that are mixed in the grain silo with an inoculant. The inoculant causes the silage to ferment quickly so it maintains its nutritional value. It raises the lactic acid content of the silage, making it easier for cattle to digest the food.

This silage-haylage mixture has a little extra in it. It has a pound of flax seed for each head of cattle.

Rissman says the flax seed will make the beef healthier than non-flax fed cattle. And it will taste better.

“What I’m striving for and my theory is that we can get the taste and flavor of a grain fed with the low cholesterol of a grass fed.”

Rissman is one of 10 cattle producers taking part in a study conducted by the Animal Sciences Department of Iowa State University. Researchers and farmers are looking at ways to raise healthy cholesterol levels in beef.

Grass-fed cattle produce healthy cholesterol called conjugated linolaic acid or CLA. The CLA is made up of trans-fatty acids. ISU Professor Allen Trenkle says increasing CLA in lab animals’ diets has protected them against plaque build up of cholesterol in arteries and certain forms of cancer.

But Trenkle, a lead researcher in the beef study, says consumers just don’t seem to like the taste of beef from grass-fed cattle.

“It’s just most of the beef that we have that’s been fed grain is bland. But that’s the taste that we’ve developed that’s what we want. They you introduce a different additional flavor and we say we don’t like that.”

Rissman explains his cattle were raised in a pasture from birth. He says by feeding them flax in the silage-haylage mix, he’s hoping to maintain the level of CLA that they produced when they fed on pasture. The cattle now feed exclusively on silage and haylage. Trenkle says flax seed has fatty acids that help increase CLA, but scientists are still learning why.

And Trenkle says there is a snag to the grain-fed experimentation:

“I would anticipate that it will be improved somewhat over conventionally fat animals, but the concentration of these fatty acids in beef’s very, very low. So feeding the flax may double it or increase it three or four times, but the concentration will still be low compared with the original oil in the flax seed.”

Trenkle says it will take a while to see if the experiment works. He says beef alone might not have a high enough CLA content to benefit consumers. Trenkle says it would have to be combined with a high CLA diet.

“I think just time alone will tell us whether the consumer is willing, how much the consumer is willing to pay for that. Will they want that product over the beef that has less CLA in it? We don’t know the answer to that question yet. In that sense, these farmers are pioneers.”

Rissman says he hopes it will work because he wants flax seed to be a prominent, viable grain again.

“Really the whole flax idea came from me wanting to find other grains. One of the big problems is, if you take food grade soybeans away from the organic farmers, probably 70 percent of those farmers would fail for lack of diversification, myself included. I wanted to find a way to diversify our crops.”

Trendle’s lab has its first batch of meat samples from grass-fed cattle. The team will begin analyzing the meat this month. Rissman says his cattle will be ready for sampling next year.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Simone Orendain.

CUBA SETS EXAMPLE FOR ORGANIC FARMERS (Part 2)

  • Cuban growers examine their crops. Farmers in Cuba have been successful in growing their own crops after the Soviet Union collapsed ten years ago. Photo by Mary Stucky

Cuba is in the midst of an unprecedented experiment in alternative agriculture… an experiment that’s attracting the attention of farmers in the Great Lakes. When the Soviet Union collapsed ten years ago, so did Cuba’s economy. Lacking money to import food or the chemicals to grow it, the Cuban government made a bold move — embracing organic farming and natural pest control. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Stucky takes a look at the lessons farmers may learn from Cuba’s organic experiment:

Transcript

Cuba is in the midst of an unprecedented experiment in alternative agriculture… an experiment that’s attracting the attention of farmers in the Great Lakes. When the Soviet Union collapsed ten years ago, so did Cuba’s economy. Lacking money to import food and the chemicals to grow it, the Cuban government made a bold move – embracing organic farming and natural pest control. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Stucky takes a look at the lessons Great Lakes farmers may learn from Cuba’s organic experiment.


The agricultural transformation in Cuba is striking. In a land only recently dependent on imported chemicals, much of the farmland is now cultivated without chemical fertilizer or chemical pest controls. In a land where people were once starving, a vast system of urban gardens are producing more than half of the fruits and vegetables consumed in Cuba, completely without the use of chemicals. So while certain foods like meat and milk are in short supply, the United Nations reports that most Cubans are now consuming enough calories for a healthy life.
There’s a pride in proving alternative agricultural methods can feed a country’s people. Fernando Funes made that point in the busy lunchroom at the agricultural research facility he runs near Havana.


“In the whole world we are a handful of people trying to go ahead with this struggle and we have to show that we are producing more healthy products that is healthy for nature. I don’t know what will happen in the future but I guess in my opinion, we are not going to come back because we have been proving very well that this paradigm is going to substitute the other one.”


Funes is out to spread the message that even the most chemical fertilizer and pesticide dependent farming can be transformed. Folks like the University of Minnesota’s Bill Wilcke are listening. Wilcke was recently in Cuba studying its agricultural innovations.


“Their solution is ‘what do we have to fix the problem,’ trying to make use of their natural resources and their own human resources to make this work.”


It’s not that they don’t use any fertilizer, or pest controls – they do. It’s just that they involve far less chemicals. For instance, Cuba’s approach to fertilizer involves the production of worm humus in so-called vermiculture facilities – where staff regularly invites curious American farmers to visit.


“We use commonly just manure, but also the kitchen residues and many other organic matters. They eat double their size.”


This Cuban farmer explains how they feed manure or garbage to the worms, which then transform it into a richer, more potent fertilizer. That fertilizer has been used to dramatically improve yields for some crops in Cuba.


(Ambient sound from lab)


Throughout rural Cuba there are more than 200 centers for the production of natural pest controls – including bacteria that devour insect larvae. That’s an inexpensive – and largely effective – alternative to chemical pesticides. Alternatives such as these are well known in the United States. But because of the ready availability of chemicals and because alternatives don’t work well on some big cash crops, they’re little used in the U.S. right now. Still, developing alternatives makes good sense to the University of Minnesota’s Bill Willcke.


“I don’t know if we need to advocate abandoning technology, but I think we need to think about what some of our options are and we have to think about the scale of our agriculture, the kinds of technology that we use.’


Some economists say it’s foolish for countries like the U.S. to imitate Cuba. They say, why go back to what some call medieval farming methods, why use valuable urban land to grow food. But Minor Sinclair disagrees. Sinclair lived in Havana in the 1990’s, representing Oxfam America, a charity working on food policy. Sinclair says Cuba may be sitting on a gold mine, with the increasing demand for organic food.


“Will Cuba’s agriculture be able to be a lighthouse for other developing countries in the region, and in some way even for farmers here in the United States. I hope so.”


Maybe someday, but most experts do not expect to see a system of organic farming and urban gardens widely embraced in the U.S. any time soon, at least not without a food crisis of Cuban proportions.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Stucky.

Food Co-Ops Losing Grip on Health Food Market

There was a time when people who ate organic and natural foods
were considered the hippie-fringe. But healthy eating is becoming more
mainstream, and the market for natural and organic foods is growing.
That’s causing some shifts in the food industry. Small mom and pop
stores are no longer the only places to find health foods.
Conventional
supermarkets have organic produce sections and large natural food stores
are opening nationwide. This has many small stores wondering how they
are going to survive. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant
reports: