The nation’s leading food processor is making big profits from ethanol. Archer Daniels Midland has had two straight years of record profits. And in its latest quarter, the company nearly set another record. Dustin Dwyer has more:
Transcript
The nation’s leading food processor is making big profits from ethanol. Archer Daniels Midland has had two straight years of record profits. And in its latest quarter, the company nearly set another record. Dustin Dwyer has more:
ADM’s profits on corn processing, which includes ethanol production, more than doubled in its latest quarter. Total profits for the period were about $400 million.
Daniel Kammen studies energy policy at the University of California – Berkeley. He says while ADM is making lots of money from corn-based ethanol, future profits could go to companies that make ethanol from switchgrass and other woody products.
“It’s really the first companies that switch into cellulosic sources that I think are going to be the big winners, because they’re going to capture the environmental prize as well as the offsetting gasoline prize.”
ADM executives have laid out a new strategy that includes plans to expand ethanol production from fuel sources other than corn.
Daniel Kammen notes that there might not even be a market for ethanol if not for government subsidies, which also helped ADM reap its bigger profits.
The Bush Administration is proposing a Renewable Fuels Standard Program. It aims to double the use of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
The Bush Administration is proposing a Renewable Fuels Standard Program. It aims to
double the use of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. The GLRC’s Lester
Graham reports:
This new regulation would require more renewable fuels at the pumps. The Bush
Administration predicts we’ll cut petroleum use by nearly four billion gallons a year.
Most of those fuels are expected to come from crops such as corn for ethanol and soy
beans for soy-diesel. But some scientists say using food crops for renewable fuels is a
short-term fix.
That’s because it takes a lot of energy to produce ethanol from corn. At best, the net
energy gain in growing, harvesting, and processing corn into ethanol is: one energy unit
input producing a one-and-a-quarter energy unit output. And, ethanol production has been
heavily dependent on government subsidies.
The Environmental Protection Agency notes that new technologies might be able to
produce ethanol from agricultural and industrial waste, such as scrap wood chips,
at a cost that’s competitive with today’s gasoline prices.
The first logging under new Bush administration rules has begun in a National Forest roadless wilderness area. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
The first logging under new Bush administration rules has begun in a National Forest
roadless wilderness area. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:
This is the first logging since the Bush administration eased a rule put in place by the
Clinton administration. That rule had made tens of millions of acres of wilderness areas
off-limits to logging, mining and development.
Protesters near Grants Pass, Oregon delayed the logging for a few hours by blocking a
bridge, but one person was arrested and the blockade removed to allow loggers to enter.
The logging operation is cutting down trees killed by a fire in 2002. The timber is being
taken from the site by helicopter.
According to an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the logging began after a
federal judge refused to block it pending the outcome of a lawsuit challenging the Bush
administration’s new “roadless rule.” The suit was brought by conservation groups and
the states of Oregon, Washington, California and New Mexico. The court ruling is not
expected before September.
Farmers who use a highly toxic pesticide will have to quickly find an alternative. That’s if the EPA sticks with a
decision to phase it out in four years. But some farmers say
they have no alternative. The GLRC’s Tracy Samilton
reports:
Transcript
Farmers who use a highly toxic pesticide will have to quickly find an alternative. That’s if
the EPA sticks with a decision to phase it out in four years. But some farmers say they
have no alternative. The GLRC’s Tracy Samilton reports:
Carbofuran has been widely used to combat aphids for many crops, including
soybeans, corn, tobacco and wine grapes. Many farmers have been phasing in
crops that are bred to be resistant to aphids. But agriculture industry
officials say in many instances, there’s no replacement for carbofuran.
Dale Huss of artichoke grower Ocean Mist Farms says carbofuran is the only
pesticide known that kills aphids that feed on artichokes. He says it’s
possible his industry will collapse:
“I don’t think we quite understand the full impact it’s gonna have on us. It really has us
concerned.”
Agriculture lobbyists say they’ll press the EPA to reverse the decision.
Environmental groups say the EPA did the right thing. Even small amounts
of carbofuran are lethal to birds, and it’s been blamed for the deaths of
millions of birds over the twenty years it’s been in use.
A newly dug drainage tile. These underground pipes keep the fields dry, but they're also a pathway for nitrogen fertilizers. (photo by Mark Brush)
Today, we begin a week-long series on pollution in the heartland.
Storm water runoff from farm fields contaminates the lakes that many cities use for drinking water. But rather than making farmers reduce the pollution, the government requires water utilities to clean it up and pass the cost on to their customers. In the first part of our series, the GLRC’s Lester Graham reports on efforts some communities have made to stop the pollution at the source:
Transcript
Today, we begin a week-long series on pollution in the heartland. Storm water runoff from farm
fields contaminates the lakes that many cities use for drinking water. But rather than making
farmers reduce the pollution, the government requires water utilities to clean it up and pass the
cost on to their customers. In the first part of our series, the GLRC’s Lester Graham reports on
efforts some communities have made to stop the pollution at the source:
To a great extent, nitrogen fertilizer determines how big a corn crop will be. But often, farmers
use more nitrogen than they really need. It’s a bit of a wager. If conditions are just right, that
extra nitrogen can sometimes pay off in more bushels of corn. But just as often the extra nitrogen
ends up being washed away by rain.
That nitrogen can get into lakes that are used for public drinking supplies. If nitrate levels get too
high the nitrogen can displace oxygen in the blood of children under six months old. It’s called
‘blue baby syndrome.’ In extreme cases it can cause death.
Keith Alexander is the Director of Water Management for the city of Decatur, Illinois. He recalls
that the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency required his city to give families with babies
bottled water because nitrogen levels exceeded the federal limits.
“For approximately six years, while we went through the motions of determining what was best
for our community, we did issue bottled water on an infrequent basis when the nitrate levels did
indeed elevate.”
The City of Decatur had to get nitrate levels down. So, they piggy-backed on federal and state
incentives offered to farmers to use better management practices. The city gave farmers money
to build terraces to reduce soil erosion. It gave money on top of federal and state tax dollars to
farmers to put in grass waterways to slow water rushing off the fields. The city gave farmers
money on top of federal and state incentives to use conservation tillage methods. They offered to
pay to install artificial wetlands so plants would take up the nitrogen before it got into the public
water supplies. It gave farmers money to use a chemical that help stabilize nitrogen in the soil.
With all that city and state and federal money offered to farmers, was it enough to reduce nitrogen
to safe levels?
“Unfortunately, no.”
Keith Alexander says some farmers did take advantage of the incentives. But not enough of
them.
“We’ve done quite a bit on a voluntary basis with a lot of great cooperation from the agricultural
community, but in spite of all that, we would still at times have elevated nitrate levels in Lake
Decatur.”
The city had to build the largest nitrate reduction facility in North America, at a cost of 7.5 million dollars to ensure its drinking water did not exceed the federal standards for
nitrates.
The people who tried to persuade farmers to sign up for the nitrogen reduction programs say
many of the farmers were skeptical that they were the cause of the problem. Some didn’t care.
And some were just skeptical of government programs and the red tape involved.
Steven John is the Executive Director of the Agricultural Watershed Institute. He’s still working
with farmers to reduce nitrogen runoff in the region. Today, the reason is not Decatur’s lake but a problem farther downstream.
“To a fairly large extent, the driver for addressing nitrogen issues now is loading to the Gulf of
Mexico. And, in one sense, because we’ve been at this for some time here and developed a little
bit of a history of city-farm cooperation– also developed good monitoring data, you know, to be
able to look at trends over time– we’re in good position to use our watershed as something of a
laboratory to test ideas that might be applied elsewhere in the corn belt.”
Nitrogen from the Decatur lake watershed eventually flows into the Mississippi River. Illinois,
just like all or parts of 37 other states drain into the Mississippi and finally to the Gulf of Mexico.
There researchers believe the nitrogen fertilizes algae growth, so much so that when the algae
dies and sinks to the bottom of the gulf, the decomposing vegetation robs the water of oxygen
and causes a dead zone that can be as large as the state of New Jersey some years.
But getting farmers to change their farming practices when it was causing problems for the city
next to them was difficult. Getting them to change for a problem hundreds of miles away is even
tougher.
Ted Shambaugh is a farmer who has changed. He says the reasons farmers don’t take the
nitrogen problem more seriously is complicated, but as far as he’s concerned, it’s part of how
farming has changed in the last few decades:
“This is going to fly against a lot of common thought, I suppose, about the farmer, and it does get
me in trouble sometimes, but the farmer has become inherently lazy in his management
techniques. They’ve even gone to the fact that even though they’ve got a 150,000 or 200,000
dollar tractor sitting there, they hire their nitrogen put on. Why do they do that? Well, a lot of it
is because they then have somebody to blame. That, if it didn’t go on right, ‘Well, I didn’t do
that.’ Well, we kind of think that’s what we get paid for, is management.”
Most people in cities like Decatur won’t say things like that about the farmers in the countryside
about them. The economic well-being of many of the cities in the corn belt are highly dependent
on agriculture. Criticizing farmers is just not done, even when many of those farmers won’t lift
a finger to clean up the water that their city neighbors have to drink.
Frank Baffi's barn in southern Michigan (photo by Mark Brush)
Today, we continue our series on pollution in the heartland.
There are fewer farmers raising pigs, cows and chickens these days.
But the amount of meat being produced in the U.S. continues to increase.
So livestock farms haven’t exactly disappeared. They’ve just gotten bigger.
In the third part of our week-long series, the GLRC’s Mark Brush reports these big operations have kept food costs down, but those cheap prices come with consequences:
Transcript
Today, we continue our series on pollution in the heartland.
There are fewer farmers raising pigs, cows and chickens these days.
But the amount of meat being produced in the U.S. continues to increase.
So livestock farms haven’t exactly disappeared. They’ve just gotten bigger.
In the third part of our week-long series, the GLRC’s Mark Brush reports these big operations have kept food costs down, but those cheap prices come
with consequences:
When you picture a typical farm, chances are you probably think of a farm just like Frank
Baffi’s.
(Sound of farm)
He grows corn and oats on his land. He’s got chickens, a couple of horses, two ducks,
about 30 beef cows. And in this fading red barn, he’s got pigs:
(Sound of claps)
“Hey Pig! C’mon! Get up!”
(Sound of pigs)
In fact, the pigs have been the most profitable thing he’s raised on this farm. Baffi says
he used to sell more than fifty thousand dollars worth of pigs every year. It was enough
to make a living on.
(Sound of pigs)
But as time went on, selling pigs became less profitable. In the 1980s, his expenses went
up and the price he could get for his pigs went down. Baffi says he was faced with a
decision. It was the same decision that many small livestock farmers faced at the time:
“I think it was a whole trend that if you weren’t big you had to get out. It was if you had
20 cows it was you gotta be milkin’ 30, or if you were milking 30 it was oh, you gotta be
milkin’ 100. The reason they weren’t making any money is that they’re not making
enough money for what they sell.”
Frank Baffi blames the drop in prices on the increase in global trade. He says US
producers started to compete with operations overseas, where expenses can often be
cheaper. To keep up, producers in the US got more efficient, and as they did so, prices
continued to drop. Baffi says he tried to get bigger, but he just didn’t have enough
money.
But just down the road there’s a pig farm that is making a profit. Frank Baffi’s neighbor
is Bruce Barton. His dad started the family in the hog business in the 1950s. Barton says
early on his Dad could see what was coming:
“He pretty much expanded because he could see that small farmers were struggling to
survive and ya know we had buy the feed in larger lots you sell your hogs in larger lots.
There was going to be less margin for each hog. You just had to have more, more of
them.”
The Bartons raised about 11 pigs when the started out. Now they raise about 100,000.
That may seem like a lot, but their operation is small compared to those that raise over a
million hogs a year.
The size of these big farms trouble many environmentalists. These farms are forced to
deal with large volumes of manure. On average one pig can generate close to two tons of
manure a year. Multiply that by one million and you get the picture. Smaller farms can
spread the manure as fertilizer on their land without much problem and large farms can
use the manure too. It’s just that they need a lot of land to spread the manure on. If they
put too much on a field, it can pollute streams and drinking water wells, and researchers
say, these farms are only going to get bigger.
Jim MacDonald researches farming trends for the US Department of Agriculture. He
says small farmers can make a go of it if they’re able to find a niche market, like
producing organic meat and milk. But MacDonald says the demand for these niche
products is still tiny compared to the demand for things like chicken nuggets and hot
dogs:
“The overall trend so far, I think, continues to be towards larger operations producing
what we might call generic or commodity like products and their prices continue to fall.”
Prices are falling because these farms continue to get bigger and more efficient. That
means fewer and fewer people are farming. So the idyllic picture we have of the small
farmer is fading.
(Sound of Frank’s farm up)
Last year, Frank Baffi lost more than a thousand dollars on his farm. He mainly relies on
his social security check for his income. A row of empty metal crates line his barn:
“This is where I’d have pigs and this is where they would have their babies. There
probably all used up but I just haven’t had the heart to tear them out. Because I always
thought that I could at least get back to where I was. And the way it looks, you know, the
profitability of this thing, it don’t look like I’m going to go there.”
So the choices you make at the grocery store influence how farms are changing. It’s only
normal: most of us pick the cheaper product. But some people who live near these large
facilities say consumers don’t know the full cost of their choices.
Settlers dug ditches and straightened rivers to drain the fields they needed for planting. (photo by Mark Brush)
Today, we wrap up our series on pollution in the heartland.
To farm in the nation’s heartland, people first had to drain the water from the land. In a lot of places, that meant dredging rivers to get them to move along faster and carry water off the fields. But straight, fast rivers aren’t healthy rivers. And the rushing water carries pesticides and fertilizers off of fields and deposits them downstream. But in some places, farmers are starting to repair rivers. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams has the final story in our week-long series:
Transcript
Today, we wrap up our series on pollution in the heartland. To farm in the nation’s
heartland, people first had to drain the water from the land. In a lot of places, that meant
dredging rivers to get them to move along faster and carry water off the fields. But
straight, fast rivers aren’t healthy rivers. And the rushing water carries pesticides and
fertilizers off of fields and deposits them downstream. But in some places, farmers are
starting to repair rivers. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams has the final story in our week-long series:
From an airplane, the land below it looks like it was drawn in geometry class. Fields
of corn and soybeans look almost like perfect squares. Rivers seem as straight as a ruler’s
edge.
When rivers have their way, they’re unruly. They have lots of twists and bends, but people have straightened a lot of rivers and streams to make it easier to grow crops
and raise animals. European settlers forging their way West got stuck in huge swamps.
The mosquitoes were terrible. But the settlers’ chances of raising food in the swampland
were even worse.
“In order to reclaim that land, muckland, for raising vegetable crops, they had to drain it.”
Barb Cook owns a farm here in fertile southwest Michigan. Her grandfather farmed here
in the early 1900s, back when the rivers were being straightened.
(sound of river)
Cook’s standing on the bank of the Dowagiac River. Right now it’s as straight as a canal
and it’s moving fast. But it’s about to get some of its curves back.
Barb Cook says she was skeptical when she heard about the plan to coax the river back to
its original path.
“Well, they want to put the wiggles back. Well, why? Were they trying to hoodwink
anyone or were their objectives pure? And I got involved and felt they were really truly
trying to improve things.”
Cook’s now the vice president of the group. It calls itself MEANDRS. It’s made up of
farmers and biologists and fishermen. People who all have a stake in what happens to the
river.
They’re carving out one of the curves the river used to follow.
Jay Wesley is a biologist with the Department of Natural Resources. He says even
though this new meander isn’t connected to the river yet, little springs are bubbling up.
“We’ve actually even seen trout in here since this first part of the project’s been done.
They’ve come up through the culvert from the river and have found their way up here.
So it’s pretty cold, high quality water.”
That’s exciting news for fishermen. A river fed by cold groundwater can be a mecca for
trout. The pools and riffles sculpted into the new meander will give fish places to hide.
These small signs of hope are a pretty big deal. This project is a very long labor of
love 12 years in the making.
That’s because there are lots of hurdles. For one thing, meander restorations are
expensive. Half a million dollars at the low end.
There are piles of paperwork.
And some farmers worry that restoring meanders will flood their fields.
In this project, the MEANDRS group surveyed nearby farmers early on about their
concerns and included them in the planning process. Bill Westraight is the President of
MEANDRS. He’s also a farmer who owns land along the river.
“I think what I say holds more weight with farmers than if somebody had come down and
was mandating that they participate in some way.”
Westraight says they had some major critics in the beginning. But he says they’ve gotten
almost all the neighbors on board. He says it was crucial that they gave everyone a say.
They also commissioned feasibility studies to make sure upstream farmers wouldn’t be
flooded.
All these hurdles mean that projects like these aren’t very common.
Andrew Fahlund is with the nonprofit group American Rivers. He says big projects like
meander restorations almost always need government funding. And that funding’s been
cut dramatically over the past few years. Fahlund says those cuts are short-sighted
because healthier rivers can actually save money in the long run.
“One of the reasons you get such an economic benefit from river restoration is that you
reduce the costs of having to treat water, filter
that water and clean it up for human consumption.”
(river sound up under)
The MEANDRS group says there’s no way they can restore the entire river. But they
hope mending just this small section will help revive the river a bit.
The group points out that this type of restoration won’t work everywhere. They say in
many places, channelized rivers are still crucial for keeping fields drained.
Farmer Barb Cook says even now, she sees this project as an experiment. In a few
months, she’ll get to see whether all her hard work will pan out, when they’ll try to force
water from the straight channel into the new meander.
“As you look at the stream behind us, it’s quite a volume of water. Water has its own
way. Mother Nature has something to say about this too. She may say no.”
Cook says nothing ever runs smoothly. But she says they’ll just be flexible and this time
around, let the river choose its course.
The ag industry, some politicians and now automakers
are pushing the idea that ethanol made from corn will help reduce reliance on foreign oil. But another study further indicates that
corn ethanol is not the best solution. The GLRC’s Lester
Graham reports:
Transcript
The ag industry, some politicians and now automakers are pushing the idea that ethanol
made from corn will help reduce reliance on foreign oil. But, another study further
indicates that corn ethanol is not the best solution. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:
Despite the huge push for corn ethanol, a new study adds to the growing body of
evidence that indicates ethanol from corn is not a viable answer to replace gasoline. New
research from the University of Minnesota has been published by the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences. It shows that ethanol from corn only yields 25
percent more energy than it takes to produce it.
The study also found greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution improvements were
only slight using corn ethanol, a bit better using soy diesel. But, the researchers say even dedicating all U.S. corn and soybean production to bio-fuels instead of food would only
meet 12 percent of the demand for gasoline and six percent of the demand for diesel.
The researchers conclude that other more woody plants and wood by-products could
provide much greater supplies and environmental benefits than food-based bio-fuels.
Leaders from Detroit’s Big Three automakers say they’ll
double the number of vehicles that run on renewable fuels by 2010.
The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has more:
Transcript
Leaders from Detroit’s Big Three automakers say they’ll double the number of vehicles
that run on renewable fuels by 2010. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has more:
General Motors, Ford and the Chrysler group have lagged behind their foreign rivals in
producing fuel-saving hybrid technology. But they’ve been out front when it comes to
producing cars and trucks that can run on ethanol-based E85.
Now, the heads of the three companies say they’ll have 10 million E85 capable vehicles
on the road by the end of the decade. And they’re asking Congress to help gas stations
pay for installing more E85 pumps.
Sue Cischke is Ford’s Vice President of Environmental and Safety Engineering. She says
E85 cuts down on the use of fossil fuels:
“And there really is a net benefit from a CO2 standpoint from ethanol produced by corn.”
Some critics argue that if you include the energy needed to grow and refine the corn,
ethanol doesn’t provide much of an environmental benefit.
A bill being introduced in Congress could double the number of gas stations in the United States that sell E-85 ethanol fuel. The GLRC’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
A bill being introduced in Congress could double the number of gas stations in the United States
that sell E-85 ethanol fuel. The GLRC’s Erin Toner reports:
Congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan says the federal government should subsidize new
ethanol pumps at gas stations. Ethanol is made from corn or other kinds of plants. Rogers says it
would cost 20 million dollars to double the number of gas stations selling E-85; a blend of 85
percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline:
“Our big three – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler – are building total almost a
million E-85 cars, so they’ve done their part. Now we need to do our part and get these
gas stations out across America selling E-85 gas.”
Rogers says the government should also boost subsidies for ethanol research to improve the
production process. He says if that happens, within five years, ethanol fuel could cost drivers
one dollar a gallon. But critics say taxpayers would be footing the actual cost of making ethanol.
