Tag: farm

Atrazine in Our Water

  • Downstream view of Roberts Creek, IA, where USGS scientists conducted a study of the degradation of atrazine, a herbicide, in streams. (Photo courtesy of the USGS)

People have been concerned
about farm chemicals getting
into drinking water supplies
for a long time. A recent report
showed that the chemical atrazine
peaks, in many areas, in concentrations
much higher than previously thought.
Julie Grant reports there are
things you can do to protect your
family. But, finding out if you
have a problem is harder:

Transcript

People have been concerned
about farm chemicals getting
into drinking water supplies
for a long time. A recent report
showed that the chemical atrazine
peaks, in many areas, in concentrations
much higher than previously thought.
Julie Grant reports there are
things you can do to protect your
family. But, finding out if you
have a problem is harder:

Bob Denges is worried. His water is discolored. So he’s
called a water purification company to test it.

(sound of running water)

They’re running water in the basement utility sink. It’s kind
of orange-y looking. So, it’s an easy diagnosis: too much
iron.

“You can probably see in the toilet, upstairs just on the first
floor, that there’s some brownish, reddish discoloration
around the toilets.”

That’s not great. But at least you can tell when there’s iron
in the water. You cannot see or taste other water
contaminants such as weed killers like atrazine.

Tom Bruusema is the water filter expert at the National
Sanitation Foundation. They test and certify water filtration
devices. He says the first place you can check is your local
municipality – the folks that monitor water in your area.

“That would be the place to start. They are required, by
federal law, to measure a number of contaminants, produce
an annual report for their consumers.”

But recently an investigative report by the New York Times
revealed water contamination can spike in some places –
and local water officials might not even know about it.

That weed killer – atrazine – is applied on farm fields and, in a
lot of places, you also find a lot of atrazine in the water
during that time.

If you’re looking for it at the right time.

Sometimes it spikes for longer than a month. But some local
water officials only test for atrazine once a month, or only
once a year, and often it’s not during that peak application
season.

So people can’t really find out about atrazine levels for their
drinking water in those places.

Some water systems are spending lots of money to treat
drinking water to get atrazine levels down to what the federal
government considers safe levels.

But that might not be enough, according to some of the new
scientific evidence about atrazine.

Five studies published in peer-reviewed journals recently
have found evidence suggesting that small amounts of
atrazine in drinking water causes health problems. Even at
levels considered safe by federal standards, atrazine might
be associated with birth defects. Things like low birth
weights in newborns. Skull and facial malformations and
misshapen limbs.

Forty-three water systems in six states — Illinois, Indiana,
Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi and Ohio — recently sued
atrazine’s manufacturers. They want to force the company
Syngenta and its partner Growmark to pay for removing the
chemical from drinking water.

Steve Tillery is an attorney in the lawsuit.

“Some of them have gone to the expense to cleaning it
completely out of their water supplies, so that it doesn’t exist
at all. And they should, in our view, be entitled to
reimbursement of expenses for cleaning it completely out of
their water supplies.”

But, some water systems are not cleaning out atrazine
completely. And, as we mentioned, there are times when
some don’t know they exceed the federal safe drinking water
levels.

There is something pretty easy you can do if you’re worried
about your water.

Tom Bruusema of the National Sanitation Foundation says a
simple carbon filter can remove atrazine. Those are the
filters you can attach to the faucet or the pitchers you refill.

“So it’s a good investment. Certainly can help them if they
have those kinds of concerns, and particularly those living in
an area that’s known to have potential contaminants in the
water supply.”

But first people have to be aware of a possible problem.
And, too often, they are not.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Keeping the Breadbasket From Drying Up

  • Bob Price is one of many farmers in Southwestern Kansas who signed up for a government program that pays farmers for their water rights and put portions of their land back into grass. (Photo by Devin Browne)

Right now, America’s Bread Basket
relies on an aquifer that’s nearly
drained. And, many say, it will dry
up if farmers keep pumping water
from it at the current rate. Devin
Browne reports the government plans
to pay farmers as one way to get them
to cut water use:

Transcript

Right now, America’s Bread Basket
relies on an aquifer that’s nearly
drained. And, many say, it will dry
up if farmers keep pumping water
from it at the current rate. Devin
Browne reports the government plans
to pay farmers as one way to get them
to cut water use:

Bob Price is every bit the Heartland farmer. He’s dressed head-to-toe in denim with a belt
buckle the size of a small plate. Just like his neighbors, he grows thirsty plants like corn
and alfalfa. But, the land is so dry and so sandy that many agricultural experts think it’s
not suitable for farming.

When Price moved to Southwestern Kansas in 1973, it didn’t seem to matter that the land
was so dry. In his pick-up, on the way to his farm, he tells me that it was the beginning
of an irrigation boom.

“Out here everyone was getting up early, going to work, and all along Highway 50 it was
irrigation pumps, irrigation pipe, engines; this was like a frontier back then.”

At that time, the government heavily subsidized the costs of irrigation. The farmers were
getting an almost immediate return. Their land appreciated almost overnight once
irrigation was established.

Farmers began to pump water – and lots of it – from one of the world’s largest
underground water supplies, the Ogallala Aquifer. They pumped two-feet of water for
every acre they farmed, right onto their crops.

“Meanwhile, the water table is declining and the water that we’re pumping is coming
from farther and farther down and, even with the same energy cost, it cost more to suck
water out of the ground from 500 feet.”

Last year, it cost Price more than $200,000 for the electricity to run the pumps to irrigate
about 900 acres of land. It’s one of the reasons he started to consider other options.

At the same time, the government, on both the state and federal level, started to think of
how to save the water left in the Ogallala Aquifer. Rivers were drying up and several
states in the Plains were suing or being sued for taking more water than they’re allowed.

Several states initiated water conservation programs as a response; Kansas was the first to
do it without the threat of a lawsuit. The program started in 2007. The strategy: pay
farmers to permanently retire their water rights.

Price had actually been wanting to take some of his land out of crops anyways. He’s a
prairie chicken enthusiast and he wants to start a guided hunting business. Prairie
chickens need prairie grass.

“So we’re farming one day, and we’re thinking, ‘sure would be nice to get that into
grass,’ but that’s an overwhelmingly expensive proposition.”

It’s not expensive to plant or grow prairie grass. You don’t need any irrigation for either.
But you do need irrigation for a cover crop that the farmers are required to grow for two
years before they can get to the grass. Susan Stover is with the Kansas Water Office.

“If we did not get something re-established there, we could have potentially dust storms
again and sand dunes moving and really big blow-outs.”

Blow-outs like Depression-Era, Dust Bowl blow-outs. So Price has to plant a cover crop
and pat double what he gets from the conservation program just to irrigate it.

Ironically, the government pays him sizeable subsidies to keep other land in corn, which
needs water from the aquifer to grow. So basically, one government program is paying
Price to stop using so much water, while, at the same time, other government programs
are paying him subsidies to grow the crops that need so much water.

Price would actually like more money to put the land back into grass, but if he wants to
lead hunting trips for prairie chickens and he wants prairie grass, there’s only one outfit
willing to pay him anything to plant that grass – the government.

For The Environment Report, I’m Devin Browne.

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Where Nothing Can Survive

  • Shrimpers have seen their catches dwindle down from thousands of pounds of shrimp a day to very little due to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo by Samara Freemark)

Every summer, thousands of
square miles of the Gulf of
Mexico die. The Dead Zone is
caused by pollution that flows
down the Mississippi River. It’s
runoff from factories, sewer
plants, and farms. And it causes
a lot of problems for fishermen
in the area. This year, the Dead
Zone is projected to be huge –
maybe the largest ever. Samara Freemark explains:

Transcript

Every summer, thousands of
square miles of the Gulf of
Mexico die. The Dead Zone is
caused by pollution that flows
down the Mississippi River. It’s
runoff from factories, sewer
plants, and farms. And it causes
a lot of problems for fishermen
in the area. This year, the Dead
Zone is projected to be huge –
maybe the largest ever. Samara Freemark explains:

Imagine for a moment you’re a shrimp fisherman. Every day you send out your fleet to the same waters you’ve fished for decades. And your boats pull in a lot of shrimp- thousands of pounds a day, millions a year. And then one day, a normal summer day, you send the boats out, and they come back empty.

“You go from about 5000 pounds to nothing. It’s dead. That’s why they call it the dead zone.”

That’s Dean Blanchard. He runs the largest shrimp company in America- Dean Blanchard Seafood. 


Blanchard started seeing the dead zone about five years ago, but it’s not a new phenomenon. For a long time, nutrient fertilizer from upstream has run into the Mississippi River and from there, into the Gulf. It fertilizes big algae blooms– and when the algae decays, it sucks oxygen out of the water, making it impossible for fish to live there.

What’s new is how much fertilizer there is now.

“It’s not natural.”

Nancy Rabalais is a marine biologist at LUMCON. That’s Louisiana’s center for marine research. She says that over the past several decades there’s been a surge in fertilizer use in the Corn Belt states. That eventually ends up in the Gulf.

“We’re having 300 times more than we did in the 1950s. And it’s just over loaded the system.”

Rabalais predicts this year’s dead zone will be almost three times as big as it was twenty years ago – more than 8000 square miles.

Of course, the bigger the zone, the further out shrimpers like Dean Blanchard have to send their boats. That means a lot of wasted time, fuel, and wages.

And the zones might mean even bigger problems. Don Scavia is a professor at the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan.

“There’s a half a billion dollar shrimp industry in the gulf. And the shrimp depend on that habitat. And what we’re concerned about is that if the dead zone continues or even grows, that fishery may collapse.”

Congress is taking some measures to address the problem. Conservation programs in the Farm Bill work to reduce how much fertilizer farmers use, and how they apply it.

But there’s something else in the Farm Bill too – a lot of subsidy programs. Those pay for ethanol production. Which means more corn. Which means a lot more fertilizer.

“And what is debated every 5 years is how much funding will go into those conservation programs, relative to funding going into subsidy programs. And, by far, the subsidies win.” (laughs)

Scavia says for every $1 spent on conservation programs in the Corn Belt, $500 go to subsidizing crops.


Shrimper Dean Blanchard says he’s not sure how long he can live with that balance, especially as he watches the dead zone grow.

“How big is this thing going to get? If we kill the oceans we have problems. We have serious problems.”

But Don Scavia is hopeful. He says we know exactly how to reduce nutrient runoff – in fact, the basic programs are already in place. It’s just a matter of Congress choosing the right funding priorities.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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A Battle Over the Treatment of Livestock

  • The treatment of laying hens is one part of the issue getting a lot of attention in Ohio. (Photo source: LEAPTOUY at Wikimedia Commons)

Recently, six states have changed their laws to require
better conditions for farm animals. But there’s a battle
brewing in one state that’s putting a new spin on the debate.
Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Recently, six states have changed their laws to require
better conditions for farm animals. But there’s a battle
brewing in one state that’s putting a new spin on the debate.
Julie Grant reports:

The Humane Society of the United States says it’s shameful
the way animals are treated on many American farms. Paul
Shapiro says veal calves, pregnant pigs, and egg-laying
hens are all kept in cages so small – it’s cruel.

“Hundreds of millions of egg-laying hens in the nation are
confined in tiny battery cages that are so restrictive the birds
are unable even to spread their wings.”

Shapiro says some farms house millions of hens, all
squished into tiny cages, and none of them get the chance to
nest, or act in any way like natural chickens. The Humane
Society has spent millions of dollars pushing for change in
California and other states.

But when the Humane Society hit Ohio with its campaign,
the state Farm Bureau Federation pushed back.

Keith Stimpert is spokesman for the Ohio Farm Bureau. He
says there’s a reason cages are a certain size for hens,
calves, and pigs: the animals’ safety.

“You can expand space, but you’re going to increase
aspects of fighting or cannibalistic behavior, or the chance
for that sow to fall down while she’s pregnant.”

Stimpert says the Humane Society doesn’t understand
livestock.

So instead of negotiating with the Humane Society, the Ohio
Farm Bureau is proposing something new: a state board to
oversee the care of livestock.

“I think we, in this case, can get to a better resolution on
animal care by organizing this board.”

The board would include family farmers, veterinarians, a
food safety expert, and a member of a local chapter of the
Humane Society, among others.

Voters will probably be asked in November to decide
whether to change the state constitution to create this board.

But the Humane Society’s Paul Shapiro says the board will
be stacked by the Farm Bureau. He calls it a power grab by
big agriculture.

“Keep in mind that these are people who have opposed,
tooth and nail, any form of agricultural regulation for years,
and now, all of a sudden, in just a few weeks, they’ve gotten
religion and feel grave urgency to enshrine in the state’ s
constitution their own favored system of oversight.”

Shapiro says this board will only protect the status quo. And
that’s not good for the animals.

Egg producer Mark Whipple runs a small farm in Clinton,
Ohio. He’s got about 1,500 hens. We caught up with him
delivering eggs at a local health food store.

He says his hens are free range.

“There ain’t no cages, really. They go in the box, lay their
egg, and go out and run around with the rest of ‘em, go eat,
drink, I don’t know, just be free.”

Whipple says he was never inclined to cage the hens.

You might expect him to side with the Humane Society on
this debate. But he doesn’t trust them to make decisions for
farmers.

“I don’t know that they really know where their food comes
from – other than they go to the grocery store or they go to
the refrigerator. Unfortunately, that’s a lot the mentality of
the world right now, so far removed from the farm at all,
knowing about livestock.”

Whipple says there are good producers and bad producers
out there – just like any business. He would rather see a
board like the one proposed by the farm bureau than a
mandate on cage sizes from a Washington DC-based
lobbying group.

But the Humane Society says the board proposed by the
Farm Bureau won’t make things better. If it’s approved by
voters this November, the Society plans to place its own
initiative on animal treatment on the ballot next year.

Meanwhile, other farm states are considering the Ohio Farm
Bureau’s approach and might soon have their own advisory
boards on how to treat animals.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Investigating the Organic Label

  • Some organic watchdog groups say the National Organics Program has been too loose with its rules. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

Congress wants to dig deeper into an ongoing investigation of the National Organics Program. The program puts the little green “USDA Organic” label on products. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

Congress wants to dig deeper into an ongoing investigation of the National Organics Program. The program puts the little green “USDA Organic” label on products. Mark Brush has more:

Congress passed a bill that will put more money toward investigating the USDA’s organic program.

Some organic watchdog groups say the National Organics Program has been too loose with its rules.

Mark Kastel is with the Cornucopia Institute. He’s one of those critics.

“They have been accused by reputable independent auditors of having ignored the will of Congress in how they are managing the organic program – favoring large factory farms – favoring unscrutinized products being imported from China – all this competing with our family farmers here in the United States.”

Kastel says that’s not the way it’s supposed to work.

But he says the USDA organic label is still the gold standard. And most producers follow the law.

He and some leaders in Congress say an expanded review of the program will make sure that little green label keeps its credibility.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Lawn Chemicals Cause Concern

  • Nationwide, farms use the bulk of chemicals. But one expert says homeowners are more likely to overuse pesticides and fertilizers. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

New laws restrict pesticides and fertilizers in some cities. In recent years, farms have cut the use of chemicals. But, Rebecca Williams reports, some environmentalists say there are still far too many chemicals polluting streams and lakes:

Transcript

New laws restrict pesticides and fertilizers in some cities. In recent years, farms have cut the use of chemicals. But, Rebecca Williams reports, some environmentalists say there are still far too many chemicals polluting streams and lakes:

There are 40 million acres of lawns and sports fields in the US. That’s only one-tenth of the amount of cropland.

But some experts say lawn pesticides and fertilizers can be more of a problem.

Charles Benbrook is the Chief Scientist with the Organic Center. It’s a non-profit research group in Oregon.

“While there are many more acres of corn and soybeans and cotton treated with pesticides than there are lawns, the rate of application on lawns in urban areas often is far higher than on the farm.”

And, he says people are more likely to get exposed to chemicals on lawns.

“There’s many more opportunities for significant exposures, particularly for children and pregnant women in urban areas.”

Nationwide, farms do use the bulk of chemicals. But Benbrook says homeowners are more likely to overuse pesticides and fertilizers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Growing Food With Fumes

  • John Vrieze has a machine called a digester on his dairy farm that's used to turn manure into energy (Photo by Todd Melby)

Big dairy farms produce more than just milk. They also generate manure. Lots and lots
of it. That can be a problem for farmers and the environment. Todd Melby reports on a
technology that reduces manure and generates electricity:

Transcript

Big dairy farms produce more than just milk. They also generate manure. Lots and lots
of it. That can be a problem for farmers and the environment. Todd Melby reports on a
technology that reduces manure and generates electricity:

(sound of suckling cows)

I’m on a dairy farm with John Vrieze and his daughter Brittany.

Oh, and some cows too.

Vrieze is a frugal man. A couple of winters ago, he had a contest with his son to see who
could use the least electricity. Vrieze was willing to go to extreme measures.

His daughter Brittany tells the story this way:

Brittany Vrieze: “He’d shut his fridge off in the winter time. Just use the outdoors for his
fridge. He was definitely trying to keep the kilowatts down.”

Todd Melby: “So what did he do? He just kept his milk in the porch?”

Brittany Vrieze: “Yup.”

Todd Melby: “And kept his frozen stuff outside?”

Brittany Vrieze: “Yup. Yup.”

Today, Vrieze isn’t just trying to save energy. He’s trying to create it.

(sound of cow moos)

From cow dung.

He’s got 1,600 head of cattle at his place here in western Wisconsin. Those cows produce
milk that gets made into cheese. But they also produce about 50,000 gallons of manure
— every day.

Farmers are required to store that manure in a big pool-like structure called a lagoon.
John Vrieze covers his up with a giant tarp.

“It would blow up from the biogas. It would look like a great big balloon or like the
Metrodome, for folks in the Cities. It’s from the nature decomposition of the manure. It
creates biogas. We would have to take that gas out from underneath the cover and flare it
off, which got us to thinking that there has to be a better way to use that energy than just
to flare it off.”

So Vrieze bought a $1 million machine called a digester. And he had help from the
federal government. They paid for a quarter of it. The government is interested in these
things because they can turn manure into energy.

And it turns out — the reason it’s called a digester — is a farm thing.

“A cow has four stomachs. We call the digester really the fifth stomach. All the stuff that
comes out of the back of the cow we then put in that digester.”

So this “fifth stomach” produces energy. However, it’s not ready-to-use energy. To sell it
as natural gas, it has to be about 95% methane. The gas from the digester is only about
60% methane.

(sound of pipeline burn off)

Another option is to convert it to electricity. But in the U.S., electricity is cheap.

Todd Melby: “You tried to sell it to the electric company, but they didn’t want it.”

Brittany Vrieze: “They’re not offering us enough money. So …”

After all this investment by Vrieze and the federal government, some of the gas he
collects is just being burned off into the air.

But maybe not for long.

Vrieze wants to build a greenhouse right on his Wisconsin farm so he can grow
vegetables and herbs in the winter. He says he’ll power it with energy from the digester.

“So, instead of your produce coming from 2,000 miles away – from the central valley of
California – wouldn’t it be neat if it came from 45 miles away?”

Vrieze is planning to use the water from the cow manure for his vegetables and herbs in
his greenhouse. And he’s got a machine similar to ones used at wastewater treatment
plants to clean the manure water.

But even with the digester, there’s still leftover manure he has to deal with. But Vrieze
says the digester makes it more manageable.

(blowing sound)

Some of the dry manure is blown into a pile where it’s gathered up and used as bedding
for the cows. In the summer, it’s also used for another purpose.

“It’s just a clean version of manure. It stinks a little bit. Most of the stink has been taken
out of it. And we mix this with potting soil and it works great for the plants. So …”

That manure/potting soil mix is sold to gardeners in the city. It’s another way for Vrieze
to be frugal and environmental at the same time.

For The Environment Report, I’m Todd Melby.

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Pharmaceuticals Down on the Farm

Congress is looking at restricting antibiotic use on livestock farms. The drugs are added to the animals’ feed to help stop diseases. Antibiotics also make the animals grow faster, and that’s good for farmer’s profits. Mark Brush reports… public health officials are concerned:

Transcript

Congress is looking at restricting antibiotic use on livestock farms. The drugs are added to the animals’ feed to help stop diseases. Antibiotics also make the animals grow faster, and that’s good for farmer’s profits. Mark Brush reports… public health officials are concerned:

A lot of researchers say overuse of antibiotics on farms can lead to bacteria that are resistant to the drugs.

A bill in Congress would stop the drugs from being used to promote growth… and just use them to treat sick animals. The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act is sponsored by the only micro-biologist in Congress. Representative Louise Slaughter from New York:

“And we’re watching a whole new classification now of bacteria, which was basically just a cut above harmless, become deadly. Particulary Staphylococcus aureus, which was as common as dirt, but now is MRSA. And can kill you in twenty-four hours.”

Slaughter says the Food and Drug Administration is not doing enough. So Congress has to step in.

The livestock industry says current regulations are enough.

For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Food, Inc. Exposes Industry’s Secrets

  • With Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner aims to educate Americans about the realities of the food industry (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

A new film documentary that’s hitting theaters now looks at the underbelly of the food industry. We’ve all heard about food recalls because of E.coli bacteria contamination. There was peanut butter, hamburger, spinach – and the list goes on. Lester Graham reports the documentary, Food Inc., looks at why food gets contaminated and reveals a lot more about our industrial approach to producing food:

Transcript

A new film documentary that’s hitting theaters now looks at the underbelly of the food industry. We’ve all heard about food recalls because of E.coli bacteria contamination. There was peanut butter, hamburger, spinach – and the list goes on. Lester Graham reports the documentary, Food Inc., looks at why food gets contaminated and reveals a lot more about our industrial approach to producing food:

This documentary is disturbing. It shows some of the things that happen to our food behind the scenes.

“There is this deliberate veil, this curtain, that’s dropped between us and where are food is coming from. The industry doesn’t want you to know the truth about what you’re eating, because if you knew, you might not want to eat it.”

The film, Food Inc., looks at how raising animals and growing crops have been industrialized from the farm to the grocery store.

Food processors have relied more and more on technological and chemical fixes to food contamination problems and storage issues instead of questioning whether the assembly line factory, mass production approach is the best way of handling food.

It looks at how companies such as Monsanto are treating farmers who want to save their seeds to replant next year – hint — involves lawyers and lawsuits.

It looks at how companies fight against labeling that would give consumers more information on packages. They say more information might unnecessarily scare their customers.

And it uses video from hidden cameras to show how animals are treated at big factory slaughterhouses.

Robert Kenner is the film’s producer/director. He thinks most people won’t like what they see.

But, he also says things can change. If people think about it, they actually vote with their forks three times a day.

“On some level, I think it’s going to be lead by moms who don’t want their children to be eating this food that’s making them sick.”

Kenner says these massive food recalls we’ve seen over the last several years are bad enough, but there’s a greater threat to our health.

“Obviously E.coli and things like that are very frightening, but ultimately it’s the everyday stuff that we don’t see – such as the sugar, salt and fat – that are making us fat. And that’s what I think needs to be changed most. That we get food that’s healthy and that we don’t subsidize food that’s making us sick.”

Food Inc. interviews farmers and food processors and some food industry critics, including author Michael Pollan.

He says those foods subsidized by the government are the kinds of ingredients that are causing some of the leading health problems, such as early onset of diabetes and heart disease.

“All those snackfood calories are the ones that come from the commodity crops – from the wheat, from the corn, and from the soybeans. By making those calories really cheap, that’s one of the reasons the biggest predictor of obesity is income level.”

Pollan says it’s wrong when it’s cheaper to buy a cheeseburger than it is to buy broccoli.

The director and producer of Food Inc., Robert Kenner says he knows the film spends a lot of time looking at the dark side.

But he also gives some of the progressive food processors and even Wal Mart credit. He says they’re doing something about meeting the consumer demand for better, safer and more healthy foods.

“There are lots of great options out there and they are growing options.”

Such as farmers markets, grocery stores letting you know if food is grown locally, and a growing selection of organic foods.

Kenner says he hopes his film, Food Inc., not only outlines the problems with how our food is handled, but gets people to start asking questions about the choices they make when it’s time to eat.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Dollars and Streams

  • A creek runs through Melvin Hershberger's farm in Holmes County, Ohio. He was able to clean up the water with money from the Alpine Cheese Company. The company needed to offset phosphorous pollution from its factory, so it pays farmers to reduce their manure runoff. (Photo by Julie Grant)

When you hear about dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, they’re largely caused by pollution draining from the farm belt. It can take a long time and a lot of money to reduce pollution at factories. So they’re starting to pay farmers to cut pollution instead. Julie Grant explains:

Transcript

When you hear about dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, they’re largely caused by pollution draining from the farm belt. It can take a long time and a lot of money to reduce pollution at factories. So they’re starting to pay farmers to cut pollution instead. Julie Grant explains:

When you eat cheese, you might not realize that something so delicious creates a lot of waste. And that waste – that pollution – ends up going into the drain. It eventually ends up in rivers and lakes.

(sound of a factory)

We’re at a cheese factory in Holmes County, Ohio where they make nearly 60,000 pounds of cheese a day.

The big stainless steel vats look immaculate. But our shoes are wet.

Bob Ramseyer is CEO of the Alpine Cheese Company.

He says the floors are covered with water because the equipment is constantly being washed.

“We have a pre-rinse – that goes to drain. We have a final rinse, and that goes to drain. And we have all the floors that are flushed down and so forth, so that all ends up as part of the wastewater.”

The cheese factory’s wastewater includes not only those caustic chemical cleaners, but wasted milk by-products. One milk nutrient is the chemical, phosphorous.

About a decade ago, the Environmental Protection Agency told Ramseyer that the cheese company had to reduce the phosphorous it was releasing into the nearby river. Ramseyer was concerned.

“The equipment alone was going to cost a half million dollars. We projected it was going to cost between a half million dollars and a million dollars a year in operating costs. So we were looking for any way we could to reduce that cost. That’s where we got into the nutrient trading program.”

Alpine Cheese was among the first to negotiate what’s called a nutrient – or water quality – trading program. Instead of reducing the phosphorous coming from his factory, he pays farmers to reduce manure – another source of phosphorous – from washing from feedlots into the river.

(sound of cows)

Mervin Hershberger is an Amish dairy farmer with 125 acres and 54 milking cows.

(sound of a stream)

His farm looks like a postcard – beautiful hilly green pasture.

But a lot of the manure was washing off his farm into the streams. Herberberger says the cows were grazing right around the water.

“With the cows being in the creek we could see dirty water. The rocks were covered with dirt from cow’s waste. You walk through the stream, you’d kick up dirt and waste from the cows.”

Hershberger didn’t like it, but he didn’t have money to change it.

So when the County Soil and Water Conservation District held a neighborhood meeting to explain that Alpine Cheese was going to pay to reduce pollution from nearby farms, Hershberger saw a way to afford to clean up his farm.

He did about a dozen projects to reduce manure run-off into the water, like building a fence to keep the cows out of the stream.

And the little creek is bouncing back:

“As of now, it’s just totally clean, what you see. For the minnows and all the critters that are in the creek.”

Hershberger gets paid for the amount of phosphorous he keeps out of the water.

About 25 other farms in Holmes County are doing similar projects to reduce water pollution. And Alpine Cheese foots the bill. In exchange, the company doesn’t have to clean up wastewater coming from the cheese factory.

It’s a lot like a cap and trade program on water pollution.

There are a growing number of small programs like this around the country. But some people are trying to create water trading projects on a much larger scale.

That would mean a factory in one state might be able to pay farmer in another state. Eventually, all of the thousands of factories in just one river basin could pay farmers enough to reduce dead zones like the one in the Gulf of Mexico and in some of the Great Lakes.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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