Biofuels in Europe: Part 3

  • Jühnde’s biomass power plant runs 24/7 and gets fed manure and grains every day. (Photo by Sadie Babits)

People fed up with hearing
about an energy crisis talk
about going off the grid.
In the US, the solution is
to install solar panels on
your roof or put up a wind
turbine. But a village in
Germany has taken a different
approach. In the final part
of our three-part series on
biofuels in Europe, Sadie
Babits explains:

Transcript

People fed up with hearing
about an energy crisis talk
about going off the grid.
In the US, the solution is
to install solar panels on
your roof or put up a wind
turbine. But a village in
Germany has taken a different
approach. In the final part
of our three-part series on
biofuels in Europe, Sadie
Babits explains:

The village of Juhnde sits between rolling farmland and woods. The first buildings went up more than a thousand years ago. It looks like a lot of German villages – narrow streets, terra cotta roofs, and a towering church steeple. But talk to anyone here and they’ll tell you Juhnde is no ordinary town. It’s the first community in Germany to be powered and heated by cow manure and grain.

“This is the biogas power station on this side.“

That’s Gerd Paffenholz. He’s lived here in Juhnde for 20 years. He volunteers to show visitors, like me, the village’s bio-energy plant.

“This is the wood heating system and what you don’t see is the network that deliver the hot water in the ground.”

Paffenholz stands on top of an underground storage tank. The liquid manure in here gets pumped over to a massive green tank. That’s the anerobic digester. There, micro-organisms have a hay day eating manure and grains supplied by farmers in Juhnde. The bacteria create biogas, which then gets combusted into heat and electricity. It’s pretty silent outside the power station but open the door…

(engine sound)

That’s the sound of 700 kilowatts of power being generated. The electricity gets sent to the public network. It provides this village of 750 people with renewable power. There’s an added bonus – energy that’s normally lost while making biogas gets captured and is used to heat water. That hot water gets delivered through a series of underground pipes to heat most of the homes in Juhnde.

The village’s bioenergy plant went live five years ago. The price tag? Nearly 8 million dollars. The money came through a government grant and from residents who each ponied up thousands of dollars to join the plant cooperative. The village has also cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half already meeting targets set by the European Union for 2050.

“It shows you what some wise investments and collective thinking can make happen.”

That’s Jim McMillan. He researches biofuels at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. He says Juhnde has created an attractive model that could work in the Northern US and Canada where people are more remote and winters are long and hard.

“It’s a good model but Europe, I mean, they’re built out much more than we are and they are doing a lot more in building. They’re density of building, the size of their square foot of their homes are much more right size and so these solutions are easier to implement there than they are here I mean we have a lot more big homes that require a lot more heat.”

Our attitudes are different too. It took several years to get Juhnde’s residents to buy into the idea of going off the grid but now most everyone is on board. Here in the U.S. we’re a lot more individualistic. But McMillan still sees a lot of promise in what Juhnde accomplished.

“So one village is a good example but we need to apply it across the board.”


Other villages in Germany are building bio energy plants. In the U.S. a few towns are attempting parts of Juhnde’s efforts. Reynolds, Indiana replaced the town’s vehicle fleet with cars and trucks that run on bio fuel. It’s now working with a company to turn algae into power. And in Grand Marais, Minnesota, they want to build a central heating system for the town that burns wood chips from the local saw mill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

Related Links

A New Way to Grow Your Breakfast

  • Brook Wilke and his son, Charlie, visit a test farm at The Kellogg Biological Research Station. Wilke and other researchers are testing how well perennial versions of popular grain crops, such as wheat, will grow in Michigan. The test farm isn't too far from Battle Creek, the home of the commercial breakfast cereal industry. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

If you had a bowl of cereal or maybe a muffin this morning, you ate flour from an annual crop. They grow one season, they die, then get re-planted again the next year. Sounds as natural as could be, but repetitive planting can wear out farmland. It can cause soil erosion and cause more water pollution. Now, some scientists are trying to coax grain crops into growing for years at a time. Shawn Allee visited researchers who are testing perennial wheat in the heart of cereal country:

Transcript

If you had a bowl of cereal or maybe a muffin this morning, you ate flour from an annual crop. They grow one season, they die, then get re-planted again the next year. Sounds as natural as could be, but repetitive planting can wear out farmland. It can cause soil erosion and cause more water pollution. Now, some scientists are trying to coax grain crops into growing for years at a time. Shawn Allee visited researchers who are testing perennial wheat in the heart of cereal country:

I’ve headed to a test farm run by Michigan State University. It’s not that
far from Battle Creek,
Michigan where cereal companies like Kelloggs got started.

Dr. Sieg Snapp shows me grain that might make into our cereal bowls
someday.

Allee: “What are we looking at on this side?”

Snapp: “We have 6 varieties of perennial wheat.”

Right now, they kinda look like spindly blades of grass. But in some ways,
this is miraculous; regular
wheat dies after harvest. These have been harvested, and now they’re
popping back up.

“We’ll harvest these this summer, and then in the fall, they’ll re-grow.
They build a deep root
system, and they’re able to come back. So, at first, they start off very
similar, but they keep
growing longer, and they re-grow after harvest. That’s the real
difference.”

Actually, that’s just the start of the difference between annual grains
like wheat and perennial
varieties.

Dr. Snapp says when farmers plant most annual grain crops, soil gets torn
up again and again from
planting and replanting. Rain can wash away exposed top-soil.

Perennial crops get planted once every few years, so they might hold soil
and they might need less
fertilizer that runs off into streams and rivers.

Snapp: “So, the roots of traditional crops including annual wheat are
usually 1-2 feet. These
root systems might be down 6 feet. They can use fertilizers more
efficiently, so they can pick
it up from deep and then move it up where we want it, into the grain.”

Allee: “And if the roots are deep enough, you might need less herbicide
to kill weeds, right?
If that perennial wheat comes up strong enough, it’s already out-competing
the weeds that
are next to it?”

Snapp: “Right, and each year it should do it better for a couple years at
least, we don’t know
how long.”

Dr. Snapp and her colleagues use the word “maybe” a lot when they talk
about perennial grains. It’s
mostly because testing these crops is slow work. That’s one reason they’re
letting some farmers run
their own small tests.

She introduces me to one farmer.

“Hi John! Come on over!”

Part-time farmer and teacher John Edgerton says he checked his test batches
recently.

“I didn’t know what to expect and I went out there and low and behold,
it’s greening up
beautifully. In fact, now, it may be a little too thick. We’ll see.”

Edgerton wants to know whether sheep can get cheap feed from leftover wheat
grass, or whether
farmers could save on tractor fuel.

“One farmer said to me, you know, if I could get three or four years of a
decent crop of
perennial wheat without having to plow, there’d be enormous savings.”

Pretty soon, another perennial wheat researcher joins us in the test field.
He’s Brook Wilke.

He tells me, all this work on perennial wheat and other grains will work
best if the final product, the
grain, tastes like what we’re used to.

Allee: “I hear you baked some chocolate chip cookies with perennial
wheat.”

Wilke: “Yeah. A big component of this work is, “’will people eat the
perennial wheat?’”

Dr. Snapp tasted Wilke’s cookies. She says the wheat tasted kinda nutty,
but good.

Dr. Snapp says maybe one day, she and other researchers will prove
perennial grain plants can thrive.
After that, maybe bread or cereal companies, like Kellogs, will run
taste-tests of their own.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Group Calls for U.S. Ban on Lindane Use

  • (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)

An environmental group is calling for the United States to ban a pesticide used to treat head lice. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:

Transcript

An environmental group is calling for the United States to ban a pesticide used
to treat head lice. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:


Lindane is most commonly used as a pesticide for corn, wheat, and other grains.
It’s also used as a medication to kill lice and scabies. But the Food and Drug
Administration warns that lindane should only be used when all other treatment
options are exhausted. That’s because the FDA has found that in very isolated
cases, lindane can cause seizures or even death.


Kristin Schafer is the Program Coordinator for the Pesticide Action Network. The
group is seeking a ban on lindane in the United States.


“This is the type of chemical that there’s no reason not to get it off the market.
It’s dangerous, it builds up in our bodies. It’s particularly dangerous to children
and there are alternatives for all uses.”


Schafer says 52 countries and the state of California have already banned lindane.
Canada plans to eliminate agricultural uses of lindane by the end of the year.


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

Related Links

Preschoolers’ Diets Laden With Sugar

  • A new study indicates preschoolers are eating more fruits and veggies... but often, they're also consuming too many calories by drinking lots of juice. (Photo by Tommy Johansen)

Preschool kids are eating more fruits and vegetables than they were twenty years ago, according to a new study of preschoolers’ diets. But they’re also eating more calories and more sugar. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

Preschool kids are eating more fruits and vegetables than they were twenty years ago,
according to a new study of preschoolers’ diets. But they’re also eating more calories and
more sugar. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:


Penn State University researcher Sibylle Kranz says years of public health messages about
the benefits of fruits and vegetables appear to have paid off. She says preschool children
are indeed eating significantly more fruits, vegetables and grains than they were in 1977
when her study began.


But they’re also eating about 200 more calories a day, and a lot of those calories are
coming in the form of juice. Kranz says health officials may need to tweak their message
so parents know just how much juice a day is okay for their two to five year olds.


“Children should not consume more than six ounces of fruit juice – and this is, we’re
talking about 100% fruit juice.”


Kranz says kids who drink more than six ounces of juice a day could run the risk of
becoming overweight. And she says the juice is probably replacing more nutritious foods
like milk.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Related Links

New Lab to Help Farmers Identify Modified Seeds

A new lab in the state of Illinois will help farmers throughout the region keep genetically modified seeds out of conventional crops. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Maria Hickey reports:

Transcript

A new lab in the state of Illinois will help farmers throughout the region keep genetically
modified seeds out of conventional crops. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Maria Hickey
reports:


Marketing corn, soybeans, and other grains to European countries has been more challenging
since genetically modified crops were introduced. That’s partly because of a lack of confidence
among European consumers in bio-tech food products.


To ensure the purity of conventional seeds, the Illinois Department of Agriculture has a new lab
to analyze the genetic make-up of seeds.


Tom Jennings is manager of the state’s division of ag industry regulation. He says the lab will
help ensure farmers get what they expect.


“We want to make sure the label claims that are on seed bags out there, that they’re correct, that
they’re accurate, and that the people, the producers who are using that seed, are assured that what
is in the bag actually meets the label claims that are on the seed labels that are on the bags.”


The lab is able to provide test results within two days and is costing Illinois tax-payers more than
300,000 dollars.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Maria Hickey.

Related Links

Grass-Fed Beef Good for Business?

Most of the cattle raised in the Great Lakes region spend their lives in a feedlot, fattening up on corn and other grains before becoming dinner themselves… but there’s a growing number of organic farmers looking at putting their cows in the pasture. They say grass-fed beef is a healthy alternative. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder has more:

Transcript

Most of the cattle raised in the Great Lakes region spend their lives in a feedlot, fattening up on
corn and other grains before becoming dinner themselves. But there’s a growing number of
organic farmers looking at putting their cows in the pasture. They say grass-fed beef is a healthy
alternative. Brad Linder has more:


(Sound of cows mooing)


Here on Natural Acres Farm in Millersburg, in Central Pennsylvania, 120 cows have their heads
to the ground. They’re chewing on tender shoots of grass instead of ground corn or some mixture
of grain feed.


Steve Shelley is in charge of marketing beef for Natural Acres. He says cows are designed to eat
grass, but most farmers today find it cheaper and easier to buy commercial feed made from grains
like corn.


“You know farmers nowadays. Well that’s the way their dads did it, so they’re doing the same
thing. It’s much easier to go out and dump a bucket of feed into a pen for that animal to eat than
it is for that animal to be out, to get the best benefit from the soil.”


And Shelley says another reason most farmers use grain feed is that it takes longer to raise cattle
on grass. Grain-fed cows are ready for slaughter within a year, but Natural Acres cows can take
six months to a year longer to reach the same size.


But Shelley says that convenience for the farmer comes at a cost to the cattle. Shelley says cows
raised on corn get sick more often than grass-fed cattle. As preventative measures, cows
traditionally have antibiotics mixed in with their feed and require frequent visits from the
veterinarian.


Cows on organic farms are naturally healthier. And since Shelley’s marketing his product to
consumers interested in “healthier meat,” the animals also don’t receive growth hormones or other
chemicals often found in commercial beef.


Natural Acres runs an organic foods shop on-site. But Shelley says the market for such products
is pretty small in rural Central Pennsylvania. Most of the beef isn’t sold here. Instead, much of it
is shipped to restaurants and stores, where people are willing to pay premium prices.


“In a grocery store, you may pay anywhere from a $1.75/pound to $2.00 for a pound of beef.
Retail, we get $4.09.”


Being able to charge more for beef is only one of the perks to raising cattle on grass. The farmers
who raise grass-fed beef don’t have to pay as much to the veterinarian.


“The animals rarely get sick. And I have talked to hundreds of people who raise animals on
pasture.”


Jo Robinson is author of the book, “Why Grass Fed is Best.” She also runs the website
‘eatwild.com,’ which compiles research on grass-fed cattle.


“The big surprise, I think – and this wasn’t known until about 1998 – is that an animal raised on
pasture has five times the amount of cancer fighting fat called conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA.”


Robinson says CLA helps prevent cows from developing tumors. There is some evidence
suggesting CLA has the same effect on humans, but it’s not yet clear if eating grass-fed beef is a
way for people to fight off cancer.


Robinson does point out that CLA is just one of the reasons there’s a growing demand for grass-
fed beef.


“Some people gravitate towards pasture finished meat because it’s free of hormones and
antibiotics. Some people are aware of the nutritional benefits. They like the fact that it’s lower in
saturated fat, higher in omega 3 fatty acids, higher in vitamin E, and a number of other
substances. It’s simply a healthier product all around.”


Robinson says she first started looking for American grass-farmers in 1997, and only found about
sixty. Now, she says, the market has grown to include at least ten times that number, which still
only represents a small portion of the American Beef Industry.


Paul Slayton is director of the Pennsylvania Beef Council, the non-profit organization charged
with promoting the state’s beef industry. Slayton says less than 1% of the state’s beef production
comes from grass farms. But he says those farms do fill an important role.


“I see it being a very viable part of our production in this part of the country, because we have
such an eclectic consumer group. And there are some consumers that just won’t eat anything else
but organic. And somebody’s going to be providing their food.”


As the beef industry is recovering from public concern over mad cow disease and e. coli bacteria,
Slayton says anything that convinces people meat is safe is fine by him.


And as for the taste of grass-fed beef, Steve Shelley from Natural Acres Farm says it might be
more familiar than many people think.


“Many times when I go and do a taste test at a store or something, a lot of the older people, when
they try it, make the comment: ‘This tastes like beef used to taste.'”


Shelley says the meat is leaner and can be tougher if cows aren’t fed a little grain before slaughter.
But Natural Acres is experimenting with different types of grass that might lend a more
consumer-friendly texture to the beef.


Shelley says it’s a combination of taste and nutrition that gets most people interested, even some
people who had given up on commercial beef altogether. Shelley tells one story about a man
who’s wife had banned meat from their house for five years.


“So he bought a hamburger and finally got her to try it, and at the end of the day, he gave me a high five, and he said, ‘I can eat beef
again! She’s given me permission to bring beef into the house!’ Well, that really makes you feel
good.”


So grass-fed beef is entering households that hadn’t seen any beef in a while for environmental
reasons or because of health concerns. While the beef might be a taste of days gone by, organic
farmers are getting better prices for their meat than even in the best of days past.


(moo moo)


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.