One crop that Carbofuran was used on is potatoes (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA)
The Environmental Protection Agency says no amount of the pesticide carbofuran is safe on food. Mark Brush has more on the new EPA rule:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency says no amount of the pesticide carbofuran is safe on food. Mark Brush has more on the new EPA rule:
The EPA has been phasing out this insecticide, but it’s still used on some crops like rice, corn, and potatoes.
When people are exposed to carbofuran, it can cause damage to the nervous system. And the EPA is particularly worried about kids exposure when eating food or when drinking water near treated farm fields.
Potato farmers say they use carbofuran to kill bugs that resist other pesticides.
John Keeling is the CEO of the National Potato Council. He says they were hoping the EPA would let them keep using it.
“We had tried to work with the agency to modify use patterns, or limit the use to particular areas, so that we could continue to use the product – but they obviously didn’t continue in that direction.”
FMC Corporation makes the chemical. Officials there issued a statement saying they’ll fight the EPA’s new rule.
An advocate predicts more cities and consumers
will begin to demand more fair trade products. Those
are goods imported from overseas that come from businesses
that pay workers a decent wage and operate in a more
environmentally-friendly way. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
An advocate predicts more cities and consumers
will begin to demand more fair trade products. Those
are goods imported from overseas that come from businesses
that pay workers a decent wage and operate in a more
environmentally-friendly way. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Something certified as fair trade means it was grown or produced in a foreign
country in an environmentally sustainable way, by workers NOT employed in
sweatshops. Paul Rice heads a major US certification group Transfair. He says
fair trade is catching on with consumers who don’t mind paying more for better
quality:
“That trading up phenomenon is already there, and I think what fair trade does is
help people think more about quality in more than just the taste of the product,
but also the impact of the product. I think what people are starting to think about who grows my food, right?”
Rice acknowledges only about twenty percent of US residents are drinking fair
trade coffee or buying other products, but he says the movement is finding its
way into more mainstream stores. Rice predicts more communities will soon pass resolutions promoting fair trade.
Theories that crops, such as the corn in Illinois, will benefit from increases in CO2 might not be as good as predicted. (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)
Carbon dioxide emissions from our cars and factories are the number one
cause of global warming. Scientists have long theorized that more of
the gas in the atmosphere could actually help farmers grow bigger
plants. But new research from America’s Breadbasket is challenging
that assumption. David Sommerstein reports:
Transcript
Carbon dioxide emissions from our cars and factories are the number one
cause of global warming. Scientists have long theorized that more of
the gas in the atmosphere could actually help farmers grow bigger
plants. But new research from America’s Breadbasket is challenging
that assumption. David Sommerstein reports:
Lin Warfel’s a fourth generation farmer in east-central Illinois. His
fields are flat and endless, the soil chunky and black and just about
the best in the world. An Interstate highway groans on one side of his
cornfield:
“In my career, early on, there was no Interstate past my farm.”
As traffic increased over the years, Warfel noticed a strange
phenomenon. The crops closer to the Interstate grew bigger than those
further away:
“They respond to the carbon dioxide. They can stay greener longer than
plants out into the field.”
OK… so, here’s a high school biology reminder: carbon dioxide, along
with water and sun, is an ingredient in photosynthesis, which makes
plants grow.
Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is also the biggest cause
of global warming. So scientists thought, huh, more carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere, bigger crops. They even coined a term: the “carbon
dioxide fertilization effect:”
“The effects of CO2 on crop yields are fairly well-understood.”
The Department of Energy’s Jeff Amthor has studied this stuff since the
1980s:
“We would expect that by the year 2050, that the increase in CO2 alone
would probably increase yields by about 10 to 15% in soybean, wheat and
rice relative to today’s yield, with nothing else changing.”
Other things are changing, like hotter temperatures and more drought.
But the predominant thinking has been that the increased carbon dioxide
will moderate those negative factors, maybe even outweigh them. A
recent study by the American Economic Review concluded U.S. agriculture
profits will grow by more than a billion dollars over the next century,
due to global warming. Most of this is based on experiments done in
controlled, greenhouse conditions, but new research done in real fields
is challenging the assumptions:
“Where you’re standing is what we refer to as our global change
research facility on the south farms of the University of Illinois.”
That’s biologist Steve Long. He runs what’s called the SoyFACE project
at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Here, Long can
actually pipe carbon dioxide gas out to the fields, and grow real crops
in an atmosphere of the future.
Long strolls out to one of 16 test plots and stop at a white pipe
sticking out of the ground:
“This is one of the pipes where the carbon dioxide actually comes up
and then it will go out into the field here.”
The carbon dioxide pipes circle a plot about the size of a tennis
court. They release the gas over the crops. Computers monitor the air
to keep the concentrations steady:
“And the current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is about
380 parts per million. We’re raising that to the level which is
expected for the year 2050, which is about 550 parts per million.”
Long has grown the crops of 2050 for 5 years now. His results
shocked him. The plants did grow bigger. They survived longer
into the fall, but the yields were 50% lower than expected. And
pests thrived. The Western corn rootworm, for example, laid
twice as many eggs:
“Japanese beetle, which eats quite a lot of the leaves of soybeans, do
twice as well under these elevated CO2 conditions. They live longer. They
produce many more young. The yield increases we’ve seen could start to be
counteracted by those increased pest problems.”
Long’s results found supporters and critics when published in Science magazine last summer. Some researchers say extra CO2
could hurt agriculture more than it helps because weeds become more
aggressive.
The Department of Energy’s Jeff Amthor co-wrote a paper challenging the
interpretation of Long’s data. But he agrees more work needs to be
done in real-life conditions:
“The bigger questions that are now before us are the interactions of CO2 with
warming and change in precip, changes in weed communities, changes in
insect communities, changes in disease outbreak. There are a lot more
questions there than there are answers.”
Amthor says what’s at stake is our future food supply.
For The Environment Report, I’m David Sommerstein.
British researchers say they’ve developed a new genetically modified
strain of rice that could solve a major health problem in the developing world.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
British researchers say they’ve developed a new genetically modified strain of rice that could
solve a major health problem in the developing world. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:
Six years ago, Swiss researcher Ingo Potrykus announced he’d designed a “golden rice” that had been
genetically mainpulated to increase iron and beta carotene.
Beta Carotene is rich in vitamin A, which could help reduce childhood blindness in developing
countries. But in the field, the golden rice didn’t produce adequate levels of Beta Carotene.
Now British scientists at the company Syngenta report in the journal Nature Biotechnology they’ve
developed a genetically modified strain that does contain enough Beta Carotene.
When the first ‘golden rice’ was announced, the biotechnology industry used it in a public
relations campaign on TV. When the first strain didn’t live up to the promise, the campaign was
quietly removed. The original ‘golden rice’ was to be given to farmers in developing countries for
free. Syngenta’s website does not indicate whether it will give away its strain of rice.
As of this month (Oct.), there are six billion people on the planet and
the population will keep rising. It’s predicted the population will hit
eight-and-half billion by the year 2025. But some experts say the demand
for food will rise even faster. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports… feeding the world will be one of the biggest
challenges of the coming century:
A Swiss researcher believes he’s found a way to correct two major
nutritional problems in the world. The researcher has genetically
altered rice to make it more healthful, but there are still obstacles
ahead…. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
One crop that Carbofuran was used on is potatoes (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA)