Tag: soil

Farmers Respond to Peer Pressure

  • Farming is big business in America's heartland. Many farmers say they want to be left alone to run their farms the way they always have - and they don't want government regulators or researchers dictating to them. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Farm pollution is the biggest water contamination problem in the
nation. But government agencies often struggle with getting farmers to
use less polluting farming methods. Many farmers say they don’t want
outsiders telling them what to do. Rebecca Williams reports one
grassroots project is trying to encourage farmers to change, by relying
on peer pressure:

Transcript

Farm pollution is the biggest water contamination problem in the
nation. But government agencies often struggle with getting farmers to
use less polluting farming methods. Many farmers say they don’t want
outsiders telling them what to do. Rebecca Williams reports one
grassroots project is trying to encourage farmers to change, by relying
on peer pressure:


(Sound of birds and buzzing insects)


The corn around here is way over knee high, and there’s a whole lot of
it. This is Iowa, after all. So, pretty much everyone farms corn and
soybeans.


But there isn’t as much farming happening today. Dozens of farmers are
hanging out by a creek that meanders through farmland. They’re
checking out the day’s catch.


(Sound of splashing around in bucket)


“Now there’s one really bright-colored southern red belly in here, kind
of the prettiest fish we’ve got in this stretch.”


Biologist Dan Kirby just used an electroshocker. It stuns the fish and
they float to the top of the water. Now that he can see them, he can
get an idea of how many fish there are and how big they are. The
farmers are watching closely.


(Farmer:) “That’s a real good sign to see them that big, at this
point?”


(Kirby:) “Yeah, especially the southern red belly – they do classify
them a little bit different, they consider them to be a sensitive
species, so it’s a good thing to have them there at that adult size,
for sure.”


That’s better news than they might’ve been expecting. This creek
running along many of the farmers’ fields is in trouble. It’s on
Iowa’s impaired waters list. In this case, that means the fish and
other aquatic life in the creek are not doing as well as they should
be.


“In some of these streams we have had some rough times. Chronic issues
where fish were not even getting to size they could catch them or else
were just plain absent.”


Dan Kirby says farm pollution such as excess fertilizer and soil
erosion from farm fields can harm fish and other stream life. That’s
the kind of thing that put this creek on the government’s watch list
three years ago.


One of the farmers, Jeff Pape, remembers hearing about that. For him it was a big
red flag:


“We knew there was an impaired waterway and it was running through some
of the land I rent and obviously I don’t want that to shine on me… I
didn’t want the DNR – not that they would or have the time to do
it, but I didn’t want them to come in and say hey, you will be doing
this, or you will be doing that.”


Pape says the fear of being dictated to by the government was a strong
motivator for him and a few of his neighbors. In late 2004, Pape
formed a watershed council with nine of his farming neighbors.


Now there are nearly 50 farmers in the group. Pape says there are some ground
rules: No finger pointing. And everyone gets equal say:


“That’s nice with this group – nobody’s telling them they have to do
anything – they do what they want when they want and that’s it. You
know, they don’t do any more than they want to.”


Pape says he’s proud of what he and his neighbors have gotten done.
They’re installing grass strips along ditches and creeks to filter
water rushing off fields. They’re putting in fences to keep cattle
from tearing up stream beds and banks. They’re being more careful
about how much fertilizer they apply.


Maybe most importantly, they’ve gotten a lot of their neighbors to join
them. Jeff Pape says cash incentives help – farmers are paid for the
conservation projects they do. It’s not as much money as some of the
government’s conservation programs, but it keeps the government out of
their hair.


Pape says this program works because there’s an even stronger
motivation:


“That guy’s looking over your fence – he sees you ain’t got a waterway
and you’re thinking about it, so that peer pressure thing does make a
difference too. You know everybody’s watching each other in this
watershed – not pointing fingers at nobody but everybody’s watching
each other and that keeps people on their toes – they want things to
look right, too.”


Other farmers here agree that a farmer-to-farmer project is going to be
much more effective than anything government regulators or researchers
say.


John Rodecap is with Iowa State University Extension Service. He’s
been helping these farmers clean up the creek. He says it’s remarkable
that more than half of the farmers in this 23,000-acre watershed have
signed on.


“The trials that they do, they talk about it at their coffee shop, they
talk about it over the fence… If the trial’s done 50, 60, 100 miles
away, that’s not good enough. They want to know how it’s gonna work on
my farm.”


Rodecap says if you see your neighbor making a change first, you’re
going to feel a little more comfortable giving it a try yourself. And
knowing your neighbor’s watching you over the fence… that’s a powerful
incentive all its own.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Insights Into Animal Diseases

A new study says the spread of animal sicknesses such as Chronic Wasting Disease in deer may
happen more easily because of the way a protein binds to soil. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A new study says the spread of animal sicknesses such as Chronic Wasting Disease in deer may
happen more easily because of the way a protein binds to soil. Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Scientists have known that when an infected animal puts prions, or abnormal protein agents, in
soil the prions can stay alive for a long time. A study has looked at different types of common
soil minerals and found that a type of clay is an especially good binding agent for the prions.


University of Wisconsin researcher Judd Aiken says the link is so good that there’s a much higher
risk of the infection spreading when another animal grazes in the area:


“There was an enhancement of infectivity and we’re estimating roughly a 700-fold enhancement
of infectivity.”


Aiken says it might mean that government efforts to stop the spread of deadly animal brain
diseases like Chronic Wasting Disease in deer or scrapie in sheep may only be as effective as the
type of soil where the animals live.


For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Growing Zones Warm Up

  • The National Arbor Day Foundation's revised hardiness zone map. (Photo courtesy of the National Arbor Day Foundation)

If you’ve been thinking about landscaping your yard, you should know things have
changed. The climate is warming so quickly that one organization has changed the
plant hardiness zone map. That’s the little map you sometimes see on the back of
seed packets. Lester Graham reports… you might want to check out the new map
before you spend hundreds of dollars on a tree that might not live long in your
warmer zone:

Transcript

If you’ve been thinking about landscaping your yard, you should know things have
changed. The climate is warming so quickly that one organization has changed the
plant hardiness zone map. That’s the little map you sometimes see on the back of
seed packets. Lester Graham reports… you might want to check out the new map
before you spend hundreds of dollars on a tree that might not live long in your
warmer zone:


You know, I’ve talked to a lot of gardeners and homeowners who do their own
landscaping about this plant hardiness zone map change, and at first they’re
kind of astounded. The growing zones are changing? Because it’s getting warmer?


But then, they sort of pause and think for a moment… and usually say something like,
“That makes sense.”


The United States Department of Agriculture issues the plant hardiness zone map.
It’s basically a map of the annual average low temperatures that helps folks figure
out what they can plant and expect to survive. But the USDA hasn’t updated its map
since 1990.


The spokesman at the National Arbor Day Foundation, Woody Nelson – I kid you not,
the Arbor Day guy’s name is Woody – Woody says his organization issued a new
map because it really needed to be updated:


“You know, people were asking us to help out, you know, ‘This old USDA map just doesn’t
seem to work for us anymore. I don’t think it’s accurate. What can you do to help?’
So we took it upon ourselves to give tree-planters the most up-to-date information
that we could.”


So the National Arbor Day Foundation looked at the low temperature data gathered
by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 1990, and the people
were right: things are warming up:


“And over that 15-year span that we used, much of the country had warmed a full
hardiness zone.”


And there’s a ten degree difference from one zone to the next. It shows a real on-
the-ground trend.


Richard Andres is with Tantre Farm. They grow organic produce for farmers’
markets like this one in Michigan. Andres didn’t know about the new Arbor Day
Hardiness Zone map, but it makes sense to him. He says he’s seeing more
extremes:


“You know, last winter was unusually warm. The winter before, unusually warm.
So, we really didn’t even get a decent freeze. We had a huge amount of bugs the
following spring. So we are noticing more extremes.”


But a farmer or gardener can adjust things for annual plants. Long term, you’re
probably wondering whether you can now plant that dogwood or whether you
should plant that spruce from up north.


(Sound of sprinkler)


Phil Walsh sells a lot of trees at Lodi Farms nursery. He knew about the new Arbor
Day Hardiness Zone map. But, he says there’s a lot more to think about than just
the annual average low temperature when you’re thinking about planting:


“Cold is not the only, or really the most, important factor when determining plant
hardiness. Questions like soil: is it well-drained; is it not; is it wet; is it dry; is it acid
or is it alkaline; do you have wind; do you have shade? Questions like this: is it high
in organic material or low in organic material? These tend to have more impact on
whether or not plants survive than strictly the zone rating.”


Walsh says the trees are pretty tough, and most of them can adapt:


“Yes, things have warmed up over the last 15 years and they may well continue or it may change and it may go down. Pick a good, hardy plant that’s well-suited for your soil
and typically one that’s native here, that’s gone through these temperature changes
in the past and I don’t expect anybody’s going to have any problems with them.”


That’s not to say that every kind of tree is taking this in stride. For example, black
spruce trees adapted to Canadian and upper New England cold might not be such a
good choice as far south as it’s been grown in the past.


Woody Nelson at the National Arbor Day Foundation says trees native to the North
are starting to be affected by the warming climate:


“There’s a whole lot of white pines that have been planted in Georgia, in the South
as a nice landscape tree over the years. And now those white pines are coming
under a little bit of stress. The native lodge pole pines, the native loblolly pines in the
deep South, again native species are something that we want to promote and stick
with.”


So, the basic rule is: if the plant hardiness zone map has shifted one growing zone
warmer in just 15 years, you’ll probably want to stick to trees native to your area, or
from just a little south of you just in case this warming trend sticks around for a while.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Greener Lawncare

  • Lawncare can be one of the most polluting and wasteful activities at a home. Simple actions can reduce the impact. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Polls indicate the majority of people want to do better toward the environment. One
of the most polluting activities at many homes is lawn care. Lawn sprinklers can use massive
amounts of water. And over-use of fertilizer can pollute nearby streams. Lester Graham looks at simple things you can do to reduce waste and pollution and still
have a green lawn:

Transcript

Polls indicate the majority of people want to do better toward the environment. One
of the most polluting activities at many homes is lawn care. Lawn mowers spew out
emissions that pollute at a higher rate than cars. Lawn sprinklers can use massive
amounts of water. And over-use of fertilizer can pollute nearby streams. Lester Graham looks at simple things you can do to reduce pollution and still
have a green lawn:


It figures that the day I went to talk to a turf expert about mowing and lawn care, it’d be raining.


“Well, we needed it. So, I guess that’s the good thing about it.”


Tom Smith is the Executive Director of the Michigan Turfgrass Foundation. He’s got
all kinds of recommendations for how to properly prep soil for beginning lawns, but we wanted
to limit this story to some simple, practical things we can do with an existing lawn to
reduce the impact to the environment:


“One of the first things and easiest things you can do is mow high. In fact, I tell most
consumers, most residential facilities, mow as high as you can set your mower.
Because, what that will do is you’ll get a better root system, you’ll get more shading
of that soil and you’ll have far less water loss.”


Smith works closely with the Michigan State University’s turf grass research
program. One of the things they’ve learned there goes against some of the advice
you might have heard in the past about watering. In research that’s been going on
since 1982, they’ve let Mother Nature take care of one plot. Another gets deep
waterings a couple of times a week, and a third gets daily watering, light rates, in the
middle of the heat of the day.


The plot that looks best year after year? The one that
gets light watering, daily during the middle of the day. Most of the water evaporates,
but it reduces the heat stress on the grass so it doesn’t go dormant and brown. And
Smith says it actually uses less water:


“In that research, we were able to reduce water use by about half by doing daily
watering at light rates in the middle of the day compared to that deep infrequent
watering.”


(Graham:) “Now, there are going to be some people who say ‘Look, I don’t want to
use water in a cosmetic way at all. Is there a grass that doesn’t use the kind of water
that most grasses we know do?”


(Smith:) “Actually, there is one of our grasses that we recommend called Turf Type
Tall Fescue. Turf Type Tall Fescue is our most drought-tolerant grass. In most
summers it will stay green without any supplemental water.”


And Smith says before you start spreading fertilizer on your lawn, you should get a soil
test to see exactly what you need. It’s an eight to ten dollar test that can be done by
your county extension office, and it’s good for about three years. If you put fertilizer
down without knowing, you’re probably adding to the phosphorous and nitrogen
pollution problems in the streams and lakes in your area and beyond.


Keeping your equipment running well also helps reduce pollution: an oil change in
the lawn mower, cleaning the air filter and sharpening your mower blades.


(Sound of grinding)


Mark Collins maintains the turf plots at Michigan State University’s turf grass
program. His crew sharpens their blades every third mowing, but they’re probably
mowing a lot more than you do:


“Probably a homeowner should at least once a month. Just keep the blade sharp.
That’s the biggest thing. If it’s a sharp blade, then it cuts the grass cleanly and you
don’t get a frayed edge on the grass blade.”


And Collins says a mulching mower is best because it cuts the grass blades into tiny
bits that help fertilize the lawn, and reduces the need for bagging your clippings.


So, using less water, planting hardy grass, using only the fertilizer you need, keeping
your machinery in good working order and buying the least polluting models all help.
But, there are soulutions, such as planting more drought resistant shrubs and trees
so there’s not as much grass to mow. And if you’re really adventurous, you
can get a manual reel mower, one with no engine. It just uses the energy you
provide by pushing it.


(Sound of reel mower)


For the Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Co2 Crops Not Tops

  • 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.

Related Links

Corn Ethanol: More Water Pollution

  • Corn requires more fossil fuel-based nitrogen fertilizer than many other crops. Tanks of pressurized anhydrous ammonia fixes nitrogen in the soil, but heavy rains can wash nitrogen into waterways. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Government-funded programs that pay for
conservation on farmland have done a lot to
improve the environment over the past twenty
years. The federal government has paid farmers
to take some cropland and set it aside to protect
waterways and wildlife habitat. In the second of
our two-part series on ethanol, Julie Grant reports
that some of that conservation is being stalled:

Transcript

Government-funded programs that pay for
conservation on farmland have done a lot to
improve the environment over the past twenty
years. The federal government has paid farmers
to take some cropland and set it aside to protect
waterways and wildlife habitat. In the second of
our two-part series on ethanol, Julie Grant reports
that some of that conservation is being stalled:


A good hard rain can wash a lot of valuable soil off a farm field.
John Wallbrown grows corn and soybeans on his farm. He says losing
soil is just like losing money. The soil carries with it all the
nutrients he’s put in the fields to help the crops grow, things such as
nitrogen and phosphorous. Wallbrown says he’s put in a good number of
grass waterways through the fields to help filter the water and hold on
to that soil:


“And so when you put in a grass waterway, it dramatically reduces the
amount of erosion. And it is just better for the water supply, better
for our crop. We’re keeping our soil in our field as opposed to it
getting put away.”


What Wallbrown calls nutrients in the field are considered pollution
once they wash into rivers and lakes. So Wallbrown says planting grass
near waterways is good for everyone. Except it means he’s got to use
land that otherwise could be growing crops, and that’s a loss of
income.


Wallbrown has gotten various government assistance to offset those
losses. The largest program, is called the Conservation Reserve Program, known as the
CRP for short.


John Johnson is with the US Department of Agriculture. He says when
you add up all the farms like John Wallbrown’s around the country, the
CRP is making a huge difference in reducing agricultural runoff into
waterways:


“Over 450 million tons of topsoil annually are prevented from eroding
because of CRP. We’ve got lots of really good benchmarks and measurements of
success of CRP, in both water quality, soil erosion and wildlife
habitat.”


But that set-aside land is in demand these days. There’s been a huge
call for bio-fuels to help reduce American dependence on foreign oil.
Bio-fuels are made from crops such as soybeans and corn, especially
corn. So Johnson says the government has decided to stop enrolling
new farmland into the conservation program:


“The overriding concern was that there is a need for a larger supply of
corn and soybeans and wheat production right now, so given the need for
that production, let’s just take a pause right now from enrolling large
acreage of additional farmland into the CRP.”


Corn is used to make ethanol, a fuel that’s now commonly blended with
gasoline. That’s caused corn prices to nearly double so farmers say
they’re planting 12 million acres more corn this year than last year.
That’s the most corn grown in the US in more than 50 years.


Ralph Grossi, director of the American Farmland Trust, says corn needs a
lot more nitrogen fertilizer than other crops. And when it rains,
nitrogen moves quickly from the fields to the waterways. That’s
especially true when grass strips don’t filter the runoff.


Grossi says that nitrogen drains into creeks and rivers from 36 states
into the Mississippi River and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico. There
it causes huge algae blooms that then die, sink, and the decaying
matter causes low oxygen in the water called hypoxia. That’s why the
Corn Belt has been blamed for creating a huge dead zone in the Gulf of
Mexico each year:


“If you increase corn production and don’t add the conservation practices
it will add nutrients and exacerbate problems in the gulf with hypoxia.
But it’s not just in the gulf, it’s problems for every local water
district that has to purify water for drinking and other urban
purposes. As they have to contend with more nutrients, that increases
their costs of cleaning the water.”


Grossi says the best place to clean the water is at the source. He
says that’s why the government must continue to help farmers pay for
grass waterways and buffer strips – those things prevent farm nutrients
from getting into the water in the first place. He says the need for
grass waters is even greater now that so much farmland is being planted
in corn to meet the demand for more ethanol.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Leaky Tanks Forever

A government report indicates to clean up fewer than half of the leaky
underground storage tanks in the nation it would cost billions of
dollars. But the Bush administration budget only calls for millions.
Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A government report indicates to clean up fewer than half of the leaky
underground storage tanks in the nation it would cost billions of
dollars. But the Bush administration budget only calls for millions.
Lester Graham reports:


Leaking underground storage tanks of gasoline or other hazardous
liquids can contaminate drinking water and soil. There are 117,000
known leaks from underground storage tanks across the nation.


A Government Accountability Office report indicates to clean up just
half that number would cost 12 billion dollars. The Bush
administration has requested less than 73 million dollars in the budget
currently before Congress.


The chair of the House Energy and Commerce committee, John Dingell,
calls the Bush request disgraceful and inadequate. But in the last
budget, Congress only appropriated 70 million to clean up leaky
underground storage tanks.


States across the nation expect to discover more than 16,000 new leaks
in the next five years. That could mean the current government funding
of clean-ups will never catch up with the actual number of leaky
underground storage tanks.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Tossing Food Scraps to the Worms

Every day we have to deal with throwing away
garbage. For most, that means taking it to the curb.
But some people keep the food scraps for something
special. Richard Annal has the story of a
family that’s using a money-saving, all-natural way
to dispose of food waste:

Transcript

Every day we have to deal with throwing away
garbage. For most, that means taking it to the curb.
But some people keep the food scraps for something
special. Richard Annal has the story of a
family that’s using a money-saving, all-natural way
to dispose of food waste:


I’m driving through the rain to meet a woman who’s doing something I’ve
heard about for years but have never actually seen. And she’s doing it in her basement. She’s taking her
family’s food scraps and feeding them to worms downstairs. Brenda
Lotito’s home is white and brown, and sits on a little hill in a suburban
neighborhood. Brenda is expecting me and greets me at the door. Behind
her, there’s a little commotion. That’s her son John and the family dog,
Charlie.


I have a seat at the kitchen table. I find out it was John who first
took an interest in worms. He likes the red, slimy night crawlers:


“What sparked my interest in the worms is how they feel when you touch
them and how you can’t hold them very well because they keep slipping
out of your hands.”


With a little research at their local library, Brenda and John found
worms work as a natural garbage disposal. So for the past five years,
instead of putting the garbage out, they’ve been feeding the worms.
They turn the food scraps into compost.


We all head down to the basement, including Charlie, the dog. That’s
where Brenda keeps the family’s worm box.


The Lotitos have a typical basement. Washer, dryer, sports equipment…
and a box of worms. It’s wood. It’s about 2 feet wide by 4 feet long.
Brenda tells me they can be different sizes depending on what you need.
This one is more than large enough for Brenda, John, her husband, and
Charlie, the dog. Brenda says she can put just about all her food waste
into the box:


“I don’t put meat or anything like that in there but we put all our
vegetables. Ya know, I don’t have to cut anything up. I just simply
throw the corn cobs in there throw the husks in there. And they eat
it.”


I open the lid and peer in. The first thing I notice is what I don’t
notice. There’s no offensive odor. The only smell I do detect is that
of fresh earth. I move the contents of the box around. There’s some
shredded newspapers, some corn cobs in the process of becoming worm
food, coffee grounds, and other food waste.


After a little poking around, I find the worms: dozens of red,
well-fed looking worms. They’re fat.


Brenda tells me she has been making worm boxes for years and she thinks
others can benefit from her experience. She’s selling worm composting
kits for a small price. She says worm boxing is easy to get started,
takes a little investment, and the maintenance is low:


“Once you buy a batch of red worms, they’ll just keep on multiplying every
7 to 10 days, and um, you’ve got yourself a great composting bin.”


Brenda says worm box composting has a lot of benefits. In her town,
the trash pick-up service charges by volume. So, she saves money on her
garbage bill by putting most food waste into the box instead of the
trash can.


And she saves money on fertilizer. Brenda is a gardener. The compost
left by the worms is a great all-natural fertilizer. And in addition,
the worm’s, um, leavings work as a natural bug repellant as well:


“What it does is it makes the plant create an enzyme that is bitter to
aphids and other creatures.”


And Brenda thinks fewer chemicals and fossil fuel-based fertilizers
makes the food in her garden that much better:


“You know I can pick the tomato right off the plant. Ya know, wipe it
off, wash it off, And feel comfortable that I’m putting it in my mouth.
Everything has come from the earth. It’s a circle, it’s awesome.”


Brenda says to her, the biggest benefit of worm box composting comes
from letting people know there’s another way to dispose of food waste.
It’s all-natural. It means less garbage to pick up, less garbage to
fill up the landfill, and at the same time it saves money, provides a
superior fertilizer that’s all organic, and puts nutrients back into
the Earth… where they come from.


For the Environment Report, I’m Richard Annal.

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Growers Cover Up Local Produce

  • If the hydroponics trend continues, strawberries could be available locally everywhere. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

It’s the middle of winter and you’re craving some fresh,
juicy strawberries. Go to your local grocery store and
you’ll find lots of packaged strawberries shipped from the
west coast or down south. For locally grown strawberries,
you have to wait till June if you live in the Midwest. But
that’s starting to change. Jennifer Guerra has the story:

Transcript

It’s the middle of winter and you’re craving some fresh,
juicy strawberries. Go to your local grocery store and
you’ll find lots of packaged strawberries shipped from the
west coast or down south. For locally grown strawberries,
you have to wait till June if you live in the Midwest. But
that’s starting to change. Jennifer Guerra has the story:


I like strawberries. A lot. There’s strawberry rhubarb pie
for starters, strawberry and spinach salad, strawberry
shortcake. But I’ve been on this kick lately of trying to
buy only locally-grown produce, which is admittedly hard to do when you
live in the Midwest, especially with strawberries. Most of
the year, they’re shipped in from Florida and California,
but there is one place in Michigan were you can still pick
strawberries as late as October.


(Guerra:) “The redder the better…that’s too green”


It’s snowing out. I’ve got on the winter coat, the hat, the gloves,
and I’m picking strawberries with Kelly Bowerman.


(Guerra:) “So, which one is this?”


(Bowerman:) “This is a tribute. We have aroma, diamante, and
tribute. Aroma is a nice big berry, diamante’s even a bigger berry,
but it just don’t turn red, it’s oranged-colored, and tribute is smaller with a lot more
flavor.”


(Guerra:) “Alright, let’s get all three. Let’s get a
variety.”


Bowerman calls his strawberries three finger berries, which
he says are roughly the same size as the ones shipped in
from California


(Bowerman and Guerra try strawberries)


And frankly, the strawberries better taste
good, seeing as how Bowerman spent 60,000 dollars on them.


Well, not on the actual berries themselves, but on the
hydroponics system he uses to grow the berries. With
hydroponics, he still grows his strawberries outside, but
instead of planting them in the ground, the runners sit in
pots above the ground in a solution of warm water and
minerals. And since there’s no soil, the strawberries can
grow from June to October without the roots freezing over at
the first sign of cold weather. Still, there’s only so much
a hydroponics system can do on its own:


“He’s gonna find out that people want strawberries at
Christmastime, and so the next step will be to put a
greenhouse over that system and then we have 12 months.”


Merle Jensen is a professor of plant science at the
University of Arizona and he knows his hydroponics. He
knows growers all across the country who’ve started moving
their hydroponics systems inside greenhouses so they can
artificially light the crops. That way, they can produce
year round. But wait, there’s more:


“All of our leafy vegetables – high value fruits like
strawberries – will all be under cover in the next 5 years.
I’m sure of that. It’s a rapid expansion, not only in the
United States, but we see it in Canada, Mexico. So, this is the wave
of the future.”


A future that Jensen swears will taste delicious:


“You know what? I can say that because we can control the
nutrition, the salinity within the root system such that we can
program that product to have more acid and more sugars and better
flavor, and we can do that through hydroponics at will. And local growing is
becoming bigger and bigger all the time. It’s just got an
image of being better.”


Of course in the Midwest, “local” is still pretty relative.
Our Michigan farmer, Kelly Bowerman, says he gets people
from up to 50 miles away to pick his strawberries:


“One guy bought $28 worth of strawberries, and he said that ain’t
no big deal cause it cost me $40 worth of gas to
get here and back.”


And he’ll have to continue putting in that kind of travel
time if he wants to eat locally grown strawberries in the
middle of winter. Unless of course Jensen’s right and
hydroponic greenhouse systems really are the wave of the
future. If so, it might not be too long before Bowerman’s
strawberries show up year round at your supermarket.


Oh, and by the way, I liked the tribute strawberries the
best. They were my favorite.


For the Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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Blazing New Atv Trails in Parkland

  • Advocates of special trails for ATV riding say the trails would reduce environmental damage from uncontrolled use. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Managers at state parks across the country are scrambling to figure out how to deal with a
rising demand for trails for All-Terrain Vehicles. Stephanie Hemphill reports park
managers are finding it’s not easy to satisfy both fans who have fun on four wheel drive
vehicles and people who want a quieter time in the park:

Transcript

Managers at state parks across the country are scrambling to figure out how to deal with a
rising demand for trails for All-Terrain Vehicles. Stephanie Hemphill reports park
managers are finding it’s not easy to satisfy both fans who have fun on four wheel drive
vehicles and people who want a quieter time in the park:


As the name suggests, All-Terrain Vehicles are built to travel rough. ATVs power over
rocks and logs. Their go-anywhere knobby tires grip the land and take their riders just
about anywhere they want to go, and a lot of them want to go to public parks.


Whether it’s forests, dunes, bogs or a desert, riders say four-wheeling can be a fun way to
get out into nature. The vehicles are popular. Dealers are selling close to a million ATVs
every year, and sales are growing steadily. With that many people looking for a place to
play, states are scrambling to accommodate them.


In Minnesota, the state decided a long ATV trail might be a good way to attract tourism
dollars to a struggling rural area in the state.


Ron Sluka jumped at the idea. He’s the trail coordinator for a local ATV club. He’d been
wanting for years to build a trail in his area. Then he heard the state would pay for a
“destination” trail so well-built and attractive, people would come from all over to ride it.
Sluka thought it would be great news for his area.


He and county officials worked up a plan, but when it hit the local news, Sluka says a
few people raised a ruckus:


“The way it was presented to the people, eminent domain would take over in cases if
need be, and there were going to be up to 20 feet of your land taken for this trail. None
of the above is true, totally none of it is true, absolutely zero. But it’s too late: once
things are rolling, it’s rolling.”


Sluka says now, it’s hard to get a rational discussion of the issues. Beyond property rights
issues and worries about the ATVs being too loud, there are other concerns:


“The residents have kind of been left out of the loop.”


That’s Deb Pomroy. She lives near the proposed ATV trail.


Pomroy says most of her neighbors don’t mind the local ATV riders. It’s that idea of
drawing ATVs from all over the state that freaks them out, and Pomroy has her own reasons
for opposing a trail here, where the Cloquet River has its beginning: wood turtles.
Pomroy is a biologist. She says this area is a refuge for the turtles. They’re endangered in
most of their range, and listed as a threatened species in Minnesota.


Wood turtles bury their eggs in sandy soil. Pomroy says they would love to bury their
eggs in soil disturbed by ATVs, but the eggs wouldn’t survive:


“Even stepping on a nest, which is buried in soil, don’t know there are eggs there, is
enough to destroy the eggs.”


The trail is on hold for now, while county officials and ATV riders try to come up with
an alternative. Concern about damage to sensitive environmental areas is one of the chief
reasons many environmentalists don’t like the idea of letting ATVs into parks.


Jason Kiely is with Wildlands CPR, a national non-profit group that works to prevent off-
road vehicle damage on public land. He says fights over ATV trails are inevitable, as
long as public agencies don’t involve all park users in a comprehensive planning process.


“Primarily because off-road vehicles affect every other use of the forest so significantly.
So we advocate for doing comprehensive travel and recreation planning, not just trying to
carve off the ATV piece, but multi-stakeholder planning efforts that offer something to
everyone.”


Kiely says the US Forest Service and many state agencies have a lot of work to do, to
find the right balance between preserving nature and allowing ATV riders to have their
fun on public land


For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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