Harvesting sugar beets. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
A new genetically modified crop will be
growing in farm fields next spring. Sugar beet
farmers have been cleared to plant beets that are
resistant to an herbicide known as Roundup. It will
be the first genetically engineered food crop to be
introduced since the 1990s. Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
A new genetically modified crop will be growing in farm fields next spring. Sugar beet
farmers have been cleared to plant beets that are resistant to an herbicide known as
Roundup. It will be the first genetically engineered food crop to be introduced since the
1990s. Mark Brush has more:
A little more than half of the sugar we use comes from sugar beets. Some beet farmers
are excited about the prospect of a genetically modified beet that won’t be killed by the
herbicide Roundup. So an entire field can be sprayed with Roundup – crops and all – to
kill weeds.
Bill Freese is with the environmental group Center for Food Safety. He says the new
engineered sugar beet is just one more crop that will make us more reliant on pesticides:
“Most of the research being done is on more herbicide resistant crops. So where the
biotechnology industry is taking us is to a world where more and more chemicals will be
sprayed.”
The industry has long maintained that Roundup and similar products don’t pollute
waterways the way other pesticides do. But the widespread use of Roundup has led to
more herbicide resistant weeds – that some people call ‘super-weeds.’
Retail groups say consumers will purchase nearly one-third of their holiday gifts
online this year. Using your computer to shop might help you beat high gas prices and
pollute less. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Retail groups say consumers will purchase nearly one-third of their holiday gifts
online this year. Using your computer to shop might help you beat high gas prices and
pollute less. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Ordering items online usually means less driving around to retail outlets, and at
the price of gas, your savings can add up. But online orders often mean a
delivery truck still has to bring you a product.
Bryan Welch of the website EarthMoment.com says you can even cut the
delivery company’s costs and vehicle pollution by having items sent to your
workplace:
“If you work in an office, in all likelihood there are several deliveries a day to that
office already. So there’s no incremental energy used to deliver one more little
box to you at the office.”
Earth Moment is owned by Ogden Publications. It’s also running a program
where money from some online purchases goes to reforestation projects and
other means of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.
Todd Forrest at the New York Botanical Garden's Ladies Border Garden. (Photo by Brad Linder)
The Ladies Border Garden at the New York Botanical Garden. (Photo by Brad Linder)
Marielle Anzelone instructs a crew working on a native plant garden in New York's Union Square. (Photo by Brad Linder)
Marielle Anzelone works on a native plant garden in New York's Union Square. (Photo by Brad Linder)
When you think about global warming, you probably think about polar ice caps
melting and rising sea levels. But climate change is also having a more immediate
effect — on gardeners. As average temperatures rise, many gardeners are finding
they can grow non-native plants in their back yards. Brad Linder visited one public
garden that’s been nicknamed “the global warming garden”:
Transcript
When you think about global warming, you probably think about polar ice caps
melting and rising sea levels. But climate change is also having a more immediate
effect — on gardeners. As average temperatures rise, many gardeners are finding
they can grow non-native plants in their back yards. Brad Linder visited one public
garden that’s been nicknamed “the global warming garden”:
Most gardeners know there are some plants they’ll never be able to grow, because
of the climate where they live. But the Earth’s climate is changing, and that means
plants that normally grow in the southern United States are thriving as far north as
New York City:
“This Japanese Flowering Apricot, prunus mume. This is a plant that’s widely
grown further south. It’s actually native originally to China, but it’s beloved in Japan.”
Todd Forrest is vice president for horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden:
“And so what we’ve found with climate change is that this plant survives, because
the winter temperatures are on average warmer. But because there’s variability in
our local climate, it will often have its flowers burned by frost.”
Forrest is walking through the Ladies Border Garden, an experimental section of the
Botanical Garden designed to demonstrate the impact of climate change on plants.
Forrest sometimes calls the Ladies Border “the global warming garden,” because
most of the plants are species that couldn’t have grown in this area a few decades
ago.
Climate change probably has been affecting plants and gardeners for years. But
Forrest says it’s only recently that people have put two and two together and realized
that unpredictable weather patterns are affecting their herb gardens:
“Gardeners at times suffer the sort of head in the sand syndrome. They’re so
obsessed with and attuned to their individual garden and climate. And we’re all used
to being frustrated by the weather. I think for a long time we all just sort of ascribed
whatever change there was or variability to that darn weather again. Acting up.
Raining when it should be dry. Dry when it should be raining. Cold when it should be
warm.”
In some ways, the Ladies Border Garden shows how exciting global warming can
be for gardeners. You can grow all sorts of exotic plants in your backyard if you don’t
have to deal with the long cold winters you’re used to.
Forrest has been able to get dozens of unusual plants to grow in New York, including
Choysia and even a Himalayan Fan Palm. That’s right, a palm tree growing in New
York City.
But just because you can grow non-native plants doesn’t mean you should. Because
foreign plants can easily become invasive species, killing off local plants.
Marielle Anzelone is a botanist and garden designer. Her specialty is working with
local plants. Today she’s planting a native-species garden in a public park:
“All the plants are going to have little signs in front of them that say what they are,
because it’s meant to be educational. People should see a plant, say oh, it’s
gorgeous. Want it. Oh, it’s vibernum nutem. And then run out to their nursery
and get it.”
Anzelone says many people don’t realize how beautiful local plants are. For
example, she says people often buy wreaths made of Asiatic Bittersweet vines —
even though it’s an invasive species that’s been killing off American Bittersweet:
“And people maybe then who hang the wreath outside on their door. A bird comes
and eats the berries and poops it out in Prospect Park or Central Park. I mean, that
is how these things get around. So it’s not just your world in a vacuum and nothing
comes to your garden. I mean, birds travel, insects travel.”
That’s why, under normal circumstances, gardeners have to be careful what they
plant in their backyards. Because non-native plants have a way of spreading and
competing with local plants, and climate change complicates things by making it
easier for invasive species to spread:
“The thing that keeps me up at night is not global warming. It’s extinction crisis. And I
think people think a lot about extinction as being this big dramatic thing. It’s a fire, it’s
an oil spill. But actually it doesn’t work that way. Extinction happens on a small scale
all the time.”
As the climate changes, Anzelone says she understands that gardeners will want to
try new things. But she says they shouldn’t forget about native plants, which feed
native insects and animals.
The New York Botanical Garden’s Todd Forrest admits that the Ladies Border
Garden is both exciting and disturbing. While he can demonstrate that new plants
will grow in New York, he knows that global warming is also killing off plants that
have lived here for thousands of years.
Botulism is killing fish and the shorebirds that eat them. The cause is likely due to a disruption in the ecosystem by invasive zebra and quagga mussels. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Shorebirds find fish sick from botulism toxin easy pickings. Unfortunately, that easy meal often kills the birds. (Photo by Lester Graham)
A deadly toxin is killing fish and birds along the Great Lakes shoreline.
Researchers think type-E botulism works its way up the food chain from
the bottom of the lake through several invasive species. Bob Allen
reports:
Transcript
A deadly toxin is killing fish and birds along the Great Lakes shoreline.
Researchers think type-E botulism works its way up the food chain from
the bottom of the lake through several invasive species. Bob Allen
reports:
These days, Ken Hyde dreads walking the pristine sandy beaches along
the Sleeping Bear Dunes. He’s the biologist in this national lakeshore
along the Michigan coast, and he only has to hike maybe a hundred feet
to find a dead bird twisted head down and half-buried in the sand:
“This is a cormorant. Just in the last two or three weeks we’re
starting to see a lot more of them. So they’re probably starting to
migrate down from the upper parts of the lake.”
Last year botulism killed over 2,500 dead birds along this 35 mile stretch
of shoreline, mostly gulls and diving ducks, including nearly 200 loons
migrating south from Canada.
This year the die-offs started earlier in the summer and struck more
species. The park lost four endangered piping plovers. The National Park
Service brought in a research team from Minnesota to look for answers.
They’ve been diving in the lakeshore now for two years.
What they’ve found is a huge shoal stretching more than a mile off shore.
It’s covered with native green algae and loaded with invasive zebra and
quagga mussels:
The Park’s research boat docks at a small village along Lake Michigan.
Dive team leader Brenda Moraska Lafrancois was surprised when she
first saw the underwater landscape:
“Last year when we first dove this area we went down and it was
shocking how little of the biomass down there was native. I think
we’re looking at a really altered system.”
Here’s what researchers know so far. The mussels filter nutrients from
the water, the clearer water allows more sunlight to reach the bottom, and
that spurs more algae growth. For good measure, the mussels excrete
phosphorus, in effect fertilizing the algae in the near shore zone. When
millions of mussels and big globs of algae begin to decompose, that uses up
most of the oxygen in water near the bottom of the lake, and that’s a
condition just right for a naturally occurring botulism to grow.
So how does the botulism migrate from the bottom to the surface and
poison shorebirds? Enter the round goby. It’s a small invasive fish that
comes from the same Caspian Sea area where zebra mussels originated.
Last year the research team at Sleeping Bear saw gobies in some places.
Now, says Byron Carnes, everywhere they looked when diving on algae
beds there solid sheets of mussels and blankets of gobies, and he
watched them feeding on mussels:
“Part of the zebra quagga mussel that is the juiciest these guys tend
to go right in and do this frenzy feeding where they just come in and
start pounding away at all the broken shells and trying to get out as
much of the good stuff inside the quagga mussel as they possibly
can.”
Mussels don’t have a nervous system, so they aren’t harmed by botulism
toxin. But when gobies get a dose they flop around on the surface for a
day or so while succumbing, and that’s when shorebirds pick up an easy
but potentially deadly meal.
Some diving ducks may also get poisoned by feeding directly on the
mussels. That’s the theory most scientists in the field think explains
what’s happening, but Harvey Bootsma says it’s not active all the time, so
it’s hard to prove each step. He’s with the Great Lakes Water Institute in
Milwaukee:
“I think the problem is it’s usually a sporadic and short-lived event
when this occurs. And unless somebody happens to be fortuitously
collecting the right samples at the right place and the right time it”s
very difficult to pin down the process as it’s occurring.”
While researchers try to pin down the effects of invasive species in one
place, the cycle spins off somewhere else. This fall there are half as
many dead birds along the Sleeping Bear Dunes shore as last year, but
the die-off is now spreading farther north along the Lake Michigan coast,
and there have been similar outbreaks along Lakes Erie and Huron.
So far Harvey Bootsma says there are no good solutions to break the
cycle of algae, mussels and gobies that scientists think is transporting
botulism toxin to shorebirds.
“And it’s just a great example of how huge an impact a new species
can have on an ecosystem. And I think it makes it all the more
imperative that we try to stem the tide of exotic species coming into
the Great Lakes.”
Researchers say it may take decades for the Great Lakes to recover from
the effects, if they ever do.
A solar panel installation training program run by Grid Alternatives. (Photo by Kristi Coale)
Renewable energy industries are worth 40 billion dollars a year worldwide. (Photo by Kristi Coale)
A new employment program is tying the need low-income people have for
good-paying work to the imperative of meeting the nation’s growing energy
demands. The “green jobs” movement trains out-of-work people and former
blue-collar workers to install solar, wind and other alternative energy
systems at homes and businesses. Kristi Coale reports what started as a
local program might soon be coming to the rest of the nation:
Transcript
A new employment program is tying the need low-income people have for
good-paying work to the imperative of meeting the nation’s growing energy
demands. The “green jobs” movement trains out-of-work people and former
blue-collar workers to install solar, wind and other alternative energy
systems at homes and businesses. Kristi Coale reports what started as a
local program might soon be coming to the rest of the nation:
It’s a sweltering, sunny day – one when people are encouraged to reduce
their energy use. And so it’s fitting that a small group of young adults is
busily installing solar panels on the roof of a house.
People honk their car horns as they drive past this house. Solar power is
supported here in California. The workers on the rooftop stop to cheer, clap,
and pump their fists in response. The atmosphere here is electric. And that’s
to be expected because these young trainees, like Andre Collins, are the
embodiment of a vision, one that takes low-income people, often people of
color, and trains them to work in the fast-growing alternative energy
industry.
“They’re green jobs, because they’re healthy and right for the people and the
environment and they’re green also because they’re taking the people who
would otherwise be poor and putting green in their pockets.”
Andre Collins is one of 15 people who are completing a 9-week training
program in solar panel installation. This program is run by Grid Alternatives,
a non-profit that installs solar in low-income communities. Grid uses
volunteers recruited by local youth employment and job training
organizations. This installation is a graduation of sorts and so these trainees
are thinking about the job market.
“I’m just proud to be a part of this, and I can’t wait to make money.”
Some non-profits are stepping up to make training programs like this
possible. So are cities. The city council in Oakland, California approved a
quarter of a million dollars for such a program, a sum that’s possible thanks
to a settlement between energy companies and the State of California. Six
years ago, when rolling blackouts hit California, companies such as Enron
raised their rates. While Enron and others didn’t admit to any wrongdoing,
they gave the state one billion dollars. Some of that money is being used to
train lower-income people in what’s come to be known as green jobs…
installing solar panels and tankless hot water heaters, converting vegetable
oil to fuel.
Renewable energy industries are worth big money, already 40 billion dollars
a year worldwide. These new industries hold the promise of putting tens of
thousands of people to work in the U.S. Van Jones is president of the Ella
Baker Center for Human Rights. He says support for green jobs is redefining
the environmental movement:
“…A social uplift environmentalism that is less about the Birkenstocks and
the tofu, though that stuff is all beautiful. It’s more about the hard hat, the
lunch bucket, more of a working class, we-can-do-it environmentalism I
think is the next step in the environmental revolution.”
Jones is leading that revolution in cities like his hometown of Oakland,
which has fallen on hard times. Jones says what’s missing in struggling blue-
collar cities like Oakland are good-paying, skilled labor jobs, jobs that used
to come through unions.
“And it’s time to really rebuild the labor movement with we think the new
face of working class America which is more Latino, more black, more
Asian and also with a new consciousness around doing things in a more
ecologically smart way.”
Oakland is the first city to declare a green jobs corps. But there could be
many more. Cities across the country might get a chance to start their own
programs, thanks to pending federal legislation:
“This bill will allow for three million workers here to be able to enjoy this
kind of training and advancement.”
That’s California Congresswoman Hilda Solis describing a bill she’s
authored in a YouTube video. The Green Jobs Act of 2007 proposes to
dedicate a half a billion dollars to train people to do green collar work. This
fall, the U.S. Senate will take up Solis’ bill. Many believe creating green jobs
will not only revitalize the economy and the environment, but also reinsert
something that has long been missing from these communities: hope.
Across the country, urban rivers that were once used almost
exclusively for industrial purposes are being reclaimed as parks.
Recently, a little island in New York City’s east river took the first
steps to becoming a nature preserve. Nora Flaherty has this report:
Transcript
Across the country, urban rivers that were once used almost
exclusively for industrial purposes are being reclaimed as parks.
Recently, a little island in New York City’s east river took the first
steps to becoming a nature preserve. Nora Flaherty has this report:
New York City’s south Brother Island used to belong to a gravel
and sand company. In spite of this, the island is a wild place, and
one that’s home to hundreds of herons and other birds, it’s also a
stopover on the Atlantic flyway migration. And now it’s the
property of New York City.
Rose Harvey is the mid-Atlantic regional director of the Trust For
Public Land. She says places like South Brother Island are a
national priority:
“We are pretty much working on all the coasts in the bays in the estuaries along the rivers
in the urban areas to ensure that the urban rivers and [all] are protected as much as the
more rural and remote areas.”
Harvey says that although New York residents won’t be able to use
the land for recreation, there’s value in just being able to see a
wild place from the riverbank.
An environmental marketing firm wants shoppers to be a little more discerning this
holiday season. They say a practice known as ‘green-washing’ is alive and well. That’s
when companies make false or misleading environmental claims about their products.
Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
An environmental marketing firm wants shoppers to be a little more discerning this
holiday season. They say a practice known as ‘green-washing’ is alive and well. That’s
when companies make false or misleading environmental claims about their products.
Mark Brush has more:
The marketing firm Terra Choice looked at more than a-thousand products making
environmental claims. They said all but one product made false or misleading
statements. They found most companies are not lying about what they sell. But they are
making statements that disguise a product’s total environmental impact.
Scot Case is with Terra Choice. He says one example of green-washing is the little green
dot on some canisters of shaving cream or hair sprays marked ‘no CFCs’:
“And that makes it seems like, ‘Oh, this is an environmentally friendly product.’ Except
CFCs were banned in 1978. So all that green dot is really saying is ‘Hey, we’re obeying
the law.’ Well whoop dee doo dah. That is not helping me buy a more environmentally
friendly product.”
Case says consumers should look at all products making environmental claims with
skepticism.
A new study finds that exposure to even very low lead levels can cause
brain damage in children. Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
A new study finds that exposure to even very low lead levels can cause
brain damage in children. Rebecca Williams reports:
Children can be exposed to lead through lead-based paint in homes, or
lead in imported toys or other products.
The researchers looked at children with lead levels in their blood that
were below the level the federal government considers to be dangerous.
They studied the children over a six year period. And found that
children exposed to lead at very low levels had reduced IQ scores by 5
points.
Richard Canfield is a senior author of the study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives:
“The evidence at this point is quite strong that meaningful effects on
children’s cognitive performance are due to small amounts of lead and
in fact, amounts below what the current regulations allow.”
Canfield says no one knows at this point if there is any safe level of
lead exposure.
Joe Reilly and poetry writer Nora sing at a CD release party for Joe's album. (Photo by Chris Reilly)
A group shot of all involved with the CD project. (Photo by Chris Reilly)
Singer-songwriter Joe Reilly recently made an album with kids. The songs on the album are all about nature. Reilly discovered that when it comes to writing and singing about nature, some of these kids are wise beyond their years. Kyle Norris has this story:
Transcript
Singer-songwriter Joe Reilly recently made an album with kids. The songs on the album are all about nature. Reilly discovered that when it comes to writing and singing about nature, some of these kids are wise beyond their years. Kyle Norris has this story:
It’s hard to get kids to think outside their own little world. Let alone get them to think about the entire planet. But Joe Reilly seems to have a knack for getting kids to think big. And to talk about something pretty big, nature. He does it with music:
“Realizing the way that music can reach a place in any person, but especially in a kid that is a place of excitement and inspiration, there’s really like a magic there.”
Joe Reilly recently wrote an entire album with kids. He’d ask the kids open-ended questions, like “why is it important to protect the river?” And then he’d weave their answers into lyrics. He had one song with music, but no words. And then he heard a poem written by one of his ten-year old students. The poem by Nora Sinnett blew him out of the water. Reilly asked Nora if she was willing to read the poem over the song’s music.
(Song lyrics): “I am important. I may be only a whisper in a sea of voices. I may be only a blade of grass on a lawn. I may be one flower in a garden, a minnow in an ocean, a grain of sand on a beach, one star in the sky. But I am important. I matter. I stand tall. I am proud.”
She says she wrote the poem one day while she was hanging out in her grandpa’s library and she was just feeling kind of blue:
“I just like, saw a little ray of sunshine in window and I thought wow, that little ray of sunshine is really small but without that little ray of sunshine there wouldn’t be any other bits of sunshine. Then the room would just be dark. It just made me feel like I’m important because like, there’s only one leaf on a tree but without leaves the tree would be really bare. So little things make up big things.”
At a benefit show for the CD, Nora and Joe performed the song together. Afterwards, a mob of children and adults surrounded Nora. Kim Hunter is a poet and writer-in-residence in the Detroit schools. He was one of the people congratulating her.
“She has some really great metaphors in there. She’s a small person but she still, as says in poem, stands tall. And that’s, for a ten-year-old, a pretty sophisticated metaphor, and she employed it in a lot of different situations. It was a good poem.”
Hunter wasn’t the only person who thought it was a good poem. Songwriter Joe Reilly jokes that he’s been writing longer than Nora has been alive. He says he wishes he could write things as profound as Nora’s poem:
“I think there’s a real power in giving kids a voice and they can speak to adults and other kids, in a way we grown folks can’t always do.”
When Joe Reilly was a kid the adults in his life taught him about music and nature. He spent a lot of time exploring both of these things. He says they helped him to feel safe and good. These days, music and nature give him hope, which he says is a welcome change. To the hopelessness he feels about the environment and the future:
“When I can sit and make music with kids about how the beautiful earth is and how we want to celebrate our connections and inter-connections with all living beings. That just takes me beyond that despair, and it anchors me in some kind of hope.”
Reilly says that if he had sat down alone and tried to write a bunch of songs about nature, the songs would have been more serious. And not as fun. And silly. And lighthearted as it was with the kids. Like in this song. Where Joe and the kids invented a word to rhyme with river:
(Song): “Shibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby diver/We got a song about the Huron River/Water is such an important life-giver/We will protect it we will deliver”
Cities can expand mass transit, getting more cars off the road and giving people more options to help reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Clive Doucet is a city councilor in Ottawa, Ontario. He is campaigning for cities to tackle the problems of global warming because he feels national governments aren’t doing enough fast enough. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Clive Doucet argues that cities can do more to reduce emissions that lead to global warming. Standing at a busy intersection in his town of Ottawa, Ontario he said, "This kind of street is a community killer, it's a planet killer." He says cities should be built for people, not for cars. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Census figures show that more and more North Americans are now living in cities. For those who want to fight climate change, that means changing the way these urban folks live. In the second of a two-part series on climate change, Karen Kelly has the story of one city councilor who’s made that his mission:
Transcript
Census figures show that more and more North Americans are now living in cities. For those who want to fight climate change, that means changing the way these urban folks live. In the second of a two-part series on climate change, Karen Kelly has the story of one city councilor who’s made that his mission:
“We’re at Bronson and Fifth. It’s a four lane roadway into Ottawa.”
Clive Doucet is a city councilor in Ottawa, Canada’s capital. He’s standing about half a block from where he lives:
“This kind of street is a community killer, it’s a planet killer. It’s the fruit of 5,560 years of building cities for cars and not human beings.”
Doucet loves cities, which is why it pains him to see a once-beautiful neighborhood street become, as he calls it, a traffic sewer. It’s loud, it’s polluted, and it’s not safe. Three pedestrians have been killed near this corner in the past five years, and there’ve been many accidents.
Doucet was an activist for a long time, but after running for city council he realized the city has the power to change the climate. It builds the roads and it controls the public transportation:
“Public transit has, every environmentalist knows is one of the main keys to solving the environmental crisis. I mean, 45 to 50 percent of greenhouse gases come out of our use of land and the tailpipes of cars and trucks. We can get rid of most of that and we can not change our lifestyle one bit; in fact, we can make it better.”
Doucet hops on his bike to show what he means. He winds through the traffic and then stops along Ottawa’s five-mile-long light rail track:
“This runs parallel to the road we were just on. It’s a test line. It carries a hundred and 50 passengers every 15 minutes and when we get the two lines up and running, it will carry three times the traffic or more as Bronson and it’s quiet. We’re standing at the station now. You’re like in a church. See the train’s coming. Do you hear any noise? It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Doucet’s vision for his city is a comprehensive light rail system. He says it will reduce air and noise pollution, and make the city friendlier for pedestrians and cyclists, but Doucet is thinking about the bigger picture, too. And there, he’s not optimistic. He’s noticed that the winters in Ottawa are warmer now, and that’s disturbing for people because they really embrace winter.
Almost every park has an outdoor hockey rink, and people ice skate, not just for pleasure, but to get around. Doucet says he’s afraid that climate change will destroy what makes his city special:
“It’s incredibly sad. I mean, I’ve skated to work all my life and I live about a block from the canal I take my skates down and I’d skate to work and skate home. And I’ve seen countless marvelous sunrises on the canal. It is difficult to imagine my life without that. Those experiences have given my life poetry.”
Doucet says he’s pretty much given up hope on the federal government. He says they’re too beholden to big industry to really curb the emissions that cause climate change.
But at the local level? He says a lot can be done.
He recently wrote a book, Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual. In it, he says it’s time for city residents to get tough:
“Go after your municipal politicians and say, you know something, we want to have a city that’s pedestrian-based, that’s public transit-based and we want you to stop building roads. You can do stuff about your local government and the way you live locally.”
Doucet wouldn’t say it’s easy. Last year, Ottawa signed a contract to expand its light rail system. Then, a new mayor came in and the plan was scrapped. Doucet thinks it will happen eventually, but in the meantime, he’s still fighting the rush hour traffic on his bicycle.
Harvesting sugar beets. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
