radiofree.asia

Category: Agriculture

  • Divided We Stand: Eleven Regional Rivalries from Mountain People to the Swamps of Dixie

    Orientation

    The reason Yankee fans and Red Sox fans hate each other goes a lot deeper than sports. In his book American Nations, Colin Woodard identifies eleven regional cultures in the United States. He compares the conditions of the home country, settler conditions, climate, geography, religious history, population density and international loyalties. He points out the parallels between how settlers’ regional locations in England impacted the type of regional culture they developed in the United States. My purpose in this article is to:

    • reveal the political bankruptcy of trying to fit eleven different regions into two political parties; and,
    • reveal the economic bankruptcy of industrial capitalists in forming a single nation-state by attempting to pulverize the differences between these regions.

    There are good reasons why the United States has rarely, if ever, unified, whether in war or peace. The notion that we were and are united  is pure political and economic propaganda.

    Questions about regional rivalries

    • How might the time of settlement affect the culture of the region and how might the region feel about other regions?
    • How might the country of origin and its politics (feudal, capitalist) affect the politics of the region and how might that region feel about different regions?
    • How might the geography (rivers, rainfall, flat-mountainous, valleys, plains) and means of subsistence (hunting, fishing, farming, herding, trading, industry) affect the culture of the region and how might that region feel about different regions?
    • How might the religion of the region affect the culture and how might that region feel about different regions?
    • How might the size of the population of the region (dense or sparse) affect the culture of the region and how might that region feel about different regions?
    • How might the history of the region’s relationship with immigrants or native Americans affect the culture of the region and how might that region feel about other regions?
    • Given the answer to the first six questions, which regions will have the greatest tensions? Why might they have these tensions?
    • The author of the book implies that the United States is too big for a single nation-state. Whether you agree or not, are there any regions that might have enough in common to join together? Or would it be better to be broken into regions that become nation-states like European states?

    I cannot address all these questions in this article. I intend to answer most of them and leave the rest to stimulate your thinking.

    Issues that Divided the Regions of the United States

    The federal government of the United States only began to try to unify the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific after the Civil War with massive architecture, street names, and flags in every classroom. it is questionable how successful they have been. To talk about a common national experience over such a large territory confronts many problems.

    David Hackett Fischer in his book, Albion’s Seed, identified four major regions in the United States with significant differences in their means of subsistence, their religion, the conditions of settlement and the parts of England these first settlers were from. In his book American Nations, Colin Woodard has expanded these settlements from four to eleven regions. Please see Table A to understand which country of Europe settled the region, the time of settlement and the region of the U.S. it occupied.

    For this section I will be following Woodard’s description. According to him, Americans have been divided since the days of Jamestown and Plymouth. Colonists saw each other as competitors for people to settle their land, for the land itself, as well their ability to draw capital to their settlement. Here are some of the issues that divided the colonies:

    • Loyalty to England: Royalist Virginia (Tidewater) vs Yankee Massachusetts
    • Individualism: Yankees and New Netherlands were for individualism vs social reform orientation of New France
    • Religion: Puritanism (Yankees, New England) vs Quakers’ freedom of conscience (Midlanders). In addition, there was a tension between the liberal and evangelical spectrum about how to practice their religion.
    • Politics:  The importance of politics for the Deep South and the Yankees as opposed to apathy to politics of the Quakers (Midlanders)
    • Use of force: Active use of force by Tidewater, the Deep South and Appalachia vs Midlanders, (Quakers) non-violence.
    • Secession: Not only Tidewater and the Deep South, but Appalachia and New England also considered secession.

    These regions had differences in religion between Catholics, Puritans, Anglicans, Quakers and Mormons. Each region differed in the kind of work people did, from cattle rearing, hunting, fishing, fur trapping, agricultural capitalism (producing tobacco, sugar and cotton), subsistence farming, herding, and industrial production (mining, railroad work and smelting). These regions were formed with different intentions including for religious purposes, commercial purposes, political independence or as a home for refugees. The politics of the regions differed drastically, from authoritarian (Deep South) to egalitarian (New France) to liberal (New England town-hall and the Left Coast) to classical republican (Tidewater) to libertarian (Far West).

    Regionalists in the U.S. respected neither state nor international boundaries. It was only when England began to treat these colonies as a single unit and implemented policies that threatened them all, that they formed a united force. It is important to realize the uniting against an enemy does not create unification after the confrontation is over. After all, the greatest regional battle in US history occurred almost a hundred years after Independence Day.

    Woodard points out that Americans are one of the only countries in the world who do not make a distinction between a statehood and nationhood. A state is a sovereign political body that monopolizes the means of violence. A nation is a group who share a common culture, ethnic origin, language, historical experience, artifacts and symbols. Some nations are stateless like the Kurdish, Palestinians and Quebecers. Most agricultural states such as Egypt, China, Mesopotamia and India had states without being a single nation (Anthony D. Smith’s work is great for these distinctions). Using these criteria, the regions of the country are like the “nations” of America. Americans may have a federal state, but not a single nation. Before turning to the predominant struggle between regions, Table B contains a close-up of the differences between all eleven regions.

    Neither the American Revolution Nor the Civil War United the Regions

    It is tempting to think that the revolutionary war against England united the regions. This is far from true. Native Americans fought on both sides of the revolutionary war. It was the New England Yankees that were the backbone of the revolution. New Netherlands was the stronghold of the loyalists after England drove out the Dutch. In the Midlands:

    The region would not have rebelled at all, if a majority of the states attending the Second Continental Congress hadn’t voted to suppress Pennsylvania’s government (132)

    Until the battle of Lexington, the Deep South was torn as to who to join until it was rumored that the British were smuggling arms to the slaves. It was the prospect of freed slaves that made them fight the English. Southern Appalachia fought on the side of the English and lost.

    Neither did the Civil War pulverize the regions into two. Woodard says that the Civil War was a conflict between two coalitions of the Deep South and Tidewater against the Yankees. The other regions wanted to remain neutral and were considering breaking off into their own confederations

    The Conflict Between the South and the East Prior to the 19th Century

    Slave aristocracy of the Deep South

    To begin with, there was an aristocracy in the thirteen colonies  but this aristocracy did not rule over peasants who did subsistence farming. The plantation owners of the South ruled over slaves who produced commercial goods of sugar, tobacco and cotton for a world market. In the East, there were university educated professionals of lawyers and clergy(“Brahmins”) who joined with merchants attempting to develop home industry (rather than trade with England, as the plantation owners did.)

    All regions are not economically equal

    While all eleven regions had their conflicts with each other, some regions were settled longer and they concentrated more economic wealth at their disposal. For example, the mountain people Appalachia herded sheep, pigs and goats. They were in no position to compete for cultural dominance with the planters of Tidewater or the Deep South. The settlers of what became known as New France made their home in Canada and in Louisiana. They were fisherman, fur-trappers, and hunters. They could not compete with the Yankees of the Northeast or the fur traders of New York. Even those with capital who settled late, as in the Far West, did not have centuries to build up a culture the way those in Tidewater, the Deep South, Yankeedom and New Netherlands did. These regions had over a 200-year head start.

    What does it mean to be an American?

    When we compare the civilizational processes of the United States, we are really talking about the differences between the New Englanders, New Netherlands and Midlands and to a lesser extent, Appalachia. It is from these regions that the concept of an American grew. In the case of the other regions, El Norte was long abandoned by the Spanish and New France by the French. Both these regions were inhabited by people who never accumulated capital. Native American tribes were decimated. Tidewater and the Deep South are not cultures which are  termed “American”. While the Far West and the Left Coast certainly had wealth, they were settled too late to have civilizational impact.

    There is a reason I am focused on the initial time of first settlement and not discussing these regions all the way to the present. It has to do with Wilbur Zelinsky’s “first effective settlement law”which says:

    Whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement, or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to affect a viable self- perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settler may have been. (American Nations, 16)

    The fundamental arena in which American civilization played itself out, is between Tidewater and the Deep South on the one hand, and the Yankees and New Netherlands on the other. Civil War historians might call this the battle between the “North and the South”, but this crudely lumps the eleven regions we discussed into two. The people of Appalachia might technically be in the South but they always had animosity to the planters. The Midlanders of the North might have sided with Yankees and New Netherlands against the slave traders, but they were not industrial capitalists who had a material interest in luring poor farmers into their factories. Therefore, there are two processes of being civilized in the United States, one southern and the other East and Central parts of the United States.

    Culture of honor in Colonial South

    Roger Lane, in his book Murder in America: A History, traced the major differences between the North and the South to a southern “culture of honor” that did not exist in the North. But where does this culture of honor come from? Lane argues that the process begins when we examine the differences in the kinds of work people did in the regions of England that they came from before settling in America. The inhabitants of Tidewater came from the Scotch-Irish borderlands of Britain where they engaged in herding. With moveable property, herders always had to be on guard, otherwise their animals might be stolen. Because herding was a difficult life, herders were not competing with many other herders for grazing ground. The sparseness of the settlement pattern makes it difficult for herders to rely on others to protect their land.

    Lastly, in both the borderlands of Britain or the areas of Virginia in which they settled, there was no centralized state to act as law enforcement. Under these conditions, herders develop very rigid protective mechanisms, being suspicious quickly, while reading body language for potential thievery. The culture of honor occurs when people cultivate a trust among equals. A culture of violence is the result of what happens when the culture of honor is violated. Someone who does not stand up for themselves has a sense of deep shame among herders. He has a reputation to defend. If insulted, the insult is addressed publicly in a duel or family feud.

    Culture of Dignity in the Colonial North

    On the other hand, the New England farmers came from East Anglia in England where farming was practiced.  Farming lends itself to living in close quarters, thus providing a social protection against theft. In addition, once they settled in New England, they lived near large cities and under the rule of law. This meant there was some legal ground for recovering stolen property. These conditions meant that farmers did not cultivate suspicion and a code of honor. Consequently, they were less likely to kill as a result of stolen property. Rather, the farmer cultivated a sense of “dignity” based on universal rights. These farmers were more likely to be self-constrained and feel guilty over imagined violations over God’s law. Violations are less likely to be settled publicly. Farmers do not engage in duels. Though farmers have been known to engage in family feuds, farmers are just as likely to bring their case to the law, depending on the region of the country and the social class of the farmer.

    The South and the East in the 19th Century

    By the 19th century, the capitalist interests in New England and New York area had crystalized into an investment in industry, building factories for textiles and railroads for transport. This form of capitalism was irreconcilable with the plantation economy of the South. As mass commodity production spread and geographical mobility of workers increased, it became more and more important that consumers were able to get along with strangers as they bought and sold goods. What being “civilized” in the East meant to treat strangers with an even-handed polite indifference or “tolerance”. It was also civilized for industrial capitalists to have same values as the Puritans: hard work, punctuality, planning and investing. In the East, the industrial capitalists were liberal politically.  To be conservative in the North in the 19th century had more to do with holding on to rural, Puritan traditions.

    The plantation owners in the South had very different notions of what was civilized. In plantation life, most everyone knew everyone else and among other plantation owners there was a culture of honor which carried over from their south English heritage. Between plantation owners and slaves there was a deep expectation of deference. Encounters with strangers were much more loaded. While the Eastern cities cultivated a cool indifference to strangers, in the South what was civilized was “southern hospitality”, which meant bringing hospitality to a stranger. This meant being generous with time, food and culture. But strangers who, for whatever reason, were not candidates for southern hospitality were not ignored. They were driven out or killed.

    Southern gentleman planters, like their aristocratic brothers in Europe, had a contempt for hard work and Puritanical values. What was civilized to them was the cultivation of taste in the arts, in manners and in clothing. For them, being civilized meant to enjoy life and display wealth. Politically, the Southern planters justified their existence as classical republicans who believed that liberty was only for the upper classes. They were contemptuous of the Enlightenment value of science and technology and saw themselves as the inheritors of Roman values. Please see Table C for a summary of these regions.

    Manners in the East, the Midlands and Appalachia

    Tocqueville famously commented that on one hand, Jacksonian America was far more egalitarian than anywhere in Europe, and less deferential. However, there was more bragging. His explanation was because of a lack of clear class boundaries, people bragged as a way to establish a status of which they remained unsure. According to  Stephen Mennell, (The American Civilizing Process) both Hegel and De Maistre commented on the lack of manners in America. Baudelaire described America in the 1850s as “a great hunk of barbarism illuminated by gas… a construction of hardened chewing gum and idiotic folklore.” Complaints about Americans chewing tobacco were common by Europeans. By the mid-19th century, Europeans also commented on what they saw as a general American obsession with cleanliness. But Yankees weren’t always like this.

    Those who washed daily did so at the kitchen sink. Soap was mainly used for laundering clothes. By the 1830s, the bathtub and daily bath were beginning to spread beyond the very rich. Immigrants new to cities were taught by social workers, educators and employers how, where and how often to bathe with soap and warm water (66). In 1840, only a tiny minority of the wealthy city-dwellers had running water and flushing water closets in their homes (65). (The American Civilizing Process)

    According to Mennell, books about American manners penetrated deeper into the class structure, in part because of the lack of the English social elite in the colonies to draw inspiration from and because a higher number of lower-class people could read.

    How Did Frontiersmen See Eastern and Midlands Civilization?   

    Mennell says that the following stereotypes were common among frontiersman about people in eastern cities. The East was seen as decadent, whereas the frontier was pristine. The East was mired in interdependent social ties such as proletarians linked to wage labor and factories in cities. The frontier, on the other hand, was the home of independent hunters, fur-trappers, ranchers or miners who called their own shots. While the East was the home of elite bankers and industrialists, there was a rough social equality on the frontier.

    But what does living in a country with a frontier do to the civilizational process? Turner, in his book The Frontier in American History, traced the steady penetration of the frontier westward from the eastern seaboard in the 17th century all the way to the Rocky Mountains in the 19th. century. He distinguishes three phases:

    • the traders’ frontier—characteristic of French colonization and fur trade
    • the miners’ and ranchers’ frontier of the West
    • farmers’ frontier—which left the trademark of the English in the Midlands

    Turner argued that the constant availability of free land meant that Americans would be less in danger of creating elite hierarchies because these hierarchies would be broken up since there was a constant return to more primitive conditions.

    The Uncivilized Nature of the Frontier

    According to Mennell, when people who have been socialized in more settled conditions are cast out into the margins of society, their behavior will change. The behavior will become more blatantly self-interested if they can get away with things that they couldn’t get away with under more settled conditions. This behavior will become even more confrontative if, because of the rough balance of power, calculations of what will happen are less predictable. These higher levels of danger will produce emotions that are more impulsive and more violent, just as Huizinga claimed occurred during the European Middle Ages.

    According to historian Patricia Limerick, the image of the self-reliant and individually responsible pioneer was not supported by her research account that outside of every farm in the 1880’s stood a great mound of empty food cans. She further pointed out these “self-reliant” pioneers often blamed the federal government for their problems along with everyone else.

    The consequences of the frontier process, according to Turner, were that:

    • The westward move diluted the predominantly English character of the eastern seaboard.
    • The advance of the frontier decreased America’s dependence on England for supplies.
    • It helped to develop the central government. The very fact that the unsettled lands had been vested in the federal government was vital to the federal government’s battle to control recalcitrant regions of the country.

    The Western Frontier as Yankee romanticism

    As Richard Slotkin warns us, we must distinguish between the people who actually lived on the frontier—hunters, trappers, miners, gold prospectors – and how the frontier was portrayed in American literature, as in dime-store novels and the work of Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales. We are interested in how the frontier romance in literature was a way for readers to:

    • escape the dark side of the industrialization process;
    • escape the increasingly militant class struggle taking place between New England, Yankeedom on the one hand and the southern plantation owners on the other;
    • muffle the class struggle in industrialized cities in hopes that the frontier stories could provide an outlet.

    In the United States, the rebellion against civilization was directed not at an aristocratic class but at lawyers, merchants, industrialists and bankers of the East. Whatever their dissatisfactions were with relentlessness of the industrialization of the cities, it did not result in a romantic, organic view of nature as in Europe. In Europe, during the romantic period, many nation-states claimed their roots in more primitive peoples, whether they are Anglo-Saxons or Celts. But for Puritans, the heathen Native Americans were out of bounds as people to go back to nature with. To return to the pristine way of life was to adapt the way of the savages, which for them would be “hell on earth”. Puritans bitterly condemned those who “went native” and lost their souls.

    While aristocratic romantics of Europe used tame country scenes to trigger collective memories of by-gone days, in the New World, what was romantic was pristine, wild and like the subtle paintings of the West by Remington and Thomas Moran. While romantics in Europe took the occasion to delve into the pre-modern world of the peasantry through the study of language and folklore, writers on American romanticism did not do this. In America, there was a deep anti-historical sense, and what appealed to romantics was the exotic world of mountains, rivers and forests that have not been seen before. In addition, the frontier was about trappers, hunters and miners who were half-way between Eastern decadent civilization and the “savagery” of the native Americans. Stories about the frontier were about Puritan’s “errand into the wilderness”. Puritans were terrified of the savagery of native Americans. Their roots were in Puritanism, not in knowing more about native culture that was from a non-Christian world.

    In the New World, the sources of romanticism were men of action, men who fought Indians, gambled and blazed trails. Different frontiersman represented different regions of the country and utilized different means of subsistence. For example, stories about Daniel Boone took place in Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri. The stories of Kit Carsen were those of a fur trapper of the mountains. Stories about Davy Crockett were more about the frontier in the Southwest.

    What romantics on both sides of the Atlantic had in common was a refusal to play roles. This was certainly true of the frontiersman attitude towards the ways of the East. Additionally, both kinds of romantics refused to act in ways that demonstrated they were civilized. While in the United States there was a championing of what was wild, unpredictable and dangerous, this did not lead to identification with mental illness as the romantics did in Europe. However, the romanticism of outcasts in the wild west, such as gun fighters like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Buffalo Bill was taken way beyond Europe. The glorification of the frontier, the west and the cowboy hasn’t let up even in the 21st century!

    Conclusion

    The purpose of this article is to show the deep political and economic fault-lines of the eleven regions of the United States. We began with eight questions about how the time of settlement, the country of origin, geography, religion, population density, attitudes to immigrants and natives might affect how these regions felt about each other. Where in the country would the greatest tensions between the regions be? What regions had the most in common where alliances could be formed? We then named six topics which were the deepest tension point in the regions. These tensions are hardly cosmetic. They remained throughout both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

    We then turned to the conflict between Tidewater, the Deep South, Appalachia and Yankees as the central struggle in the United States. Being an “American” was forged between four regions—Yankeedom, New Netherlands, Midlands and Appalachia. I closed my article with our focus on the West. This included how frontiersman themselves viewed the East as decadent and how writers of the East romanticized the West in dime store novels and paintings.

    The United States of America is hardly united, nor has it ever been. The real physical economy today is hammered by lack of investment and lack of work due to COVID. Meanwhile finance capital continues to destabilize the economy with the mania of printing free money. As extreme weather pounds the regions from Florida to California and from Texas to North Dakota, it would be hardly surprising that as Anglo-American capitalism sinks into the bog, that part of the sinking will involve a fracturing of the regions in a good ole American style, with each region for itself, and the Devil taking the hindmost.

    • First published in Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

    The post Divided We Stand: Eleven Regional Rivalries from Mountain People to the Swamps of Dixie first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ecosocialist Bookshelf – For a people’s green new deal

    Climate and Capitalism editor Ian Angus presents A People’s Green New Deal, plus three new books on pandemics and two on the global food crisis.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Scientists have long warned climate change threatens our food security. Now they’re finding solutions.

    For years, scientists have been warning that higher temperatures will reduce the bounty of farms around the globe: The National Climate Assessment forecasts smaller harvests in the United States. One model suggests that world corn yields could fall 24 percent by 2050. And a study that came out in April suggests that climate change has already slashed agricultural yields by 21 percent. 

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that as many as 183 million additional people will be at risk of going hungry by 2050 if carbon dioxide levels keep rising.

    These findings conjure apocalyptic visions of famine and hunger wars. But scientists say the body of research into the impacts of climate change on the world’s food systems also has another major takeaway: that we have a tremendous capacity to adapt. One critical way, they say, would be to figure out exactly what makes plants susceptible to heat, so breeders know what to look for as they develop hardier crops for the future. 

    Research on plant heat stress is blooming as techniques improve and as scientists map the genomes of major crops. Colleen Doherty, an associate professor of biochemistry at North Carolina State University, is one of the researchers working to figure out how we can feed ourselves, while using less land, and allowing forests and habitats to regrow.

    “And we can do it, we’ve barely touched the potential of plants,” Doherty said.

    Ten years ago, Doherty read an economics paper seeking to understand why rice harvests kept rising year-over-year in some places, while they had begun to plateau in others. What was different about those areas where rice yields were suffering? The economists found that the places where yields were struggling all had warm nighttime temperatures. When Doherty read this, the metaphorical lightbulb went on over her head: She was pretty sure she knew what was going on.

    Doherty studies the way plants tell time. Just like us, plants become groggy and inefficient when their internal clocks are misaligned. “If you switch a plant from North Carolina time to Pacific time, they will get jet lag,” she told Grist. Plants use light and temperature to tell time — for millennia they have set their clocks to the reliable cooling of nighttime. When nights stay warm, it throws the delicate work of plants — spinning atoms from the atmosphere into sugars — into disarray. Because Doherty studies the mechanics of this plant clockwork, she had some ideas about which switches might be turning on daytime processes at night. Sure enough, she and a team of scientists found a couple dozen of these cellular switches, and thousands of genes triggering action at the wrong time in rice suffering through hot nights. The researchers published their findings last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    The next step: Zero in on the most important of these genes, and figure out how they work. Then crop breeders can look for those genes when developing the crops of the future.

    Scientists are making discoveries like this all the time. Just last week, another paper showed a way plant breeders might develop barley plants able to produce more grain as temperatures rise.

    Krishna Jagadish, a crop scientist at Kansas State University who worked with Doherty on the rice research is also digging into the way warm nights throw off the internal clocks for wheat and corn. But, he said, university scientists almost never have the funding to turn these discoveries into new strains of crops that farmers could plant. Private corporations usually do that work, which can often take up to a decade. “We get to explore, we get to innovate, and then give leads to industry who pick it up,” Jagadish said.

    In other areas — from medical research to clean energy development — government funding helps push the processes of innovation beyond exploratory research, assisting with subsequent investigations and providing subsidies to help new technologies get a foothold. Perhaps we should be doing that with plants as well, because when it comes down to it, Doherty said, food is not optional. “Every person on the planet faces the problem of eating every single day and climate change is going to make that problem harder,” she said. “People will fight if there’s not enough food to feed their kids — I know I would.”

    The possibilities, from understanding the inner workings of crop staples, to pioneering new forms of farming, to benefiting from the wild diversity of plants, are huge, said Crispin Taylor, president of the American Society of Plant Biologists. But the country has never treated it as essential work — the United States spends at least an order of magnitude more money researching cancer, than researching crops.

    “Not everyone gets cancer, but everybody eats,” Doherty said. “If you really want to save the world, plants are the place to be.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Scientists have long warned climate change threatens our food security. Now they’re finding solutions. on Jul 8, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • 25% Global Harvests At Risk From Climate Change Within Decades, Scientists Warn

    4 Mins Read Climate change is set to put a quarter of global harvests at risk by the end of this century, scientists warn in a new study.

    The post 25% Global Harvests At Risk From Climate Change Within Decades, Scientists Warn appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • This New ‘Zero Foodprint’ Dish At Just Salad Helps to Boost Regenerative Farming

    3 Mins Read Just Salad has launched a new ‘zero foodprint’ menu item with the focus of supporting regenerative agriculture efforts.

    The post This New ‘Zero Foodprint’ Dish At Just Salad Helps to Boost Regenerative Farming appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • News on China | No. 57

    The post News on China | No. 57 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • AgriTech policy: On innovation and migration

    Australia has a well-earned reputation for innovation in agricultural technology. What comes next might be a surprising link of innovation and migration policy.

    Australia has been a nation of innovation in agriculture. Examples include rust resistant wheat, the stump-jump plough, or greenhouse emissions reducing stock feeds.

    Agricultural machinery has moved a long way since the days of a farmer perched on a tractor on those funny little triangular seats. These days precision agriculture means GPS guided machines that can plant this year’s crop between the lines of last year’s crop. Laser levelled fields make maximum use of irrigation water.

    But like all sectors, innovation needs to be ongoing.

    As previously reported here in 2016 AgriTech had the potential to double the agriculture sector by 2030. But the AgriTech sector earlier this year expressed concern Australia was being left behind.

    AgriTech
    AgriTech opportunity: The link between migration and investment in technology

    Be it called AgriTech, AgTech or Agriculture 4.0 there is plenty of reasons to think about the opportunities.

    There are parts of the Federal and NSW budgets that should be linked here, together with a pressing problem revealed by the pandemic.

    First to the budgets.

    Back in the 1970s at my secondary school, we had a lunch time talk promoted as ‘AI: A cow of a business, no bull.’ When I was in the workforce in the early 1980s, AI had already moved on from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Intelligence with the commercial development of expert systems.

    But over the next forty years the description of AI was just as apt. AI remains an area where future promise continues to outweigh current delivery.

    A centrepiece of the Morrison Government’s ‘back to the future’ Digital Economy strategy incorporated in the 2021 budget was an Artificial Intelligence action plan.

    As the AFR’s Chanticleer noted one of the frustrating parts of this strategy is that the AI expertise that had been developed by the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence (better known as NICTA) before it was gutted and merged with the CSIRO to form Data61.

    Chanticleer made two other observations, the first was the value in recruiting great leaders into University research roles where they can also teach, and of partnering with leading global firms.

    Interestingly the government announcement gave an example of local food manufacturer BlueEsky looking to ‘speed up their operations with AI and robotics.’

    Robotics really consists of three disciplines; the machinery to move and grasp etc (actuation, locomotion and manipulation), the devices to sense the environment and finally the intelligence to control movement, interpret inputs and make decisions. But robotics need not be limited to factories.

    Fruit picking robots are already being developed in the academy and commercially. (It is worth noting also how orchardists have started to espalier their trees – which both improves light distribution and access to fruit.)

    In NSW, the 2021 Budget included $48 million for an expanded Farms of the Future program. This is specifically focussed on constructing and operating a Long-Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) in the five target regions. This will enable communication across wide areas and complements existing mobile and broadband services.

    While the focus is on accessing static sensors, one of the original ALP Digital Economy projects focussed on using sensors to track stock movements which enabled fertiliser use to be targeted and reduce run off.

    Wide area communications of course does not only help with sensing, but also with control. What is, after all, the differences between the advanced ag machinery with a driver sitting in air-conditioned comfort and a driverless truck in an Australian mining site?

    The answer is simply connectivity. The more intelligence that is built into the remote agent the less throughput that is required of the connectivity.

    Now to the problems revealed by the pandemic.

    Mid-pandemic, we are being reminded just how dependent our agriculture sector has become on migrant workers, be they backpackers or Pacific Islanders.

    The recent UK free trade deal has removed some of the work restrictions on backpackers from that location and prompted a suggestion that even when borders open, we will still be short of workers.

    The proposed new agricultural worker visa to be offered to ten ASEAN countries has horrified long term professionals in immigration policy.

    Speaking on ABC’s The Drum Abul Rizvi (at 41:20) noted that he had worked for twenty years at the Department of Immigration and that one thing they said to themselves over that time was that ‘Australia should never become a low skill guest worker society.’ They said that because they could see the exploitation of these workers that has occurred in the US, Europe and gulf countries.

    One of the real problems with meeting the demands of employers for low paid workers by importing low paid workers is that you remove the incentive for the investment in the more enduring solution, which in this case is robotics.

    The other sector that has been high on the list demanding access to imported workers has been the tech sector. The same problem occurs there of course, that allowing importation of workers reduces the incentives to invest in our own development.

    More worrying however is the experience of overseas students doing postgraduate study in IT in Australia. They are entitled to work domestically for two years after their graduation but report that Australian employers are reluctant to take them on. That is a topic, however, for another day.

    The other huge impediment to AgriTech is the structure of Australia’s agriculture sector. One of the reasons so much Australian agricultural land has been acquired by international investors is because they are willing to make big investments in technology.

    Our largest pool of investment funds, superannuation, finds long-term investing in agriculture unattractive because of the liquidity requirements imposed by our rules around superannuation choice.

    Australia has a huge opportunity to increase the productivity and value of our agriculture sector.

    Realising that opportunity doesn’t require the diversion of water from environmental flows nor increasing the amount of land cleared for agriculture. It is about applying technology to our farms and not trying to rely on a low-paid and exploited underclass of guest workers.

    The post AgriTech policy: On innovation and migration appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • AgTech VC Omnivore Raises US$150M To Help Indian Farmers Boost Yields and Profitability

    3 Mins Read Agtech VC Omnivore is aiming to raise US$150 million to support tech innovations and solutions for Indian farmers.

    The post AgTech VC Omnivore Raises US$150M To Help Indian Farmers Boost Yields and Profitability appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • The Buried Documents That Linked The Infamous Cult To The CIA

    Washington – Concerning the Finders cult — the elusive Washington, D.C.-based outfit whose antics and ties we began examining in Part 1 of this series — one set of documents in particular held the most explosive allegations made against the group and against the CIA for allegedly covering the story up. Despite their contents, almost no corporate press ever quoted from these documents or addressed the concerns they raise. This article will attempt to remedy that deficit of coverage by fully exploring what the documents have to say.

    I previously described the 1987 arrest of two well-dressed men in Tallahassee, Florida, on charges of child abuse relating to six children found neglected, dirty, and hungry in their care.

    The post The Buried Documents That Linked The Infamous Cult To The CIA appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Toxic Corporations Are Destroying the Planet’s Soil

    A newly published analysis in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science argues that a toxic soup of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides is causing havoc beneath fields covered in corn, soybeans, wheat and other monoculture crops. The research is the most comprehensive review ever conducted on how pesticides affect soil health.

    The study is discussed by two of the report’s authors, Nathan Donley and Tari Gunstone, in a recent article appearing on the Scientific American website. The authors state that the findings should bring about immediate changes in how regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assess the risks posed by the nearly 850 pesticide ingredients approved for use in the USA.

    Conducted by the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and the University of Maryland, the research looked at almost 400 published studies that together had carried out more than 2800 experiments on how pesticides affect soil organisms. The review encompassed 275 unique species or types of soil organisms and 284 different pesticides or pesticide mixtures.

    Pesticides were found to harm organisms that are critical to maintaining healthy soils in over 70 per cent of cases. But Donley and Gunstone say this type of harm is not considered in the EPA’s safety reviews, which ignore pesticide harm to earthworms, springtails, beetles and thousands of other subterranean species. The EPA uses a single test species to estimate risk to all soil organisms, the European honeybee, which spends its entire life above ground in artificial boxes. But 50-100 per cent of all pesticides end up in soil.

    The researchers conclude that the ongoing escalation of pesticide-intensive agriculture and pollution are major driving factors in the decline of soil organisms. By carrying out wholly inadequate reviews, the regulatory system serves to protect the pesticide industry.

    The study comes in the wake of other recent findings that indicate high levels of the weedkiller chemical glyphosate and its toxic breakdown product AMPA have been found in topsoil samples from no-till fields in Brazil.

    Writing on the GMWatch website, Claire Robinson and Jonathan Matthews note that, despite  this, the agrochemical companies seeking the renewal of the authorisation of glyphosate by the European Union in 2022 are saying that one of the greatest benefits of glyphosate is its ability to foster healthier soils by reducing the need for tillage (or ploughing).

    This in itself is misleading because farmers are resorting to ploughing given increasing weed resistance to glyphosate and organic agriculture also incorporates no till methods. At the same time, proponents of glyphosate conveniently ignore or deny its toxicity to soils, water, humans and wildlife. With that in mind, it is noteworthy that GMWatch also refers to another recent study which says that glyphosate is responsible for a five per cent increase in infant mortality in Brazil.

    The new study, ‘Pesticides in a case study on no-tillage farming systems and surrounding forest patches in Brazil’ in the journal Scientific Reports, leads the researchers to conclude that glyphosate-contaminated soil can adversely impact food quality and human health and ecological processes for ecosystem services maintenance. They argue that glyphosate and AMPA presence in soil may promote toxicity to key species for biodiversity conservation, which are fundamental for maintaining functioning ecological systems.

    These studies reiterate the need to shift away from increasingly discredited ‘green revolution’ ideology and practices. This chemical-intensive model has helped the drive towards greater monocropping and has resulted in less diverse diets and less nutritious foods. Its long-term impact has led to soil degradation and mineral imbalances, which in turn have adversely affected human health.

    If we turn to India, for instance, that country is losing 5334 million tonnes of soil every year due to soil erosion and degradation, much of which is attributed to the indiscreet and excessive use of synthetic agrochemicals. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research reports that soil is becoming deficient in nutrients and fertility.

    India is not unique in this respect. Maria-Helena Semedo of the Food and Agriculture Organization stated back in 2014 that if current rates of degradation continue all of the world’s topsoil could be gone within 60 years. She noted that about a third of the world’s soil had already been degraded. There is general agreement that chemical-heavy farming techniques are a major cause.

    It can take 500 years to generate an inch of soil yet just a few generations to destroy. When you drench soil with proprietary synthetic agrochemicals as part of a model of chemical-dependent farming, you harm essential micro-organisms and end up feeding soil a limited doughnut diet of toxic inputs.

    Armed with their multi-billion-dollar money-spinning synthetic biocides, this is what the agrochemical companies have been doing for decades. In their arrogance, these companies claim to have knowledge that they do not possess and then attempt to get the public and co-opted agencies and politicians to bow before the altar of corporate ‘science’ and its bought-and-paid-for scientific priesthood.

    The damaging impacts of their products on health and the environment have been widely reported for decades, starting with Rachel Carson’s ground-breaking 1962 book Silent Spring.

    These latest studies underscore the need to shift towards organic farming and agroecology and invest in indigenous models of agriculture – as has been consistently advocated by various high-level international agencies, not least the United Nations, and numerous official reports.

    The post Toxic Corporations Are Destroying the Planet’s Soil first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Decline of Butterflies May Bring Dire Consequences for Life on Earth

    A butterfly crawls through the grass

    Butterflies are a symbol of beauty and metamorphosis, and one of few universally beloved insects. Indeed, few would think twice at squashing a fly or spider, yet butterflies inspire reverence. Both ancient Egyptians and Aztec believed that butterflies would greet the virtuous in the afterlife; multiple cultures around the world associated butterflies with the soul. In Western culture, they’re an eternally popular (if clichéd) tattoo decision.

    So embedded are butterflies in human culture that it is hard to imagine a planet without them. Yet that seems like the kind of world that we are headed for, at least based on current ecology trends.

    “In the last 50 years, our moth and butterfly populations have declined by more than 80 percent,” writes Josef H. Reichholf, an entomologist who recently penned a book, The Disappearance of Butterflies. “Perhaps only older people will recall a time when meadows were filled with colorful flowers and countless butterflies fluttered above.”

    Reichholf’s recent book is a paean to these beloved insects. In it, he regards butterflies not merely as a symbol for sensuality or visual splendor, but as animals with personalities. As Reichholf explains, they experience a complicated life cycle, their bodies constantly transforming and changing, an existential ordeal likely incomprehensible to the human mind.

    They are also, Reichholf says, astonishingly sophisticated in unappreciated ways. For instance: their penchant for drugs.

    “Butterflies can get drunk to some degree by sucking substances with psychopharmacological effects,” he told Salon.

    I interviewed Reichholf over email about his book and the future of butterflies. As always, our interview has been condensed and edited for print.

    Can you explain the contrast between butterfly populations when you started studying them in the late 1950s with what they are now? What have you personally observed?

    Quite vividly. I remember the lots of butterflies flying over the meadows when I was walking towards the river to observe birds [at] the River Inn in southeastern Bavaria in the early 1960s. The butterflies were of all the different kinds, from swallowtails to the then-very abundant blues, not only cabbage whites as now it is the case. However, studying diversity and abundance of night-flying Lepidoptera, the “moths,” revealed the ongoing trends over the next decades.

    While average species diversity decreased roughly by half in the last ten years, abundance fell to a level as low as 15 percent, compared to the numbers of the years from 1969 to 1979, at the margins of the village in the southeastern Bavarian countryside.

    Whereas this place of study borders directly the agricultural landscape, which had been exposed to extensive changes in use and input of fertilizers as well as in agrochemicals, there happened no significant changes in species diversity and abundance of Lepidoptera and other insects in the river and forest close by, where I kept running the same type of light traps in the same nights from the early 1970s onwards. And similar investigations which I made in the city of Munich in the 1980s and from 2002 to 2010 revealed no decrease despite some major fluctuations in the abundance of night-flying insects. It is important to note that now in Munich the level abundance of insects is higher than on the countryside dominated by the agricultural landscape.

    At one point you describe how purple emperors get drunk, literally, on toad poison. Can butterflies get “drunk” in the same way that we do? Why do they do this?

    Not only butterflies can get drunk to some degree by sucking substances with psychopharmacological effects, but as it is well known also to beetle collectors that many beetle species can be lured with alcohol-containing saps, some of which develop naturally if sugar-containing sap ferments by virtue of microbes present in nature. A number of mammals “like” alcohol-containing fruits, and birds do that as well. They have an enzyme in their livers which enables the decomposition of the alcohol, called alcohol-dehydrogenase.

    Can you break down the life cycle of the average butterfly? Most people believe that it’s as simple as a caterpillar creating a cocoon and transforming into a butterfly, but your book complicates that a bit.

    We have to look a bit closer into the life cycles of the butterflies and moths, which are much more dominated by the needs of the caterpillars than by those of the adult flying stage. The caterpillars are the “feeding stage,” which precedes the “mating stage” of moths and butterflies when they emerge from the pupae. There are two very basic requirements of the feeding stage — namely the proper food plants, as many Lepidoptera are quite specialized in their food choice; and a favorable microclimate in their habitat, conditions of which can be very different from that officially measured at the meteorological stations.

    For completing the annual cycles, the different species also must be able to survive through the winter, which may be in either stage as an egg, a caterpillar, a pupa or even as a hibernating butterfly (like the brimstone). General meteorological trends, therefore, reveal little about the weather’s real influence on the insects.

    Like so many ecological catastrophes, this one can be linked to industrial agriculture. What can we do to save them?

    My studies reveal, like so many others, the overwhelming influence of agriculture on insect populations. It is better now for butterflies and moths to try to live in cities than on a countryside dominated by agriculture.

    Reducing the amount of pesticides, however, as necessary and desirable as it certainly is, will not be followed closely enough to become convincing by increases of insect abundance. The predominating factor, at least here in Central Europe, is the over-fertilization of the landscape. The availability of nitrogen compounds in wide excess of the real demand favors the growth of a few plant species besides the field crops, thus reducing food plant diversity, and creating much wetter and cooler microclimates than normal for the sites due to the excessive growth of vegetation. Greatly reduced food plant diversity and too cold a microclimate are the key factors in the demise of butterflies and of most moth species and a lot of other insects, which aren’t agricultural pests.

    Reducing the amount of fertilizers, therefore, would be paramount in the political strategy for more insect conservation. Our nature reserves are too small and too subject to side effects from the modern agriculture to enable thriving populations of butterflies, moths and other desirable insects.

    Confronted with the fact, that more than a third of the agricultural products which people in Germany by in the supermarkets are disposed into the garbage, a lowering of the agricultural production level by some 25 per cent would not influence the food security for people, but greatly reduce the amount of fertilizers and pesticides used for maintaining the now so extremely high production level.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Will history repeat in a dry Klamath Basin this summer?

    This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    In mid-May, Klamath Tribal members and supporters stood at Sugarman’s Corner in downtown Klamath Falls, Oregon, holding signs like “Ecocide is Cultural Genocide,” “Save the Klamath” and “Honor the Treaty” as part of a caravan rally. The goal was to highlight Indigenous voices and priorities for the Klamath River basin, like protecting culturally important c’wam (Lost River suckers) and koptu (shortnose suckers) endemic to shallow Upper Klamath Lake.

    Tensions were high in the basin, which spans the Oregon-California border. Just a day before the rally, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had announced that it wouldn’t release water in the basin to irrigators or national wildlife refuges because of dire drought forecasts.

    Joey Gentry, a member of the Klamath Tribes who helped organize the event, nervously braced herself for an armed counterprotest, like the ones that happened in Klamath Falls during Black Lives Matter marches last year. To Gentry’s relief, however, no counterprotesters materialized. “Everyone empathizes with the plight of our farmers,” said Gentry, who farms hemp in the region. “But we also now know that food systems and agriculture systems must support ecosystems for all of us.” 

    This summer’s strife recalls the events of summer 2001, when drought caused the Bureau of Reclamation to cut off water to the majority of fields in the area and farmers staged a standoff to restore the flow. Now, the basin is facing an even worse drought: A large-scale fish kill has already happened, and, for the first time since 2001, the majority of farming in the basin must cease for lack of water.

    Another factor reminiscent of 2001 is a new iteration of an old theme: An extremist element is present in the region, more energized and better organized than in the past. But there are critical political and legal differences between this year and 2001: Years of negotiations on large-scale settlements have built relationships between tribal nations, politicians, agencies and irrigators that didn’t exist before. And a slew of court cases over the past two decades have affirmed that the federal government must prioritize tribal nations’ water rights and protected species’ needs. “The state and the federal government, I believe, have a real responsibility to help folks,” said Klamath Tribes Chairman Don Gentry. (Don and Joey Gentry are siblings.) “It’s an environmental injustice … This is our homeland; all the things that were placed here should be here. We shouldn’t have to fight over them.”

    The Klamath Basin contains Upper Klamath Lake, which supplies part of the water for the Klamath Project, a Bureau of Reclamation irrigation operation that waters 1,200 farms and over 240,000 acres of farmland. Water from the lake flows southwesterly via the Klamath River through the ancestral lands of the Klamath Tribes, Hoopa Tribe, Karuk Tribe and Yurok Tribe, emptying into the Pacific.

    But more of that water is spoken for than actually exists. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates water flows would need to be 135% of average to fulfill all of the rights in the basin. Forecasts put this summer’s streamflow as low as 21% of average. “There’s really not enough water in a good water year,” said Adell Amos, Clayton R. Hess Professor of Law at University of Oregon, who worked as a staff lawyer for the U.S. Department of Interior during 2001. “But when we get a year like this year, it becomes really profound.”

    A farmworker checks the sprinklers at a farm in the Klamath Basin outside Tulelake, California on May 18. Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

    In April 2001, the Bureau of Reclamation cut off all irrigation to 170,000 acres of farmland, the first time in U.S. history that farmers were forced to stop farming because the agency would not deliver water. Instead, it prioritized water for threatened and endangered species: coho salmon in the Klamath River, and c’wam and koptu upstream.

    In response, farmer-activists illegally broke open the Klamath Project’s head gates and held protests, and convoys of outside supporters, including some with militia ties, rolled into town. The actions seemed to work: In midsummer, the George W. Bush administration released some water to farmers. But that did little to appease the protestors, and after the water ran out in September, 300 people climbed over a chain-link fence at the head gates and set up an encampment. The standoff ended in an uneasy truce after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.

    The next summer, despite the same drought conditions, the Bush administration provided farmers their full water allocation. That left little water for the Klamath River itself and meant the federal government failed to meet its tribal trust obligations. In the fall, a devastating disease that proliferates in warm, shallow water ripped through coho, chinook and steelhead populations in the river, killing an estimated 34,000 adult salmon, the largest fish kill in U.S. history. A federal whistleblower later alleged that, due to political pressure, the Bureau of Reclamation had illegally ignored scientific findings and prevented biologists from fully assessing the risk of lower water levels.

    Perhaps the biggest change in the basin over the past two decades is the heightened power of tribal sovereignty and water rights. In 2013, Oregon recognized the Klamath Tribes as the most senior water-rights holders in the Upper Klamath Basin. That means they can secure their water needs first in a dry year, leaving those with more junior rights with less water, or even none at all. The tribes exercised that right for the first time in 2013, to protect c’wam and koptu in Upper Klamath Lake, which meant that irrigators got less water. “It’s a blunt tool, but this was the only path available to us,” Tribal Council Member Jeff Mitchell told High Country News at the time. In March this year, they did the same — though at a much larger scale, which effectively curtailed water for both irrigators and threatened salmon downstream.

    Another tool the tribes have used to protect fish and their ecosystems is litigation. Since 2016, for example, the Yurok Tribe, downriver from the Klamath Tribes, has ratcheted up its legal strategy against the Bureau of Reclamation and the Klamath Water Users Association, a group that advocates for Klamath Project farmers. Typically, the litigation is over who gets water, and when, to try to prevent another massive salmon die-off. A proposal to remove four dams on the Klamath River would alleviate pressure on the fish, and thus potentially free up water for protecting upstream species.

    Still, other challenges remain: For example, the Yurok and Hoopa tribes and Congress have yet to reach settlements quantifying the exact amount of their water rights, a source of major uncertainty during yearly water allocations.

    Federal leadership is also necessary for any sort of basin-wide agreement over water use, which could help bring stability to the region. After the conflict of the early 2000s, the Interior Department led negotiations that resulted in a handful of deals, but the largest one fell apart in 2016, when Congress failed to appropriate funds for it. Essentially no progress was made during the Trump administration. In April, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) mentioned a long-term plan in a memo to assistant secretaries, and acknowledged that, “given the dire and unprecedented drought conditions that we are facing, we know that difficult decisions will need to be made in the coming days and weeks to address water shortages.” 

    Meanwhile, the potential for another standoff over Klamath Basin water appears higher than at any time since 2001, and not only because of drought. The Department of Homeland Security warned earlier this year that right-wing extremists “may be emboldened by the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., to target elected officials and government facilities.” 

    Right-wing extremist groups have voiced support for Klamath farmers, often on the grounds of ‘private property rights,’ even though Klamath Project water is not necessarily legally considered irrigators’ private property. In the spring, two farmers bought land on either side of the project’s head gates, and said that they will have a standoff this year. The same farmers were photographed breaking open head gates at the 2001 encampment, though nobody was charged with a crime.

    But this year’s encampment has little political support, unlike the 2001 standoff. The Republican congressman who represents the area, Cliff Bentz, who was elected last year, explicitly declined to visit the encampment. “There’s been some people who have said, ‘Well, if it’s our water, we should take matters into our own hands and take it.’ And I would counsel against that,” Bentz said during a public event in early June, reported Jefferson Public Radio. Partly that’s because it could make it harder for Bentz to secure financial aid for basin farmers and others from Congress; his current proposed package is $57 million.

    Those at this year’s encampment are also not representative of the irrigators who would take part in basin-wide negotiations. In May, Ben DuVal, the president of the Klamath Water Users Association, spoke out against putting Bureau of Reclamation employees’ personal information online to intimidate them or bringing in outsiders who could enflame the situation. “Stop it,” DuVal said. “It is completely out of line.”

    This summer, as in 2001 and 2002, the dire position of all stakeholders could trigger a desire for fresh basin-wide conversations about a new large-scale agreement to halt the cycle of drought-related conflict within the Klamath Basin. True solutions, however, aren’t limited to policy or water quantities; they must include achieving justice and acknowledging tribal presence and sovereignty, said Joey Gentry, who helped organize this year’s rally for the Klamath ecosystem. “In addition to addressing some of the solutions in the fields and in the irrigation ditches, we also have to address this equity piece.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Will history repeat in a dry Klamath Basin this summer? on Jun 19, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Salad will survive climate change. But at what cost?

    Braddock, Pennsylvania is not what most people would call a farm town. White plumes of methanol, ammonia, zinc, and manganese billow throughout the day from its last remaining steel mill, while cars and pickups and freight trucks roar back and forth across the nearby Rankin Bridge. Despite its diminutive size, the town is well-known in the Pittsburgh region for its air quality, which ranks among the worst in the nation for year-round dust, soot, and smoke pollution. 

    And yet, inside a wide, windowless warehouse set just a block or two back from the banks of the Monongahela River, thousands of tender, young plants are thriving beneath a gleaming roof and complex HVAC system that shields them from both the azure sky and the effluence of the adjacent smokestacks.

    a gray warehouse with a green sigh that says "fifth season" in an industrial neighborhood
    Fifth Season, a vertical baby greens operation, is located next to the last operating steel mill in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Grist / Eve Andrews

    The company Fifth Season is responsible for tending to this farm, though the startup’s use of “farm” certainly stretches traditional definitions. The greens here do not grow out of the comforting foundation of earth; they are produced “vertically,” cradled in plastic trays of soil about 16 square feet, stacked and slotted into a white tower as tall as several men, like cookies in a bakery for giants. 

    The indoor plots are bathed in fuchsia light and tickled by an artificial breeze, precisely calibrated by hundreds of intermittently humming fans. It is not the whim of clouds and air pressure that determines when these greens are watered; rather, it is a continuously refined algorithm that drives the robot dispersing carefully measured droplets over arrays of seedlings. Meanwhile, the human overseeing that algorithm sits in a room several states away in Michigan.

    What plants does one grow in such a place? Young spinach, juvenile arugula, prepubescent brassicas — you may know them as “baby greens.” In just a few decades, they have become the standard base of any salad, commonplace in both families’ crisper drawers and the coolers of airport cafes. In order to maintain their omnipresence, more growers are looking into moving delicate crops like these indoors.

    silver trays are stacked several feet high on either side of a box-like machine. The background is bright pink as a result of the lighting.
    A robot moves between trays of baby greens at Fifth Season as they are bathed in fuchsia light. This “pinkhouse” is the result of an LED-powered mix of red and blue light, which helps the business reduce electricity costs for indoor growing. Grist / Eve Andrews

    To actually incorporate these greens year-round into diets in places like western Pennsylvania, “some level of indoor production in those climates and locations will be necessary,” said Daniel Blaustein-Rejto, director of Food and Agriculture at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research organization in Oakland, California. 

    The indoor growing strategy has environmentalists split. On the one hand, anything that helps shift diets away from carbon-intensive animal products and toward plants is generally considered to be necessary to mitigate warming, including by the experts that make up the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But there are challenges to growing enough fresh produce to feed billions. Defying seasons — and, increasingly, extreme weather patterns — takes a lot of energy from an electrical grid that continues to rely heavily on fossil fuels. 

    But if the weather is too unpredictable and vertical farms are too energy-intensive, what’s the best way to grow greens so that anyone can eat them at any time? Or in other words: How can we democratize salad?

    Salad has been around in one form or another since the days of the Roman Empire. But if a colorful forkful of spring mix has crossed your lips anytime during the past several decades, you arguably have Alice Waters to thank for it. Waters is the founder of the storied Berkeley, California, restaurant Chez Panisse, the original farm-to-table fine dining establishment. She boils her legacy down to one achievement: putting salad — true, crisp, flavorful salad — back on the American plate. 

    Fresh lettuce first began to appear year-round on dinner plates back in the roaring ’20s with the popularization of iceberg lettuce — what food scientist and historian Gabriella M. Petrick describes as the “first seasonless fresh vegetable.” Hardier and more resilient to transport compared to other varieties, iceberg could be grown in farms in California and Arizona and sold in big cities on the East Coast. Between 1919 and the mid-1950s, national consumption of fresh lettuce — predominantly iceberg — grew more than threefold. As refrigeration and freight technology continued to improve, other forms of produce began following a similar supply route, allowing for the proliferation of larger, more specialized grow operations. 

    But Waters’ vision of American salad went beyond a wedge of iceberg lettuce slathered in a cream-based dressing. Her virescent awakening occurred in the 1960s while she was visiting a friend in France. In the countryside on the outskirts of Nice, Waters ate her first mesclun salad, a dish which takes its name from the Provençal word for mixture. “The farmers just went around the field and picked things,” Waters said. “And they put it all in a big dish towel and brought them to the farmers market, and you bought it by the pound.” Sometimes the mix would have dandelion greens and rocket and chervil, and sometimes a little oak leaf lettuce, red and green, but it was always a blend of local offerings picked in their prime. Waters’ friend would dress it simply with anchovy and garlic. “I just loved it,” she recalled. 

    According to Waters, the beauty of the mesclun salad, as the farmers did it in France, was that each meal was unreproducible. You might never come across the same combination of leaves twice. And that was exactly what Waters sought to recreate when she brought the dish to the menu at her restaurant. The fresh greens that Chez Panisse serves to customers grow right on the grounds of the establishment itself in a large garden, picked by hand for each plate. Waters is so committed to her salad’s vision — a combination of balance, freshness, and flavor — that when she was asked in 1980 to serve her version of a garden salad at a Playboy magazine award dinner in New York City, she flew from California with her own flats of still-growing rocket lettuce and nasturtium blossoms in order to harvest them right there at the event.

    “I want what is of that moment, I want to be reminded of nature,” she said. “That’s what mesclun gave me — that sense of biodiversity.”

    Chef Alice Waters stands behind a large wooden table covered in fresh produce, a large pile of baby greens on the left.
    Chef Alice Waters stands in the kitchen of her restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, in 1982. Roger Ressmeyer / CORBIS / VCG via Getty Images

    Biodiversity is a popular refrain among a high echelon of farm-to-table chefs, including Waters and Dan Barber, the celebrated chef and owner of New York’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns. They argue that we have bruised the Earth with abrasive monoculture, that a climate-friendly diet is not so much about what you eat as how you grow it. If you are of this school of thought, mass-produced salad — be it grown on an industrialized single-crop farm in California or by robots in a warehouse in Western Pennsylvania — is a perversion of the natural order.

    In his popular 2006 treatise on the food industry, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, science writer Michael Pollan described his own grappling with the massive scale, industrial precision, and calculated sterility that goes into each package of tender, perfectly-sized lettuces. Following a visit to the facilities of Earthbound Farms, then the largest organic salad producer in the country, he noted his newly wilted preconceptions: “The contrast of the simplicity of this type of eating, with all its pastoral overtones, and the complexity of the industrial process behind it produced a certain cognitive dissonance in my refrigerated mind,” he wrote. “In precisely what sense can that box of salad on sale in a Whole Foods three thousand miles and five days away from this place truly be said to be organic?”

    Waters remembers being similarly affected by her first encounter with a grocery store bag of Dole “mesclun” mix. She found it depressing. “I just thought: This is not what it was about, at all,” she told Grist. “They were co-opting a really beautiful idea, and not giving it its due — not giving it its reason for being.”

    Waters is not bemoaning the fact that salad can be purchased in grocery stores; she says she wants everyone, everywhere to eat more salad. It’s more the fact that an industrially produced mesclun mix is an oxymoron, by her definition. For one thing, prepackaged salad’s “freshness” is debatable: To keep the greens looking good on store shelves, baby greens are packed along with a mixture of gases — a “modified” or “protected” environment in industry lingo — that can prevent them from wilting for a week or more. But the more time passes from harvest to consumption, the less the nutritive value of the leaves. Still, Pollan, a regular at Waters’ restaurant before the pandemic, acknowledges that industrial-style production is necessary to achieve a widespread adoption of his well-known dictum: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Very few people have the time or money to forage their way through the French Baronnies or Berkeley backyards to enjoy a bowl of delicate, seasonal leaves. 

    Navin Ramankutty, a professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, says that it’s important to find a balance between nutritive value and widespread access. He explains that even as fewer people in the world go hungry, nutrient deficiencies remain high — the current global estimate is that 2 billion people suffer from at least one form — and the best remedy is to feed people more fresh fruits and vegetables. Canada, for example, just published national dietary guidelines that recommend filling half your plate with fresh fruits and vegetables. And yet, a study from Emory University found that the world does not currently grow enough fresh fruits and vegetables to meet dietary guidelines even less ambitious than Canada’s. 

    Fresh salad — particularly of the true mesclun variety — has certainly become available beyond the menus of white-cloth restaurants, but it’s still a relatively pricey grocery item. For the outdoor-farmed lettuce varieties, that’s been partially due to climate change-driven events, like early spring weather throwing off planting schedules in recent years and heat waves singeing harvests; for plants grown indoors, the expense is due to the higher costs entailed by a still emerging, boutique industry. And yet, salad remains an in-demand item, particularly the baby greens-laden prepackaged mixes that command higher prices in exchange for convenience.

    A wall of baby greens mixes each in its own plastic clamshell in a salad aisle
    Baby greens, like these seen in a Whole Foods produce section, have become a near-ubiquitous grocery store item in recent years. Grist / Eve Andrews

    But for all its value in micronutrients, a bag of arugula does not offer much in the way of calories, which is more important to a hungry person with limited funds. A U.S. Department of Agriculture analysis found that only 20 percent of Americans eat salad on a given day, and that statistic drops to 15 percent for the lowest income bracket. 

    Assuming you can afford them, it’s easy to understand how baby greens became the darlings of the salad set. If you buy a full head of, say, butter lettuce, you cannot simply chomp on it like you would an apple. If you want to make a salad like a normal person you will have to slice the lettuce into smaller, bite-sized pieces. But as soon as the knife makes contact with the leaf, an enzymatic reaction — akin to that of skin healing from a wound — will discolor its cut edges, causing the leaf to start to brown, wilt, and rot.

    Each leaf of baby greens, on the other hand, is ideally sized to fit in a human mouth, no mutilation necessary. And furthermore, they don’t even need to be washed. Prepackaged salad mix is designed to be poured directly from its plastic container into a bowl, or even — gasp! — eaten straight from the container itself with some bottled dressing. 

    “One thing that is clear is that over time, the needs of the consumer for something that is ready to eat, quick to eat, and healthy is really driving the vegetable industry toward fresh-cut produce,” explained Francesco Di Gioia, a professor in the department of plant science at Penn State University. “And the baby leaf was developed to serve the needs of the fresh-cut industry and ready-to-eat salads.”

    Today, the majority of U.S. lettuce is still grown outdoors in a few select areas of the country — California’s Imperial Valley or the salad bowl of Yuma, Arizona — then processed and shipped sometimes thousands of miles until it reaches the produce aisle of a grocery store. But as drought and precipitation cycles in the West have become both more extreme and temperamental, it’s simply not sound climate policy to rely on California for so much of the nation’s greens. Extreme weather patterns weaken leaf integrity, making the plants more susceptible to contamination and disease. Flood and wind events can easily spread dust from nearby animal feedlots onto fields and into reservoirs. Leafy greens can’t easily be sterilized, which is one reason they are the culprits behind so many E. coli outbreaks. 

    If Americans want to eat more salad — and going by industry predictions, they do — the supply chain that brings the leaves from the earth to the plate (or the plastic clamshell, as the case may be) has to be both reliable and efficient. According to Di Gioia, farming is no longer a simple business. “It’s more technological, more advanced,” he explained. “You need people there who know what they’re doing, people who are in charge of production, an agronomist, people who are going to check that everything is safe and high quality.” 

    That could not be more apparent than at the robot-operated Fifth Season. Only a few sanctioned humans are allowed to wander the aisles of the biodome, given a security clearance and exhaustive sanitation ritual that has little to do with workers’ COVID risk, but is meant to protect delicate plants from any number of foreign microbes. Most of the movement in this sterile, cavernous warehouse occurs as a couple of crane-like machines glide up and down the aisles. They pull one little slat of greens from its slot and move it into another, perhaps several times over the course of one day, to perfectly optimize its growing conditions: a little more light, a little less breeze, just this quantity of nutrient-enhanced water.

    Fifth Season started in 2015 as a robotics company, trying to sell its products to other greenhouse growers. At the time, they found prospective buyers few and far between, so they decided to go into vertical farming themselves using their own robots. During my tour of their Braddock greenhouse, I saw seeding robots, watering robots, and fanning robots — the fanning helps ensure each baby spinach leaf has the right amount of crunch, explained my tour guide and Fifth Season’s chief category officer, Grant Vandenbussche. Robots also indicate when the plants are ready to be harvested.

    When that moment arrives three to five weeks later — the exact timing determined, again, by the algorithm — an entire tray is pulled from its shelf in the biodome and delivered along a conveyor belt into a new, only slightly less regimented room. A woman with only a sliver of face visible through protective equipment gently prods and examines each leaf with a pair of large tweezers, checking various characteristics against a checklist on a gleaming iPad, before the whole container slides on to be harvested. In one swift, clean slice, hundreds of leaves are cut from their stems and shuttled off to their next destination.

    • a worker in a white hair covering, cover-alls, and purple gloves stands hear a big tray of baby lettuces grown indoors
    • a teal conveyer belt of loose baby green leaves in purple and green
    A worker at Fifth Season checks on trays of still-growing baby greens, left. Workers wear protective gear to prevent the delicate lettuces from outside contamination. On the right, a conveyer belt at Fifth Season moves freshly harvested baby greens for processing. Photos by Eve Andrews / Grist.

    When this tray, so very precisely planted and fertilized and watered and photosynthesized over the past 20 days or so, emerges from the harvesting machine, it is a chartreuse-and-emerald buzz cut. It has been reduced to hundreds of slim inch-high stalks, packed so densely that you can barely see the soil between them. But this shorn garden barely has a moment to realize its own nakedness before it is unceremoniously emptied from its cream plastic tray into the compost bin, the tray sent on to be replanted and the process begun anew. 

    There is not a puff of air or drop of water that is not automated in the greens-growing process of this warehouse — a level of standardization Vandenbussche says holds a growing appeal, particularly in contrast with harvests that are more exposed to the increasingly vacillating elements.

    But Fifth Season’s level of control comes at a cost. It turns out when you recreate the Salinas Valley under a roof, it requires a lot of electricity. Crops need light, water, and soil to grow. On a traditional farm, you might have to pipe in the water and meticulously fertilize and pH-balance the soil, but all that abundant California sun comes free. 

    “We’re talking about substituting that energy indoors,” Ramankutty said. “And that energy cost is too high for anything other than niche crops.”

    a close-up of fresh baby lettuce leaves in various colors growing in a black plastic tray
    A tray of vertically-grown baby greens waits for harvest at Fifth Season. Grist / Eve Andrews

    If your vertical farm is located in a region that depends largely on fossil fuels for its energy — like, say, western Pennsylvania — the carbon footprint of your indoor-grown salad is likely going to exceed that of the one from the farm. That calculation might change as those grids shift to renewable power sources and indoor growing technology becomes more energy efficient. Having more indoor operations located near large East Coast markets could cut down on emissions related to transportation, which usually constitutes the largest portion of lettuce’s carbon footprint. But for most crops, greenhouse growers have a long way to go before those benefits outweigh the energy that goes into heating, cooling, and lighting an indoor farm.

    Energy expenditures notwithstanding, the profit-minded case for indoor farming is already compelling enough for some growers to scale up. When Paul Lightfoot founded the mid-Atlantic salad grower BrightFarms in 2010, it was based on what he describes as a sort of well-informed business hunch. Today, BrightFarms grows 6.5 million pounds of baby greens per year in large greenhouses. The company harvests and packages them on-site, and distributes them within 200-ish miles of each farm, covering a swath roughly from Wisconsin to Delaware. 

    “I knew it wasn’t that old of an industry, it was growing quickly, and it would keep growing,” Lightfoot said. “People would eat more salads and make a better connection between what they’re eating and their health. What I wouldn’t have predicted is that it’s still a fast-growing category, but most growth is coming from indoor salad producers.”

    Baby greens are a particularly tricky crop to scale without making a few compromises. Precise timing is required to harvest a young leaf at its proper size, flavor, and freshness. They have to be protected from pests, sun, frost, and dust. And while no one needs to eat salad, people are drawn to baby greens for their combination of flavor, healthfulness, and convenience. Advocates of indoor growing say it’s an ideal crop to experiment with, as the growing time is relatively short compared to staples like grain or wheat — which, right now, would be incredibly inefficient candidates for indoor agriculture.

    There may, however, be some real environmental benefits to embracing some “unnatural” grow operations in the long term. For all its chilly sterility, the land and water footprints of indoor farms are a small fraction of that of traditional farms. And when you grow everything under one climate-controlled roof within a day’s drive of the grocery store that will be distributing it, a lot of the uncertainty of the supply chain gets eliminated — and along with it, food waste.

    Lightfoot explained the calculus of grocery store marketing as being similar to that of a hotel, with one of those damp, refrigerated shelves in the produce section akin to a floor of rooms. You want every room filled, or you’re losing money. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the supply chains of big agricultural conglomerates were suddenly snapped, a lot of those shelves lay dry and empty. Producers with shorter, more reliable paths to market started to look a lot better. It’s even nicer if you can charge a little more for that sweet “local” label. 

    To that end, he notes that while indoor farming can, in theory, bring fresh produce to a wider market, that’s not the motivation currently driving the boom in baby greens. One reason grocery stores have doubled down on boutique salad mix is because it brings in an economically desirable demographic. “People buying our salads are model customers,” he said. “Younger, health-focused, higher level of wealth.”

    Salad — really the entire food system in general — is caught up in this same climate-driven catch-22. Farmers will need to invest in new techniques and technology to keep certain foods available to consumers on demand. Food justice advocates emphasize that giving all communities access to fresh foods must be a part of that equation. But, by the laws of economics, the cheaper a crop becomes, the less incentive there is for profit- and tech-minded, growers to buy in. 

    “I just don’t see indoor production reducing the cost of most of these foods,” said the Breakthrough Institute’s Blaustein-Rejto. “They seem to be a niche item that is appealing to some people who want to buy food hyperlocally. But I don’t think that kind of production, at least in the foreseeable future, will cut costs and help make these foods more affordable or accessible.”

    If you walk about two blocks up from the Fifth Season facility, away from the river but still within a touchdown pass of the steel mill, you’ll find yourself at Braddock Farms. On a little less than an acre, a small farm staff raises all forms of produce under the mill’s toxic clouds. The farm, run by the nonprofit Grow Pittsburgh, opened in 2007, at the request of the then-mayor, John Fetterman, now Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor and a 2022 Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

    a red shed is marked with several signs including a Braddock Farms marker. To the right, there are rows of green crops growing under blue cloudy skies
    A sign marks the edge of Braddock Farms, which grows produce outdoors for local consumption. Grist / Eve Andrews

    Fetterman wanted Braddock to have access to local produce. At the time the farm was founded, the town did not have a grocery store. The organization now sells its wares in four different farmers markets located in predominantly Black and lower-income neighborhoods. Its salad greens, notes farm manager Nick Lubecki, are very popular and are priced to be competitive with conventionally grown options sold at the grocery chains Giant Eagle and Aldi, the latter of which opened in Braddock earlier this year.

    On an oppressively steamy June afternoon, Lubecki showed around me the small farm. Zucchini plants bloomed under tent-like hoop houses, lines of onion stalks drooped a bit in the heat; and rows of mauve, violet, and pale green heads of lettuce erupted from plastic mulch, many of the heads heftier than a human newborn. Most baby leaf greens are too finicky to grow here because of their sensitivity to weeds and pests, but Lubeki pointed to a cluster of arugula sprouting under a protective cloth cover. The salad mix they sell comes instead from the Salanova breed of lettuce, he explained, lifting up the lowest skirt of a curly-leafed specimen to show its rooted core. It grows as a head, but you can cut it from the bottom and all the leaves will fall separately into a neat heap, creating the coveted single-bite-size product.

    The small farm has doubled in size since its start, pushed by demand for its locally grown crops, but the obvious challenges remain. Grow Pittsburgh tests the farm’s soil regularly for heavy metals and other pollutants that might rain down on it from the nearby steel mill. According to Lubecki, the levels currently meet the safety standards required by the state. But the local air pollution, trapped in the valley by the heat, especially on the increasingly sweltering days during the growing season — “last summer was brutal, and this one is shaping up to be” — is the operation’s real challenge; not for the plants so much, but on the people who work at the farm and pick them.

    rows of plants grow outdoors from the earth with a blue industrial warehouse in the background
    Braddock farms is a community organization that grows produce for local outdoor markets. The plot is located close to both the steel mill and Fifth Season. Grist / Eve Andrews

    When asked if this same farm could be profitable were it not subsidized by Grow Pittsburgh, Lubecki was confident that it would — though it would likely require a different labor structure and a new assortment of crops. What assortment of crops, then? More salad, because people will actually pay its true cost.

    “People like salad,” he said. “They get mad if you charge $5 for an onion, but they’ll pay close to that for a head of lettuce.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Salad will survive climate change. But at what cost? on Jun 16, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • The ‘gas-led recovery’ is failing regional Australia

    The Socialist Alliance has put forward a plan for rural and regional COVID recovery that seeks to address ecological, economic and social crises.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • News on China | No. 54

    The post News on China | No. 54 first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dongsheng News.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Poor working conditions combine with Brexit to cause huge decline in fruit pickers

    Brexit has caused a “massive hole” in the numbers of people coming to the UK to pick fruit in the summer months putting growers “on the brink”, it is claimed.

    The fruits of Brexit

    Numbers of seasonal workers applying to work at one Kent-based company are down 90% in the last two years and there are fears for the future. Stephen Taylor, managing director of Winterwood Farms Ltd, said the labour market has got “tighter and tighter” over the last couple of years. He said the impact of Brexit on the flow of workers to UK farms is only getting worse. However, working conditions for fruit pickers have affected the recruitment of people from the UK to do the same work.

    A spokesperson from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the government will “always back our farmers and growers” and ensure producers across the UK have the support and workforce that they need.

    Speaking to the PA news agency, Taylor said:

    95% of all fruit and produce picked and packaged in this country is done by eastern Europeans. From the end of June, people who haven’t got pre-settled status, at least, can’t work.

    We are not talking about a few tens of thousands, we are talking hundreds of thousands of people less to work in the UK. That’s a massive hole.

    Two years ago, Taylor’s company received about 20 applications a day from people wanting to come to the UK to work picking fruit, but this year it’s just two a day. He said:

    We are right at the brink now

    Taylor referenced the UK’s unemployment rate, which stood at 4.8% of over-16s for January to March. But he said it varies by region, and issues arose where British workers didn’t live in reach of farms. He said:

    If we want the Brits to do that work they need to be mobile.

    Get Britons picking?

    In 2020, the government launched its ‘Pick for Britain’ campaign. Prospect summed up the issues with it, reporting:

    5am starts, poverty wages and no running water—the grim reality of “picking for Britain”

    One worker detailed their experience:

    5am starts and 10-hour shifts leave little time for socialising. Our weeks are dominated by work. And it’s tough. Really tough. Being bent over picking fruit for most of the day puts huge strain on your body. Perhaps this wouldn’t be a problem if we were adequately paid and properly housed. In reality, neither is true. The UK boasts the cheapest food in western Europe. My experience has made clear that this is only made possible through the neglect of employee welfare…

    the notion that you can make good money through “piece work,” as has been asserted by both MPs and industry experts, is a fallacy. Unless you have significant prior experience, making anything above the minimum wage… highly unrealistic. After funds are deducted for rent and deposits, our salaries come to about £7 per hour. Furthermore, management’s conduct towards employees has been, at times, appalling. I’ve seen my colleagues berated, degraded and branded “stupid” by their superiors.

    Coronavirus
    The lack of pickers could hit supplies of fruit for supermarket shelves (Stephen Jones/PA)

    Control

    He also criticised the “politics” of the debate on seasonal workers coming from the EU. Taylor argued:

    We are taking back control, as Boris would say, but when we are taking back control, we are actually deliberately throttling our own businesses because we know the thing we haven’t got control of is labour.

    The solution is for the Government to recognise the fact that these people, they come and they go back home, so they don’t have any recourse to public funds.

    Nick Marston, chairman of British Summer Fruits, said the soft fruit industry faces decreasing numbers of seasonal workers from the EU and the “impossibility of recruiting a significant proportion of our large workforce from UK residents”.

    But he added:

    Despite Brexit and restrictions on the free movement of workers, the industry has generally been able to recruit a large enough workforce for the current soft fruit season.

    In short, we are confident that strawberries won’t be left in fields unpicked on any significant scale, although we can’t rule out pockets of issues on a few farms.

    He welcomed the government’s decision to expand its Seasonal Agricultural Workers visa scheme.The scheme allows people to come to the UK for up to six months to do farm work. The government has expanded the scheme from 10k visas in 2020 to 30k for 2021.

    A Defra spokesperson said:

    Seasonal workers provide vital labour to ensure that local produce gets onto supermarket shelves.

    We will always back our farmers and growers, and ensure that producers across the UK have the support and workforce that they need.

    They also cited the department’s review into automation. They said the review will “pave the way for a pioneering and efficient future” for fruit and vegetable growers.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Climate Commission report gives NZ dairy industry ‘free pass to pollute’, say critics

    By Katie Todd, RNZ News Reporter

    Critics have hammered the Climate Change Commission’s agriculture goals in New Zealand, saying it has missed the mark on methane targets.

    In a final 419-page report handed to Parliament yesterday, the commission urged the government to get tough on the way New Zealanders live, move and work, through implementing 33 recommendations.

    To help keep global warming below 1.5C it said there should be no more new or used petrol or diesel cars imported, made or assembled in New Zealand by 2035.

    The commission asked for substantially more government investment in cheap, accessible public transport, cycle paths and walkways, and no more coal boilers “as soon as possible”, with at least 95 percent renewable electricity used by 2030.

    Greenpeace head of campaigns Amanda Larsson said it was all a bit disappointing because the report missed a major weak spot.

    “Despite thousands of submissions in favour of climate action, despite huge public mandate out there for climate action, the commission has failed to really take responsibility for the industry that is causing the most climate pollution in New Zealand – and that is the dairy industry,” she said.

    “There’s been no real change in its recommendations and the dairy industry still gets basically a free pass to pollute.”

    Mechanism to reward farmers
    The commission wants the government to decide next year on a pricing mechanism for rewarding farmers who reduce emissions.

    It suggests technologies including methane inhibitors – vaccines which can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide burped by cows into the atmosphere – could reduce the country’s biogenic methane emissions by more than 50 percent.

    It also sets an overall biogenic methane reduction target of 10 percent by 2030 – which Dairy NZ called “incredibly challenging” and a “big ask” for farmers, saying New Zealand milk already had the lowest carbon footprint in the world.

    “We do remain concerned agriculture may be asked to do the heavy lifting if we don’t see urgent action to reduce CO2 emissions. We are all in this together and we must have a fair and balanced plan that requires our communities to contribute equally,” its chief executive Dr Tim Mackle said.

    Dairy NZ chief executive Tim Mackle
    Dairy NZ chief executive Dr Tim Mackle … “We are all in this together and we must have a fair and balanced plan.” Image: RNZ/Victoria University of Wellington

    However, Larsson said there could have been strict limits on stock numbers, among other measures.

    “We need to cut synthetic fertiliser and we need to cut imported feed and we need to support farmers to transition to regenerative and organic ways of farming.”

    Hard-line approach in other sectors
    Oxfam New Zealand campaign lead Alex Johnston said the commission was already taking more of a hard-line approach for other sectors.

    “The pathways for reducing emissions in agriculture are simply not consistent with keeping to 1.5 degrees,” he said.

    “Even if we go as hard as we can on transport and other sectors, if we don’t directly regulate emissions from agriculture and step up our actions in that area, then we’re not going to be able to do our fair share to contribute to this global problem.”

    Forest & Bird spokesperson Geoff Keey agreed that agriculture was still getting “a bit of an easy ride” and the measures should be stricter, but he believed there was another blind spot in the report.

    He wanted kelp and shellfish beds re-established on coastlines, and measures to stop wetlands drying out, to ensure more carbon did not go into the atmosphere.

    “One of the big things that comes out of the report is once we start looking beyond 2030 and 2040, we’re going to need to protect our carbon stores in forests, in the sea and in wetlands. Right now the rules are not strong enough to allow that to happen,” he said.

    Someone who felt more optimistic about the report was Niwa chief scientist Dr Sam Dean, who called it “a breath of fresh air”.

    Traction on policies
    He said there was finally traction on a more “comprehensive” range of climate policies.

    “Up ’till now we’ve based our response on the emissions trading scheme, which is incentivised plantation and forestry. Moving away from that to a broader range of policies that are going to actually reduce emissions, especially carbon dioxide, is especially important. It’s something we’ve not managed to do, to date. And it’s something we’re going to have to do really quickly,” he said.

    Dean said the difficult part was not writing the report – it was up to the government to rise to the challenge.

    He said his plea for the government was to embrace all the recommendations with urgency and he challenged all New Zealanders to show their support and willingness to make changes.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The climate bill even Big Agriculture loves

    This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    Senator Joni Ernst normally doesn’t see climate change as a major societal threat in need of a policy response. A magnet for agribusiness and oil-industry campaign contributions, she pleaded ignorance about climate science at a debate in 2014. She added, “I can’t say one way or another what is the direct impact, whether it’s manmade or not. I’ve heard arguments from both sides.” Yet Ernst has managed to find a piece of climate legislation she likes — one that involves one of her state’s major industries: agriculture. 

    It’s called the Growing Climate Solutions Act, and Ernst counts among 49 senators on both sides of the partisan divide sponsoring it. Outside supporters include the National Milk Producers Federation, the National Pork Producers Council, and the United States Cattlemen’s Association. The American Farm Bureau Federation, an insurance conglomerate and agribusiness lobbying powerhouse that has long opposed federal regulation to cut greenhouse gas emissions, is pushing it, as is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a champion of unfettered oil and natural-gas drilling. 

    Some Big Green groups back it, too. “Passage of the Growing Climate Solutions Act would be a big win for agriculture, conservation, and the climate,” argued a recent statement from the Nature Conservancy, echoing similar enthusiasm from the Environmental Defense Fund. In late April, the bill sailed through the Senate Agriculture Committee, and likely has the votes to pass the full Senate, although it has yet to be scheduled for a vote. 

    What policy intervention could magically align these disparate forces behind climate action? And does its broad appeal represent a nascent urge among GOP stalwarts like Ernst and polluting industries like Big Ag to take the challenge seriously?

    No doubt, cutting greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, and fast, will be vital to fending off the worst ravages of climate change. Farms contribute just 10 percent of total U.S. emissions, but the situation is worse than it looks at first glance. Overall U.S. emissions have been edging downward since peaking in 2007, albeit not nearly rapidly enough. We’re now spewing heat-trapping gases at an annual rate just 1.9 percent higher we did in 1990, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, reports. Greener electricity generation — more wind and solar, less coal — drives the downward trend. But over the same period, ag-related emissions have steadily drifted upward, rising 11.7 percent since 1990. 

    The Growing Climate Solutions Act turns out to be a pretty small-bore response to this growing problem. It mandates no emissions cuts or any new regulations. Instead it directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, to “develop a program to reduce barriers to entry for farmers, ranchers, and private forest landowners” to participate in voluntary private carbon markets. 

    Carbon markets work like this: Say a farmer opts for techniques that suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil (see my 2013 piece on Ohio cover-crop/no-till evangelist David Brandt, who has developed a system for doing just that). In a functioning carbon market, the farmer could sell what’s called a “carbon credit” for the stored carbon to a polluting company — say, an oil driller. The farmer gets a payment; the drilling company gets to boast a cut in its “net” emissions, earned with the payment, without having to change its own practices. Such credits can be flaunted to appease the growing set of shareholders demanding that polluting companies cut their emissions; or simply to generate good PR as the ravages of climate change pile up. The goal of such agricultural “offsets,” as they’re known, is to incentivize climate-friendly farm practices, like Brandt’s. 

    Private carbon markets for agriculture already exist, but they have not exactly taken farm country by storm. The most prominent one, run by a company called Indigo Agriculture (profiled by my colleague Maddie Oatman here), has so far managed to enroll farms representing 2.7 million acres into its program, Reuters recently reported. That’s a tiny fraction of U.S. farmland; the four most prolific U.S. crops — corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton — cover about 239 million acres. Genetically modified seed and pesticide giant Bayer Crop Sciences (formerly Monsanto) runs a rival carbon program; and a cluster of Big Food and Big Ag companies, including McDonald’s, Cargill and General Mills, plans to roll out yet a third, the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium, in 2022.

    Indigo, Bayer, McDonald’s, Cargill, and General Mills have all endorsed the Growing Climate Solutions Act, in hopes that getting the USDA stamp on private ag-based carbon markets will draw in more buyers, and ultimately more farmers willing to adopt practices that qualify for credits. The bill calls on the USDA to provide guidelines for which practices reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon; and for entities like Indigo and the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium to “self-certify” with the department by claiming expertise in measuring ag-related climate benefits and providing technical assistance to farmers for attaining them. 

    And that’s pretty much it. In short, if the act passes, the USDA will provide its imprimatur — in the form of a “USDA-certified” designation — on private markets that are already functioning, though currently at low level. 

    Not everyone is as convinced that voluntary markets managed by private players like Bayer and Indigo can push U.S. farms in more climate-friendly directions, even with USDA guidance. Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a Minneapolis-based think-tank, notes that rigorous market-based climate action requires carrots and sticks: not just payouts for operations that sequester carbon or cut pollution, but also ever-stricter limits on overall greenhouse gas emissions — which the Growing Climate Solutions Act lacks. 

    In a classic cap-and-trade scheme, the government mandates an economy-wide cap (limit) on emissions. The cap then drops over time. Companies that can’t comply — say, ones drilling for crude oil, running coal-fired power plants, or methane-spewing cattle feedlots — would be compelled to buy carbon credits to offset a portion of their emissions. As the carbon cap continued to drop, offsets would get more and more expensive, forcing polluting companies to adopt less greenhouse gas-intensive business models or go bankrupt. That’s the theory, anyway. Lilliston notes that California has had a pioneering cap-and-trade system in place since 2013, and the state’s powerful oil and gas industries have still managed to continue spewing greenhouse gases largely unimpeded. Meanwhile, a blockbuster recent ProPublica report showed that the system may be significantly overestimating carbon-sequestration rates for some forest-based projects that have drawn $1.8 billion worth of credits. But with no cap at all in place, there’s no real lever to force polluters to buy credits, Lilliston points out. 

    “Even if you’re true believer in market-based solutions, to create an offset market without a carbon cap — that makes no sense,” he says. “There’s no chance that the carbon-credit price will ever really rise, because polluting companies don’t have to buy these offsets.” Currently, the price of an offset stands at around $15 per ton of carbon equivalent. At that level, some big companies may opt to buy offsets to burnish their reputations, Lilliston says. (Reuters cites IBM, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Barclays as current buyers of ag offsets.) If the price of the offset gets to $40 or $50, he says, “they can just say, ‘screw it,’ and stop buying offsets, or buy them from another part of the world where they’re cheaper.” Then the U.S. carbon price would drop, and we’d be back to where we are now: A little-used carbon market doing not much at all to impede ever-growing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions on farms. 

    Lilliston notes that this precise scenario played out in the 2000s, when a project called the Chicago Climate Exchange sold carbon credits, including ones generated on farms, into a market with no emissions cap. It ended up collapsing in 2010 due to a lack of buyers. In short, without strict limits on emissions, a carbon market represents an opportunity for polluting industries to launder their reputations, but doesn’t push them to change their ways.  

    Silvia Secchi, a natural resource economist at the University of Iowa, says voluntary carbon markets have other problems as well. These schemes “do not fundamentally challenge, for example, livestock — it’s becoming more and more apparent that really, policymakers don’t want to touch that,” she says. The U.S. meat industry is a massive contributor to  U.S. agriculture’s greenhouse gas footprint, EPA data show. Methane, a gas with 25 times the heat-trapping power of carbon, spews from livestock farms in two ways: from the digestive system of cattle (mainly in the form of burps) and from vast manure stores outside of factory-scale beef, dairy, hog, and chicken farms. Between 1990 and 2017, as U.S. livestock farming has concentrated into ever fewer and larger operations since 1990, manure’s methane footprint surged 66 percent, according to the EPA. The meat industry’s manure problem is unlikely to be resolved without regulation that forces farms to stop polluting, Secchi says. 

    The prospect of climate legislation brimming with carrots and lacking sticks may be exactly why the meat industry welcomes the bill. “We believe that farmers, ranchers, and producers are the mainstay of the agriculture industry and play an essential role in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions,” wrote John R. Tyson, Chief Sustainability Officer at Tyson Foods, the globe’s second largest meat company, in an email. “The Growing Climate Solutions Act of 2021 is a great move in the right direction, and we commend the bipartisan work to address climate change.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The climate bill even Big Agriculture loves on Jun 8, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • International Energy Agency calls time on new fossil fuels

    The International Energy Agency has ruffled feathers by calling for no investment in new fossil fuel supply projects, reports Margaret Gleeson.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Aotearoa New Zealand: Western Sahara activists, XR picket fertiliser plant

    Western Sahara Solidarity Aotearoa and Extinction Rebellion successfully blockaded the headquarters of Ballance Agri-Nutrients on May 29, reports Kerry Smith.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Trials to suck carbon dioxide from the air to start across the UK

    This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    Climate-heating carbon dioxide will be sucked from the air using trees, peat, rock chips, and charcoal in major new trials across the United Kingdom.

    Scientists said the past failure to rapidly cut emissions means some CO2 will need to be removed from the atmosphere to reach net zero by 2050 and halt the climate crisis. The £30 million ($42.5 million) project funded by UK Research and Innovation will test ways to do this effectively and affordably on over 100 hectares (247 acres) of land, making it one of the biggest trials in the world.

    Degraded peatlands will be re-wetted and replanted in the Pennines and west Wales, while rock chips that absorb CO2 as they break down in soil will be tested on farms in Devon, Hertfordshire and mid-Wales. Special charcoal called biochar will be buried at a sewage disposal site, on former mine sites and railway embankments.

    The best large-scale ways to use trees to capture carbon will also be examined across the UK, including on Ministry of Defence and National Trust land. The last trial will measure the carbon removal potential of energy crops such as willow and miscanthus grass for the first time at commercial scale. These crops would be burned for energy, with the CO2 emissions trapped and stored underground.

    “This is seriously exciting and pretty much world leading,” said Professor Cameron Hepburn, at the University of Oxford and who is leading the coordination of the trials. “Nobody really wants to be in the situation of having to suck so much CO2 from the atmosphere. But that’s where we are — we’ve delayed [climate action] for too long.”

    He emphasized that cutting emissions from fossil fuel burning as fast as possible remains vital to tackling global heating: “There’s no suggestion that [CO2 removal] is a substitute for reducing our emissions.”

    Scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have concluded there is no way of keeping the global temperature rise to the internationally agreed target of 1.5 degrees Celsius without both cutting emissions and removing billions of metric tons of CO2 a year by 2050. The UK’s official climate advisers estimate the UK is likely to need to remove about 100 million metric tons of CO2 a year by 2050 to reach net zero.

    Carbon removal is also deemed essential because it will be difficult to halt all emissions from sectors such as aviation, farming and cement by 2050. The new trials are part of a £110 million ($142 million) government program that also includes trials of using technology to scrub CO2 directly from the air.

    The coordination hub for the new trials will consider the social, ethical, and legal issues related to removing carbon. For example, said Hepburn: “If you’re grinding up rocks and putting it on land to grow food, then you want to make sure that what’s going into the food system is completely safe — I’m sure it will be.”

    There is a current debate on whether carbon removal could be used by companies to offset their emissions, rather than cut them, and whether such offsets can be guaranteed to be genuine.

    “We are very alive to the possibility that companies will just use offsetting as greenwashing,” said Hepburn. “Part of what this program is about is to develop the monitoring, reporting and verification frameworks to ensure that removals are genuine.”

    Enhanced rock weathering

    Spreading basalt chips on fields will be trialed on arable and grazing land. Chemical reactions that degrade the rock lock CO2 into carbonate minerals within months. It is expected that up to 13 metric tons of CO2 per hectare could be locked up each year. In degraded soils, the rock chips can also help reverse acidification and replenish essential plant nutrients. “The joy is that if it does sequester CO2 and lead to enhanced agricultural productivity, then everybody’s laughing,” said Hepburn.

    Biochar

    The trial will be the most comprehensive biochar trial to date and will add 200 metric tons of the material to 12 hectares (29.7 acres) of arable fields and grasslands. The charcoal-like material is produced from wood or organic waste. About 10 metric tons of biochar per hectare can be added to crop fields, but 50 metric tons or more could be buried under grassland. Biochar increases the ability of soil to hold water and nutrients and can help prevent run-off of fertilizers and pesticides.

    Perennial bioenergy crops

    Coppiced willow and miscanthus grass can provide fuel for power stations and remove CO2 from the air if the exhaust gas is captured and stored underground. The trial will seek the best varieties and planting methods and assess how much carbon is also stored in the plants’ roots. Twenty hectares will be planted and current estimates are of 11-18 metric tons of CO2 being removed per hectare each year.

    Peatlands

    Today, damaged peatlands are the UK’s biggest source of CO2 emissions from the land and the trials aim to reverse this by blocking drainage and raising water levels. In lowland trials, former agricultural land will be converted into a “carbon farm” and in the upland trials peat will be restored via measures such as planting sphagnum moss. A restored peatland could absorb 10 metric tons of CO2/ha/year, as well as preventing the loss of about 30 tons of CO2/ha/year. Renewed peatland will also help wildlife, flood prevention and water quality.

    Large-scale tree planting

    “Trees represent the most cost-effective way of removing CO2 from the atmosphere, while also delivering benefits such as enhancing biodiversity and recreational and health improvements,” said Professor Ian Bateman, at the University of Exeter, who is leading these trials.

    But he warned planting trees can have disastrous consequences, if they are planted on peat and release carbon, for example. The trials will test how to plant the right tree in the right place. The trees will be measured and also surveyed by drone and carbon buildup in the soils will be checked.

    Up to 13 metric tons CO2 equivalent/ha/year could be stored, and Bateman said: “You can start now, you just need land and plants. There is huge potential to make an immediate difference towards the goal of net zero by 2050.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trials to suck carbon dioxide from the air to start across the UK on May 25, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • New U.K. Scheme Pays Older Farmers ‘Standing In The Way’ Of Sustainable Change To Retire

    3 Mins Read A new British government scheme to pay older farmers to retire has been launched in hopes of welcoming a new greener, younger generation to enter the agricultural sector. Under the exit scheme, farmers who are “standing in the way of change” could receive a sizeable payment to also make way for a number of “public […]

    The post New U.K. Scheme Pays Older Farmers ‘Standing In The Way’ Of Sustainable Change To Retire appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Cheers? Rising temperatures could make Michigan the next great wine hub.

    Five miles from Lake Michigan, on sloping hills and down a gravelly road, sits the Mountain Road Estates vineyard, owned by Michigan’s oldest winery, St. Julian. Located in the state’s “fruit belt,” the 25-acre vineyard is surrounded by neighboring peach, cherry, and blueberry farms. Near the entrance, rows of pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon grow just feet apart. Typically, these two varieties wouldn’t be seen in such close proximity — pinot noir thrives in colder climates. Cabernet sauvignon, meanwhile, prefers warmer ones. 

    “Warm growing season throughout the year is allowing us to make some really classic varietals, like cabernet sauvignon,” said Nancie Oxley, the vice president of St. Julian’s and a winegrower for several decades, gesturing to the rows of grape vines just starting to bud. “I don’t know if we would’ve been able to do that 20 years ago.” When St. Julian first opened in 1921, the company grew mostly native varietals like Niagara and Concord, because the cold climate and extreme winters in Michigan were too harsh for European grapes. Now, St. Julian grows over 50 different varietals, including a number originating from Europe. 

    • A photo of a woman in a black puffer vest and a long blue-gray shirt. She has blonde hair and is smiling. In the background are green fields.

    The wine industry in Michigan is valued at $5.4 billion dollars and directly creates 28,000 jobs — and it’s getting even bigger, in part due to climate change. Average temperatures in the state have increased by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 100 years. The onset of spring has shifted forward, extending the growing season for wine grapes by an entire month. But even as Michigan wine producers stand to benefit from rising temperatures, compared to other wine-producing regions, they’ll also face new climate challenges.

    “What you get with [climate] warming is the possibility of more varieties, some that wouldn’t fit in the growing season now,” Armen Kemanian, an agricultural scientist at Pennsylvania State University, told Grist. “That applies in general for grapes, but for other crops as well.” Rice production, for example, has slowly been moving more north in the United States. In a few decades, places like Iowa and Illinois may be able to “double crop,” meaning when farmers can plant and harvest two crops consecutively in the same field thanks to a longer growing season. So far, Kemanian said, plant growers in the Midwest and Northeast have mostly experienced the positives that are related to a warming climate. 

    The number of vineyards in Michigan has almost tripled in the last decade, jumping from 90 in 2012 to 257 in 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA. Currently, 3,375 acres of Michigan are covered with wine grapes. By 2024, the Michigan wine industry aims to have 10,000 acres in wine grape cultivation.

    A map showing wine grape suitability in Michigan between today (2020) and the 2050s. The suitability region moves northward over time.
    Projections for how much more land in Michigan will be suitable for growing wine grapes over the next three decades. Clayton Aldern / Amelia Bates / Grist

    Scientists say that across the northern U.S. — in states like Wyoming and Montana — more land will increasingly become suitable for wine-growing as temperatures rise. But even within this region, Michigan will likely see the biggest boost thanks to its unique microclimate along Lake Michigan. During summer months, the Great Lake absorbs heat, gradually releasing it during the fall and winter. This extends the state’s agricultural growing season. It also means that while winters in the farming regions bordering Lake Michigan are cold, they’re not nearly as cold as other parts of the state. 

    The USDA divides the country up into what are known as “plant hardiness zones,” designations that help gardeners and farmers know which plants will thrive best in different areas based on average annual minimum winter temperatures. Since 1990, hardiness zones in the U.S. have shifted northward 13 miles per decade, changing areas’ designations by roughly half a zone, with minimum temperatures around 5 degrees F warmer. Michigan’s current wine-growing regions shifted from being a Zone 5 plant region in 1990 to a Zone 6 in 2012, the last time the USDA updated its maps. It means the state is slowly shifting from a cool-climate region into more of a warm-climate one similar to southern France, and capable of growing the same grapes, like cabernet sauvignon. Eventually, grapes like petit verdot and tempranillo that only grow in warm places like Texas could soon be successful across Michigan, Maria Smith, a viticulture specialist at Ohio State University, told Eater. 

    Coenraad Stassen has grown wine grapes for Brys Estate Vineyard and Winery in Traverse City in northern Michigan for the last 15 years. Recently, he’s started experimenting with a few new varietals, including tempranillo, although he says there hasn’t been a lot of success with growing the grape in Michigan yet. “It’s not massive plantings. Just a barrel or two barrels to see how climate change is affecting varietals that we haven’t done before,” he said. Stassen previously grew wine grapes in South Africa for eight years, but moved to Michigan in 2003 because of the potential he saw in the state’s wine industry. He thinks the benefits of a warming climate on grapes in the state outweigh the negatives, but emphasized the changes will be very slow. Like in any industry when there are shifts, he said, there’s a learning curve. “We as growers and winemakers have to adapt. That’s going to be the key.” 

    Also in Traverse City is viticulture educator Esmaeil Nasrollahiazar, who works for Michigan State University. Winemaking is a family tradition for him, and he used to grow grapes professionally in Italy. He moved to the U.S. in 2019 to help Michigan grape growers adapt to the effects of climate change. “I’m really optimistic that our state will be one of the leading grape wine producers in the U.S.,” he said.

    A photo of rows of green grape vines in the foreground. In the background, there are trees with fall foliage
    Rows of grape vines at the Chateau Grand Traverse vineyard in Traverse City, Michigan. Esmaeil Nasrollahiazar/ Michigan State University Extension

    It’s not just Michigan growers that are enthusiastic about the state’s wine potential as the climate warms up. Last year, the magazine Wine Enthusiast highly ranked a record number of Michigan wines. Of the 65 wines that made the list, most scored 87 to 91 out of a total possible 100, placing them on par with wines from Oregon and Spain. “Michigan really has great potential,” Aaron Mandel, an international wine judge and director of education for the American Wine Society, told Grist. “It’s one of the states I’ve always been excited about their potential for vinifera wines,” or wines made from European grapes. 

    There are five federally recognized viticulture areas in Michigan, clustered along the top of the state’s mitten shape and the southern end of Lake Michigan. With a warming climate, more areas are becoming available for wine grape production. Right now, red varieties are mostly only planted along the southern end of Lake Michigan. But by 2050, scientists estimate that range could extend to include more than half of the Lower Peninsula. Even more land will be good for growing white varieties. The quality of wine will improve too — with warmer temperatures, grapes produce a naturally sweeter wine that doesn’t require growers to add sugar. The longer growing season also allows the fruit to sit on the vine longer and ripen more, giving the grapes a more “balanced” flavor.  

    Places like Italy, Spain, and California are well-known for their wines, but it is these areas that have the most to lose from the effects of climate change, scientists and agricultural experts said. If the world warms by 2 degree Celsius, or 3.6 degrees F, traditional wine growing regions could shrink up to 56 percent as temperatures rise and precipitation decreases, according to a study published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

    An increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather will also take a toll. Wildfires, for example, pose a major threat to vineyards in the U.S. West. California produces around 85 percent of the wine consumed in the U.S. Fires last year led to the smallest grape harvest for the state since 2011, equivalent to a loss of 80 million gallons of wine. Once a vine is hit by fire, it can take three to five years for it to grow grapes again. 

    a close up photo of a bunch of green grapes attached to a vine
    Pinot blanc grapes growing at Michigan State University’s Northwest Horticulture Research Center in Traverse City. Esmaeil Nasrollahiazar/ Michigan State University Extension

    While Michigan doesn’t have nearly the same risk from wildfires as wine-growing regions in the West, it will have to battle other climatic challenges. The state is projected to experience more extreme heat and precipitation events as the climate warms. In early April, Traverse City experienced an 80-degree F day. Typically, the region wouldn’t see such warm weather until July. High temperatures mean an early start to grape growth, which means a longer growing season and more yield. “It could be amazing,” Stassen said, “but there’s always that risk of it getting really cold again.” If frost hits the vines after they bud, they could be seriously damaged or not produce any fruit. 

    To reduce the chance of a too-early bud, some growers spray water onto the vines when temperatures drop, forming a protective layer of ice. Others use wind machines to blow warm air over their crops to prevent frost. In recent years, Stassen has started tying some of the grape branches to the irrigation line on the ground and plowing over them with snow so they will be insulated during January and February when it’s coldest. 

    In the last 50 years, average precipitation in the Midwest has also increased by 5 to 10 percent. A lot of water and humidity can increase problems with pests and disease. In the last few years, Spotted Wing Drosophila, a type of vinegar fly (commonly known as fruit fly), has become a huge issue for wine growers in the region. It was first found in Michigan in 2010. Most vinegar flies only lay eggs in damaged fruit, but Spotted Wing Drosophila will cut a hole into healthy fruit to lay their eggs, damaging the grape. They can cause even more damage by introducing sour rot and fungal disease to the fruit. 

    Even with all of the challenges, Michigan winemakers remain optimistic about their ability to adapt to the effects of climate change, to keep growing the state’s wine industry, and producing high-quality wines. Many think Michigan will soon be a premier wine-growing region in the U.S. For those who have been growing in Michigan for years, St. Julian’s Oxley said playfully, “We think it already is.” 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Cheers? Rising temperatures could make Michigan the next great wine hub. on May 12, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Air Pollution From Livestock and Fertilizers Kills Nearly 18,000 People Yearly

    A curious pig looks at visitors to the barn on one of the Silky Pork farms in Duplin County in a 2014 file image. Air pollution from Duplin County farms is linked to roughly 98 premature deaths per year, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    A new study from a group of agricultural researchers found that nearly 18,000 deaths occur annually in the United States due to air pollution coming from farms.

    The study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, noted that gases associated with manure and animal feed are producing particles that are able to drift hundreds of miles away from their source. Most of the deaths attributable to farm pollution, however, come from animal-based agriculture, accounting for 80 percent of the deaths the study uncovered.

    Chronic exposure to increased levels of fine particulate matter (sometimes shortened to PM2.5) that is released from farms “increases the risk of heart disease, cancer, and stroke,” an analysis of the study noted.

    Notably, deaths associated with farm pollution are more localized than deaths that occur with greenhouse gas pollution. Communities upwind from farms discharging the pollutants are at greatest risk, said Jason Hill, University of Minnesota professor and a lead author of the study. In other words, the health effects from agriculture-based air pollution tend to be more localized, dependent upon local weather patterns and other factors.

    While that reduces the risk from these pollutants at the national and global levels (areas most affected by this type of pollution are in eastern North Carolina, California’s Central Valley and the Upper Midwest), the annual number of deaths caused by farm pollution now exceed deaths caused by pollution from coal power plants in the U.S.

    The biggest culprit behind the deaths from farm pollution, in the study’s estimation, is ammonia, a chemical that’s released by manure and fertilizer, and which often combines with other pollutants found on farms, including nitrogen and sulfur. Hill, speaking with The Washington Post about the study, pointed out that animal waste is often stored in “lagoons” on farms, where huge amounts of ammonia are generated by the breakdown of animal feces. Ammonia is also created when farmers apply too much fertilizer on crops.

    According to the study, livestock waste and fertilizer overuse likely accounted for about 12,400 deaths per year. While particulate matter emanating from “dust from tillage, livestock dust, field burning, and fuel combustion in agricultural equipment use” accounted for around 4,800 more deaths annually.

    Agriculture industry leaders were quick to push back against the study’s findings. “U.S. pork producers have a strong track record of environmental stewardship,” claimed Jim Monroe, a spokesperson for the National Pork Producers Council.

    A spokesperson for Smithfield Foods, which runs industrial hog operations in North Carolina, agreed with Monroe’s contentions, citing a study from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, which said it didn’t find air quality problems in the areas where they had farms. But that study has some noteworthy flaws, including the fact that monitors used to detect ammonia levels were set up far away from the farms themselves.

    Ammonia is a reactive chemical, and is difficult to detect unless a significant amount is released at one time.

    In spite of this pushback, the study on agricultural air pollution noted there are potential solutions to the problem that could reduce yearly deaths in the U.S.

    “Air quality–related health benefits … can be achieved through the actions of food producers and consumers,” the study’s authors said. Reducing particulate-related emissions, promoting dietary shifts in animals, reducing food loss and waste, and other methods are cited in the study as helpful to reducing the number of deaths from agricultural air pollution.

    “The greatest benefits are from changes in livestock waste management and fertilizer application practices,” the study said. “Producer-side interventions in the 10 percent of counties with the highest mitigation potential alone could prevent 3,600 deaths per year.”

    Methods based out of regenerative agriculture — described as “a system of farming principles and practices that seeks to rehabilitate and enhance the entire ecosystem of the farm” by the Climate Reality Project — could also be beneficial for scaling back farm-based air pollution, particularly in California, where such efforts could potentially reduce the impact of wildfires in the state. Such methods (including encouraging animals to graze natural plants, shrubs, or grass on the land, rather than animal feed, and engaging in no-till farming strategies to increase moisture levels in the soil) have been cited by farmer Alexis Koefoed as helping her family’s farm survive a wildfire last year.

    “I think what the fire reinforced for me is that regenerative agriculture, managing the soil, using animals as grazers to build healthy soil is absolutely the direction to go in,” Koefoed said.

    Beyond saving family farms, reducing the impact of wildfires could result in better health outcomes for nearby areas, particularly since smoke from those fires has been found to be 10 times more harmful than from other sources, including car exhaust.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Supporting Brands That Benefit the Environment

    Image Source: Unsplash

    It’s impossible to ignore the effects of our actions on the environment. According to NASA, we’re dealing with rising global temperatures, warming oceans, glacial retreat, and many other environmental concerns that will have a lasting negative impact on our planet.

    Because of this, more companies are taking the initiative to be more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprints. As consumers, getting on board with those companies can make a big difference.

    Doing so requires an understanding of which kinds of companies and brands you should be supporting, and why that support can ultimately make a difference in our environmental future.

    With that in mind, let’s look at some of the industries with the largest carbon footprint, and how you can support the right businesses within those sectors.

    Travel and Transportation

    It’s estimated that greenhouse gas emissions from transportation make up about 28% of all emissions in the U.S. Unfortunately, that’s also a number that continues to rise.

    The biggest contributor to these emissions is the fossil fuels that are burned for almost all of our main methods of transportation, including:

    • Cars
    • Airplanes
    • Trains
    • Trucks
    • Ships

    The problem starts with drilling for oil. It requires land clearing which disrupts entire ecosystems in the process. Oil drilling also contributes to dangerous emissions thanks to the extraction process, further contributing to climate change.

    The easiest way to support certain transportation brands is to look for those who are “steering” away from traditional fossil fuels. Thankfully, electric vehicles are becoming more popular and prominent. Thanks to advancements in technology, some of today’s EVs can even outperform their gasoline counterparts.

    Some of the most notable car manufacturers taking steps toward sustainability through EVs include Tesla, Hyundai, and Chevrolet. Looking for companies that are willing to change their methods is crucial when it comes to helping the environment, and all of these manufacturers have taken a step away from fossil fuels for a more promising future.

    Personal Products

    The manufacturing industry is another problematic area when it comes to greenhouse emissions. Support for these industries is usually steadfast since they create and produce products most people use daily. Unfortunately, most people don’t give the things they use and wear much thought when it comes to how they were created or sourced.

    For example, that new shirt you just bought may not have been sustainably made. It might be a “fast fashion” item that wears out quickly, causing you to get rid of it. The problem is that the U.S. generates 25 billion pounds of textile waste each year, filling our landfills and causing major issues. Choosing to shop with brands that make quality clothing and use sustainable practices can help to combat this problem.

    The jewelry you’re looking at in the window of your favorite shop might be pretty on the outside, but the process of sourcing it is certainly less attractive. Some mining tactics harm the environment since they utilize chemical pesticides and plasticizers. Supporting brands that promote ethical jewelry will help to ensure that the mining process was sustainable or the jewelry has been recycled.

    The everyday items you use can all have an impact on the environment, including:

    • Hand soap
    • Laundry detergent
    • Toothpaste
    • Wet wipes

    Thankfully, some brands offer eco-friendly alternatives for all of these. Doing your research and switching to those brands (and learning about why they’re different), will help you to see how these products traditionally do damage to the planet, and why a change is so important.

    Agriculture

    You might think agriculture and sustainability go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, it’s an industry that is currently doing more harm than good. The agricultural industry has gotten out of control thanks to endless demands.

    The vegetables on your plate may have been grown with pesticides and chemicals to speed up the process. They were likely harvested using large machinery that contributed to carbon emissions. Then, they were probably shipped across the country, contributing to even more emissions.

    Instead of going to your local supermarket for things like produce, consider shopping locally at farm markets, or get to know some local growers. When you know the source of your produce, you can take comfort in the fact that it was organically grown and didn’t require hundreds of travel miles to get to you. In this case, supporting smaller businesses and brands is the way to go.

    Alternatively, you could decide to grow your produce at home, reaping the benefits of spending time in nature. But, if you want to support businesses and the environment, go local whenever possible.

    It can feel overwhelming when you consider how different industries have such a large impact on our planet. By doing your part to support brands that benefit the environment, you’re helping to keep those brands moving forward. As a result, it’s more likely that other businesses will start to follow sustainable practices, and we can see some positive changes in the alarming statistics surrounding the planet.

    Beau Peters is a freelance writer based out of Portland, OR. He has a particular interest in covering workers’ rights, social justice, and workplace issues and solutions. Read other articles by Beau.

    This article was posted on Monday, April 26th, 2021 at 9:05am and is filed under Agriculture, Air Travel, Environment, Fossil Fuel Emissions (FFE), Motor vehicles, Pesticides, Sustainability, Transportation.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Supporting Brands That Benefit the Environment

    Image Source: Unsplash

    It’s impossible to ignore the effects of our actions on the environment. According to NASA, we’re dealing with rising global temperatures, warming oceans, glacial retreat, and many other environmental concerns that will have a lasting negative impact on our planet.

    Because of this, more companies are taking the initiative to be more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprints. As consumers, getting on board with those companies can make a big difference.

    Doing so requires an understanding of which kinds of companies and brands you should be supporting, and why that support can ultimately make a difference in our environmental future.

    With that in mind, let’s look at some of the industries with the largest carbon footprint, and how you can support the right businesses within those sectors.

    Travel and Transportation

    It’s estimated that greenhouse gas emissions from transportation make up about 28% of all emissions in the U.S. Unfortunately, that’s also a number that continues to rise.

    The biggest contributor to these emissions is the fossil fuels that are burned for almost all of our main methods of transportation, including:

    • Cars
    • Airplanes
    • Trains
    • Trucks
    • Ships

    The problem starts with drilling for oil. It requires land clearing which disrupts entire ecosystems in the process. Oil drilling also contributes to dangerous emissions thanks to the extraction process, further contributing to climate change.

    The easiest way to support certain transportation brands is to look for those who are “steering” away from traditional fossil fuels. Thankfully, electric vehicles are becoming more popular and prominent. Thanks to advancements in technology, some of today’s EVs can even outperform their gasoline counterparts.

    Some of the most notable car manufacturers taking steps toward sustainability through EVs include Tesla, Hyundai, and Chevrolet. Looking for companies that are willing to change their methods is crucial when it comes to helping the environment, and all of these manufacturers have taken a step away from fossil fuels for a more promising future.

    Personal Products

    The manufacturing industry is another problematic area when it comes to greenhouse emissions. Support for these industries is usually steadfast since they create and produce products most people use daily. Unfortunately, most people don’t give the things they use and wear much thought when it comes to how they were created or sourced.

    For example, that new shirt you just bought may not have been sustainably made. It might be a “fast fashion” item that wears out quickly, causing you to get rid of it. The problem is that the U.S. generates 25 billion pounds of textile waste each year, filling our landfills and causing major issues. Choosing to shop with brands that make quality clothing and use sustainable practices can help to combat this problem.

    The jewelry you’re looking at in the window of your favorite shop might be pretty on the outside, but the process of sourcing it is certainly less attractive. Some mining tactics harm the environment since they utilize chemical pesticides and plasticizers. Supporting brands that promote ethical jewelry will help to ensure that the mining process was sustainable or the jewelry has been recycled.

    The everyday items you use can all have an impact on the environment, including:

    • Hand soap
    • Laundry detergent
    • Toothpaste
    • Wet wipes

    Thankfully, some brands offer eco-friendly alternatives for all of these. Doing your research and switching to those brands (and learning about why they’re different), will help you to see how these products traditionally do damage to the planet, and why a change is so important.

    Agriculture

    You might think agriculture and sustainability go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, it’s an industry that is currently doing more harm than good. The agricultural industry has gotten out of control thanks to endless demands.

    The vegetables on your plate may have been grown with pesticides and chemicals to speed up the process. They were likely harvested using large machinery that contributed to carbon emissions. Then, they were probably shipped across the country, contributing to even more emissions.

    Instead of going to your local supermarket for things like produce, consider shopping locally at farm markets, or get to know some local growers. When you know the source of your produce, you can take comfort in the fact that it was organically grown and didn’t require hundreds of travel miles to get to you. In this case, supporting smaller businesses and brands is the way to go.

    Alternatively, you could decide to grow your produce at home, reaping the benefits of spending time in nature. But, if you want to support businesses and the environment, go local whenever possible.

    It can feel overwhelming when you consider how different industries have such a large impact on our planet. By doing your part to support brands that benefit the environment, you’re helping to keep those brands moving forward. As a result, it’s more likely that other businesses will start to follow sustainable practices, and we can see some positive changes in the alarming statistics surrounding the planet.

    The post Supporting Brands That Benefit the Environment first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Up From Sweatshops

    For decades, economists have promoted low-wage textile industry as the best way for poor countries to build a manufacturing base. In East Africa, the promised trickle-down effects of foreign investment have not materialized.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Portraits Of Houston’s Black Urban Farmers

    Texas is home to more Black farmers than any state. The USDA’s Census of Agriculture estimated in 2017 that of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States, roughly 48,000 are Black, and nearly a quarter of them are located in the Lone Star State. 

    The number of Black folks sinking their hands into Texas soil, however, used to be much larger. The early 1900s witnessed the terrors of Jim Crow, which ran Black families in Texas off of their own land. The societal and business practices of the 1950s didn’t allow Black farmers access to the fields and credit necessary to keep their farms afloat, and by the 1980s, an estimated 170 farms a week were being forced into foreclosure, most of them Black-owned. 

    The post Portraits Of Houston’s Black Urban Farmers appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Florida Workers Race to Prevent Massive Spill of Radioactive Waste

    Water flows across a darkened landscape

    Florida workers over the weekend rushed to prevent the collapse of a reservoir wall containing hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater from a defunct phosphate mine, a looming environmental catastrophe that prompted mandatory evacuation orders and a declaration of emergency by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    A leak in the Piney Point reservoir was first reported late last month, sparking fears of a complete breach and possible upending of stacks of phosphogypsum, a radioactive waste product of fertilizer manufacturing. During a briefing on Saturday, a public safety official for Florida’s Manatee County warned that “structural collapse” of the storage reservoir “could occur at any time.”

    To prevent a full-fledged breach and contain spillage, local work crews on Sunday continued actively pumping tens of thousands of gallons of toxic wastewater per minute into Tampa Bay. As The Guardian reported Sunday, Manatee County officials “warned that up to 340 million gallons could engulf the area in ‘a 20-foot wall of water’ if they could not repair” the leak.

    Justin Bloom, founder of the Sarasota-based nonprofit group Suncoast Waterkeeper, said in a statement Sunday that “we hope the contamination is not as bad as we fear, but are preparing for significant damage to Tampa Bay and the communities that rely on this precious resource.”

    “It looks like this is turning out to be the ‘horror’ chapter of a long, terrible story of phosphate mining in Florida and beyond,” Bloom added.

    Aerial footage posted to YouTube by a local news outlet shows the leak at the Piney Point reservoir as of Sunday morning:

    The Environmental Protection Agency said late Sunday that it is “actively monitoring the ongoing situation at Piney Point” and has “deployed an on-scene coordinator” to work with local officials.

    Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said Sunday that the crisis was “entirely foreseeable and preventable” and cries out for immediate intervention by the federal government.

    “With 24 more phosphogypsum stacks storing more than one billion tons of this dangerous, radioactive waste in Florida, the EPA needs to step in right now,” Lopez said. “Federal officials need to clean up this mess the fertilizer industry has dumped on Florida communities and immediately halt further phosphogypsum production.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • How much forest did we lose in 2020? Like, a Netherlands’ worth

    Despite all the dire warnings, corporate pledges, and tree-planting promises, forests keep falling at an alarming pace. In a report out Wednesday morning, experts tallied up all the acres of the most important forests lost in 2020 and found that it amounts to an area the size of the Netherlands.

    “Those dense forests can be hundreds of years old and store significant amounts of carbon. Losing them has irreversible impacts on biodiversity and climate change,” said Rod Taylor, director of the forest program at the nonprofit World Resources Institute, which produced the report with Global Forest Watch. The two organizations have been monitoring the world’s forests for 20 years with satellite images.

    These tropical old-growth forests that WRI focused on don’t go through regular cycles of harvesting and regeneration, like those managed by timber companies. In a better world, the 4.2 million hectares of primary tropical forest that fell this year would have remained standing forever. Levelling them resulted in the release of some 2.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide, according to the report, equivalent to twice the annual emissions from automobiles in the United States.

    WRI / Global Forest Watch

    Weather has become a driving force in forest loss. In places where weather was abnormally hot and dry last year, like Australia, Brazil, Bolivia, Germany, and Russia, forest fires flared and tree-cover loss spiked. The swampy Pantanal region in west-central Brazil lost nearly a third of its tree cover after a drought. In contrast, the numbers improved in Canada and Indonesia, where the weather was cooler and wetter.

    It’s clear that forests are growing more vulnerable to severe weather as the climate warms, said Francis Seymour, an WRI fellow. “I mean wetlands are burning!” she exclaimed. “Nature has been whispering this risk to us for a long time, but now she is shouting.”

    But there was some cause for hope: Indonesia, which has been among the top three deforesters for the previous 19 years, dropped into fourth place in 2020. That’s after four years of declining tree-cover loss.

    Indonesia had good luck with the weather, with unusually heavy rains last year. Falling prices for palm oil during the pandemic relieved economic pressure to clear forests for palm plantations. But some of the credit should also go to the government, which took decisive action after devastating fires in 2016 and 2017 to squelch deforestation, Seymour said.

    WRI / Global Forest Watch

    Cargill, the Singapore-based Wilmar International, and other big corporations involved in the palm oil trade have promised to freeze out plantations that bulldoze forests, but there are still bad actors. Palm oil prices have rebounded this year, which might make it tough for them to keep their promises. “I think this year and the next two to three years will be a real test to see if Indonesia can maintain its performance in reducing deforestation,” said Andika Putraditama, sustainable commodities and business manager, at WRI Indonesia.

    In Africa last year, deforestation seemed to be primarily driven by small-scale farmers moving from one spot to the next rather than big corporations with big plantations. Trees are falling to farmers just growing food to feed their families, or woodcutters harvesting fuel for cooking. So in central Africa, keeping trees upright requires  improving agriculture practices, rather than restricting farming. People have been expanding into forests because they don’t have the basic resources, like fertilizer, to keep renewing existing farmland, said Elie Hakizumwami, WRI’s country manager for the Democratic Republic of Congo.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How much forest did we lose in 2020? Like, a Netherlands’ worth on Mar 31, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.