Urban Ecoist

The other day I wrote about the kitchen garden that First Lady Michelle Obama is putting in on the White House grounds, the first garden since the World War II victory garden tended by Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Obama decided to garden after being gently encouraged by a group called Kitchen Gardeners International, and just when you’d think that the First Lady is going to get some respect for doing something like planting some lettuce and peas for White House dinners, another group has taken offense.

The Catch-22 Garden

Seems the organic garden of Mrs. Obama is ruffling some feathers among those that farm the “conventional” way. Ok, is it odd that the way of farming that has been around for thousands of years and lead to the dawn of civilization is not called “conventional”? No, conventional farming is the newfangled less-than-a-century-in-use chemical farming that everyone thought was the answer to all of our species troubles.

Anyway, the Mid America CropLife Association has sent Mrs. Obama a letter asking her to rethink her plans to go organic in her kitchen garden. The main gist of the argument is that chemical “conventional” agricultural practices are good enough for everyone else, so the Obamas don’t need to go starting something.

Here’s a brilliant passage from the letter, which I got from La Vida Locavore.

Starting in the early 1900’s, technology advances have allowed farmers to continually produce more food on less land while using less human labor. Over time, Americans were able to leave the time-consuming demands of farming to pursue new interests and develop new abilities. Today, an average farmer produces enough food to feed 144 Americans who are living longer lives than many of their ancestors. Technology in agriculture has allowed for the development of much of what we know and use in our lives today. If Americans were still required to farm to support their family’s basic food and fiber needs, would the U.S. have been leaders in the advancement of science, communication, education, medicine, transportation and the arts?

We live in a very different world than that of our grandparents. Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and aging parents. The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family’s year-round food needs.

Much of the food considered not wholesome or tasty is the result of how it is stored or prepared rather than how it is grown. Fresh foods grown conventionally are wholesome and flavorful yet more economical. Local and conventional farming is not mutually exclusive. However, a Midwest mother whose child loves strawberries, a good source of Vitamin C, appreciates the ability to offer California strawberries in March a few months before the official Mid-west season.

So, chemicals pesticides and fertilizers are responsible for mankind’s advances in other “fields”…ok, sure, I’ll buy that a constant food supply does allow for surpluses, which would in turn lead to wealth that would be able to fund research and the arts. But a lot of studies are showing that there is very little real advantage to conventional farming methods, and that often the health of the soil is degraded over many seasons as the farmers are throwing chemical nutrients into the soil hoping that the plants will absorb them before they leach through the soils into the groundwater supply. If the nutrients are not staying the soil, then the soil turns to dust.

And I love the part at the end about a Midwestern mother be able to give her strawberry-loving child berries in March rather than waiting for the June strawberry season. Come on, that is a poor argument, especially as we start looking at the total carbon footprint of the agricultural industry and see that transporting produce in off-seasons can really add up in terms of carbon emissions. Not only that, but that California strawberry was picked while it was underripe, and underdeveloped nutritionally-speaking, so that it would be perfectly ripe by the time it made its cross-country trip to that Illinois grocery store.

That Midwestern mother would be better off teaching her kid about seasonality and how local produce is more often than not the produce at the peak of its nutritional load. Better yet, she could plant a strawberry patch with her child and then freeze extra berries for March, or make the berries into jam to have all year like my mom did.

Michelle Obama, organic gardening, White House, kitchen garden, agriculture, crops, farming, conventional farming, chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, seasonality, local foods, Kitchen Gardeners International, carbon emissions

You may not know about all the chemicals floating around in your house or even your office, and chances are you are not aware of how dangerous some of the Volatile Organic Compounds that are given off by synthethic materials that are found in your home. It’s a process called off-gassing. For example, particle board (that cheap stuff that all cheap furniture is made of) off-gasses formeldahyde. But here’s the deal. Even natural products off-gas, so it’s not like you can ever fully remove VOCs from your home. Anything plastic gives off VOCs, but then wood also gives off gases.

Much like a garden can be a “sink” and a “scrubber” for water and pollutants, your indoor houseplants can help you remove volatile organic compounds (loosely defined by the Environmental Protection Agency as any compound that photoreacts or easily vaporizes and enters the atmosphere. The problem with VOCs in your house is that because you keep your house closed up (especially in colder weather) those VOCs can reach some pretty high levels, even 5 times more than if you were outside.

And your houseplants are effective at removing VOCs from your house. Of course, some plants are better than others. Here’s a top 15 to get you started.

1. Philodendron scandens `oxycardium’, heartleaf philodendron
2. Philodendron domesticum, elephant ear philodendron
3. Dracaena fragrans `Massangeana’, cornstalk dracaena
4. Hedera helix, English ivy
5. Chlorophytum comosum, spider plant
6. Dracaena deremensis `Janet Craig’, Janet Craig dracaena
7. Dracaena deremensis `Warneckii’, Warneck dracaena
8. Ficus benjamina, weeping fig
9. Epipiremnum aureum, golden pothos
10. Spathiphyllum `Mauna Loa’, peace lily
11. Philodendron selloum, selloum philodendron
12. Aglaonema modestum, Chinese evergreen
13. Chamaedorea sefritzii, bamboo or reed palm
14. Sansevieria trifasciata, snake plant
15. Dracaena marginata , red-edged dracaena

That list comes from Clean Air Gardening.

And get this…the study of using plants to clean the air all started with NASA in the 1960’s. The materials used in the enclosed environments in space are synthetic and the VOCs off-gassed were making people sick. An environmental scientist named Wolverton started studying how plants could clean up toxic waste, and he found that simple houseplants can be really effective little cleaners of indoor air pollution. Today, Wolverton’s company is working on using natural materials derived from plants as filters for enclosed environments.

plants, indoor air quality, indoor air pollution, VOC, volatile organic compounds, plastics, synthetic materials, indoor environment, health

This week is National Poison Prevention Week, as if you didn’t know. But you may not know that this is the 48th of such weeks, and National Poison Prevention Week is one of the longest running public health campaigns.

In fact, did you know that 30 children a year die in the United States from accidental poisoning? Thanks to the National Poison Prevention Week, that number is down from a high of 216 in 1972. What I think is even more impressive is that the numbers of accidental poisonings are down despite the increase in household poisons we keep around our typical American homes. Good work, NPPW!

And it’s not just cleaning products or drain openers that are poisoning our kids. Half of all accidental poisoning in very young children involve prescription drugs and dietary supplements.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission offers tips on preventing accidental household poisonings, including not referring to your medicine as candy in front of kids. No kidding. Also, keep an eye on your kids when any hazardous material is present. Keep everything dangerous out of reach or better yet, locked up. Also, and I thought this is a good one, do not have colorful lamps and candles that have lamp oil in them. The stuff may look like Kool-Aid to kids, but even more deadly.

I’m going to go you one better and suggest that instead of keeping lots of chemically-delicious household cleaners around the house, explore other ways to clean your house with natural ingredients. Not that a tummy full of borax would be good for your child upon ingestion (it really wouldn’t), but it cannot be as bad as some of the stuff that may be under your sink.

poison, poisoning, National Poisoning Prevention Week, Consumer Product Safety Commission, children, health, death, chemicals, household cleaners, prescription drugs, medicine, dietary supplements, natural, borax

Within days of getting my email from the Great Sunflower Project asking me to confirm my mailing address for my free sunflower seeds, I also get news that the Natural Resources Defense Council is campaigning to get the EPA to suspend use of and review its approval of the pesticide imidacloprid, a “moderately” toxic pesticide that works on the neurotransmitters in insects.

If you are a regular reader, you know that I often lambaste the EPA for its shortsightedness when it comes to approving chemicals for use in industry and agriculture (and pharmaceuticals and consumer use) without any true long-term testing. And in the case of imidacloprid, the NRDC is asking that something as simple as multi-generational studies on how this pesticide affects honey bees.

Imidacloprid was first patented and put into use in the late 1980’s. The pesticide is a neonicotinoid, which is based on the chemical makeup of nicotine. Imidacloprid works on a an insect’s nervous system, after the insect ingests the chemical after feeding on a plant’s sweet juices. A neonicotinoid blocks a receptor in the brain and causes an excess amount of acetylcholine. The excess creates paralysis and then death in the victim.

France has banned imidacloprid, sold thereunder the name Gaucho, for use on sunflowers since 1999 after one-third of all the country’s honeybees dies after a season of wide-spread usage. The French further banned the chemical on sweet corn, and last year, decided not to approve its use at all. Germany banned imidacloprid and its 8 neonicitinoid cousins last year after a huge die-off of honeybees following an application of the pesticide, clothianidin. Furthermore, imidacloprid’s maker, Bayer, is being sued by various groups, from farmers to local and national environmental groups.

What you can do

You can write to the EPA calling for action. Click here for the NDRC action site to send a pre-written letter to the Office of Pesticide Programs.

Also, buy organic produce and support farmers that eschew chemical pesticides.

EPA, pesticide, agriculture, imidacloprid, neonicotinoid, honeybees, colony collapse disorder, bees, toxicity, chemicals, organic, France, US, Gaucho, corn, farming, Germany, banned, Europe, clothianidin, acetylcholine, brain, nervous system, insects, plants

A new study came out that finds that by cutting pollution in your city, you can live longer.

More importantly, the study found that life expectancy increased by 3 years over the last 20 years (approximately) in 50 cities across America. It may be in all cities, and I’m sure you could draw that conclusion; I only add the 50 cities because that is what the study included. The researchers behind the study analyzed data sets comparing life spans and levels of particulate pollution from 1980 and 2000. As pollution levels dropped, life expectancy rose. Seems simple enough…

Actually, to put a finer point on it, your life was extended by 5 months because of a drop in air pollution. How they came up with five months, I don’t know, but wait, the article mentions that factors such as “such as changes in demographics, income, migration, population, education and cigarette smoking.” So I guess due to all those factors, we urbanites in the 50 cities included in the study are living 2.72 years longer than we did back in 1980. The air pollution accounts for 15% of that increase.

Neat.

Some of the very dirtiest cities saw an increase in life expectancy of 10 months due to the reduction in air pollution, thanks to the Clean Air Act. Although even relatively clean cities show a benefit to public health standards from additional reductions in air pollution levels.

This is good news for many reasons — longer, healthier lives for one — but this is good timing for all those who are trying to undermine the intentions of the Clean Air Act by ignoring some pollution and/or not enforcing limits on things that are produced by burning, say, gas or coal. Hopefully, with a new Administration and a new EPA administrator, the EPA will start regulating such things as carbon dioxide, and then new studies will show us in twenty years how we lengthened our lives by doing so.

Just a thought.

air pollution, health, life expectancy, cities, urban, America, US, Clean Air Act, pollution, particulates, gas, coal, public health

Like how I rhymed that…

I got an email from the Sierra Club today. Reading through it, I clicked on a link to a really scary report from the Environmental Integrity Project. Seems the Tennessee Valley Authority may not be all that truthful about the recent “leakage” at the Widow’s Creek Fossil Plant in Alabama.

No!! A member of the Big Coal not being truthful. I can’t…nay, I won’t believe it.

The Environmental Integrity Project went through the TRI’s (Toxic Release Inventory) of both the Kingston Fossil Plant and the Widow’s Creek Fossil Plant. TRI are just what they sound like, an inventory of all toxic (by the Environmental Protection Agency standards) substance released over the course of a year and these reportings are required by law. Of course, that doesn’t mean that some industrial entities don’t lie about their releases. That is how companies end up paying fines, if and when the EPA starts enforcing rules.

The TRIs from the Widow’s Creek coal-fired power plant tell a very different story from what the TVA said the day the leak was discovered. The TVA claimed that the dump site that leaked was simply relatively safe gypsum.

Now to be fair, that could be true. I am not privy to the exact location of the leaking waste pond. However, I did check out the location of the Widow’s Creek plant on Google Earth, and there are quite a few holding ponds. One of which is a sickly green color that is oozing into another different green pond. Incidentally, that green pond looks like it is close to what I think is Widow’s Creek, which is harder to find since it looks like it may have been manipulated by the Plant. What is worrisome is just how closely the ponds are situated in relation to not only Widow’s creek (which looks pretty small), but also the very large Tennessee River.

But truly, the most frightening thing to me — and maybe I’m not the only one here — is the large amounts of toxic releases that are allowable by the EPA. Truly staggering numbers of both air and water releases of things like arsenic, lead, mercury. There was over a billion tons of mercury emissions coming from Widow’s Creek in four years (1998-2002).

It is no longer acceptable to ignore the considerable amount of toxic substances that we spew onto the land and into the water and the air. Widow’s Creek is not unusual and there are many, many, many facilities around the United States pumping out similar numbers of compounds that are making us sick. Widow’s Creek supplies the electricity for 650,000 homes according to the TVA’s website. No matter where you live, you are consuming power that has to come from somewhere. Find out where, and find out how dirty it is and just how close it is to your home and your child’s school. Then maybe we will start looking beyond the empty promise of clean coal[sic].

At what cost progress? And we are only going to be needing more energy…

Widows Creek, Fossil Plant, fossil fuels, emissions, toxins, toxic substances, coal, energy, electricity, Tennessee Valley Authority, Tennessee, Alabama, Stevenson, Google earth, Kingston, clean coal, schools, homes, pollution

It is not often lately that I can applaud the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency. But today, it was announced that another agreement was reached between the EPA and three major manufacturers of sulfuric acid. The three companies — Chemtrade Logistics, Chemtrade Refinery Services, and Marsulex — will pay civil penalties for pollution emitted that violated the Clean Air Act in addition to the combined $12 million in new pollution controls that the companies will install to curtail harmful emissions of sulfur dioxide.

Remember sulfuric acid…it makes acid rain. We don’t hear as much about acid rain anymore, do we? A lot of that has to do with the Clean Air Act. And certain industries are better than others at cleaning up after themselves, but the acid production industry has not been held all that accountable until recently.

“The companies are expected to reduce harmful air pollution by an estimated 3,000 tons per year, which is well over half of their annual emissions,” said Granta Y. Nakayama, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Today’s settlement will improve air quality for millions of people.”

“This settlement is the product of our sustained effort to bring all sulfuric acid manufacturers into compliance with the Clean Air Act,” said Michael Guzman, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division. “We are pleased that the cooperative effort among us, our state counterparts, the Northern Arapaho Tribe, and the defendants resulted in this victory for the environment.”

Between January 2010 and January 2013, at its four production facilities in Beaumont , Texas ; Shreveport , La. ; Tulsa , Okla. ; and Riverton , Wyo. , Chemtrade will upgrade existing pollution control equipment called scrubbers to meet new, lower emission limits for sulfur dioxide. At its facility in Oregon , Ohio , Marsulex will improve chemical processing equipment, which will reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by no later than July 2011. Finally, Marsulex will install a new scrubber at Chemtrade’s sulfuric acid plant in Cairo , Ohio , to meet lower sulfur dioxide limits by July 2011. — EPA

Sulfuric acid production burns sulfur (or sulphur, if you prefer) to produce sulfur dioxide (SO2). SO2 readily combined with water to produce H2SO4, otherwise known as sulfuric acid. Concentrated sulfuric acid is used in many industries like fertilizers, steelmaking, ore refining, petroleum refining, and it’s even used in making nylon and detergents.

Reductions in sulfuric acid emissions will come from new scrubbers and lower allowance limits. The new short-term limits that the companies have agreed to finally follow are from 1.7 pounds to 2.5 pounds of SO2 per ton of product, according to the EPA.

The civil penalty comes from modifications made at Chemtrade and Marsulex that increased emissions, and since neither company bothered to gain proper permits to do so or the required scrubbers to limit those emissions, they effectively violated the Clean Air Act. The fines will go to the Federal government ($460,000) and the rest will go to the four states where the six manufacturing plants are located.

Good job, EPA, doing your, um, job?

Clean Air Act, sulfuric acid, sulfuric dioxide, acid rain, Chemtrade, Marsulex, EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, federal, government, emissions, pollution

This is one of those news stories you hear, and you just shake your head in disgust.

Maybe if the Coal Industry had spent all those clean coal advertising dollars on building better containment areas for the enormous amounts of toxic waste that clean coal is producing, these spills would not keep happening.

It was reported this morning that yet another TVA coal-fired plant has suffered a spill of its coal by-product. And this spill happened in a holding pond that was seriously just inspected and as of December 31st, was deemed safe.

The Tennessee Valley Authority that runs the Widow’s Creek Fossil Plant near Stevenson, Alabama has claimed that the spill is smaller than the Kingston spill in Tennessee last month. And this spill’s waste is mostly gypsum, which is a naturally occurring benign substance used in the manufacture of dry wall and cement. It can also be used to promote coagulation in tofu, adding calcium. Just in case you didn’t know that, tofu-nuts.

However, by early afternoon, the “spill” was renamed a “leak.” The TVA now says that it was a pipe that was leaking and they did not know how long it had been leaking. Hmm, shouldn’t that have been discovered during the recent inspection?

The TVA also claims that the gypsum leak did not significantly leak out into Widow’s Creek (appropriately named for its close proximity to a coal plant, if you ask me), but instead remains in the holding pond. Normally, the gypsum is held in that pond and then dried out and sold to companies that make cement.

On the same day that the leak at Widow’s Creek was discovered, another story came out that the Kingston Fossil Plant had two previous leaks that were not adequately repaired before the major coal ash spill a few days before Christmas.

That TVA sure is doing good work…More coal-fired plants, please. [super sarcasm]

coal, ash, spill, leak, gypsum, Alabama, TVA, Tennessee Valley Authority, Widows Creek, Kingston, Tennessee

I have covered this topic again and again, and sadly the consequences of coal mining and coal-fired electric generation plants have come home to roost…actually 15 destroying homes in the roosting process.

Thankfully, no one was killed or seriously injured in the accident. However, the toxic effects of the coal fly ash spill are still being debated by those responsible, of course.

Here’s a great quote from a New York Times article that rehashes the debate over coal ash and its dangers.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has issued no warnings about the potential chemical dangers of the spill, saying there was as yet no evidence of toxic substances. “Most of that material is inert,” said Gilbert Francis Jr., a spokesman for the authority. “It does have some heavy metals within it, but it’s not toxic or anything.”

Oh, that “it’s not toxic or anything” is really reassuring, isn’t it? And what’s with that “most of the material”? What else is there besides the supposedly inert, non-toxic material?

Fly ash is a by-product of burning coal to produce electricity. And the same icky stuff that is found in coal is concentrated in the coal ash, so if you are worried about the heavy metals in coal, you should really be concerned about the heavy metals in coal ash.

And those heavy metals are…

arsenic

lead

selenium

chromium

nickel

vanadium

beryllium

cadmium

barium

molybdenum

and don’t forget the good ol’ radioactive substances in coal and fly ash like uranium, thorium, radium, and radon.

The biggest threat that most of the aforementioned substances pose is when they are inhaled or ingested. Almost of those substances are carcinogenic or carry other threats of developmental damage to animals and humans. Once that sludge dries, it will become air-borne dust. And obviously, it has already been introduced into the water supply.

Inert, maybe. Not toxic, hardly.

And when you add most of those heavy metals to water, it is a dangerous situation, indeed, whether you boil that water or not.

Fly ash is called fly ash because it used to be the by-product that flew off into the sky from coal-fired plants. The Clean Air Act put a stop to that, and the fly ash had to be captured by the plants. Unfortunately, there is that old law of matter not being created nor destroyed, and the fly ash had to go somewhere. Coal-fired plants simply built some earthen dams and made their own landfills. However, that was hardly the solution as whenever it rained, fly ash leached into groundwater supplies.

Another 2007 E.P.A. report said that over about a decade, 67 towns in 26 states had their groundwater contaminated by heavy metals from such dumps.

For instance, in Anne Arundel County, Md., between Baltimore and Annapolis, residential wells were polluted by heavy metals, including thallium, cadmium and arsenic, leaching from a sand-and-gravel pit where ash from a local power plant had been dumped since the mid-1990s by the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company. Maryland fined the company $1 million in 2007. — NY Times

I hate to keep pilfering from the NY Times, but here is a really good graphic to give you an overview of how fly ash is produced and a map of the Kingston fly ash spill. Click on the image for a bigger view and better detail.

Kingston, Tennessee, coal, ash, fly ash, spill, heavy metals, arsenic, lead, selenium, chromium, nickel, vanadium, beryllium, cadmium, barium, molybdenum, uranium, thorium, radium, radon, toxic substances, radioactive, dangers, water supply, coal mining, coal-fired plants, electricity

Despite my reluctance to admit that I read USA Today occasionally, I read USA Today occasionally. My aunt and uncle subscribe, and spending the holidays at their house, well, it’s here, and I tend to read anything within an arm’s reach.

USA Today has been publishing special investigative reports on “The Smokestack Effect: Toxic Air and America’s Schools“, and I happened upon this week’s installment in what seems to be a pretty expansive series. Monday’s paper had a scary article on the alarming proximity of industrial facilities and elementary schools and pre-schools.

USA Today found that more than 20,000 schools are located within one half-mile of an industrial plant that emits some rather dangerous pollution. That is one in every six schools. And to make matters worse, half od those schools are elementary schools and early education centers such as pre-schools. That is just unacceptable.

Children are kind of like our canaries in the coal mine. Think about it. Kids are smaller, so any chemical that is taken in is naturally going to become a higher amount percentage-wise than in adults. And here’s where it becomes downright negligent — the EPA only tests chemicals in terms of how they may affect an adult body.

Too little is understood about the impact of thousands of chemicals on children. In part, that’s because most government assessments of the dangers assume those exposed are adults.

“The science doesn’t know — it can’t establish — what a safe level is” for children, says Stephen Lester, the science director of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, an advocacy group that focuses on children and schools. “There’s no tool, scientifically, for evaluating cumulative risk.”

Landrigan says the lack of detailed knowledge on safe levels of exposure, coupled with today’s rates of childhood cancer, asthma and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, begs “the obvious question: Is there a cause-and-effect relationship?” –USA Today

One of my pet research projects, and biggest gripes, is that many, many, way too many chemicals are not thoroughly tested before being approved for general consumption. Look at bisphenol-A. And in the case of many industrial facilties, chemicals are being pumped into our air with hardly a thought given to how those chemicals affect people over the long term.

USA Today, chemicals, pollution

I want to say yes here, but it really depends on what your bio-diesel is made from.

Researchers at the University of Illinois have tested various sources of bio-diesel and have determined that the best choices for bio-diesel and ethanol production that actually reduce the net carbon released into the atmosphere is …drumroll, please…perennial grasses.

The researchers analyzed published estimates of changes in soil organic carbon in landscapes converted from natural or agricultural land to biofuel crops.

They focused on corn, sugar cane, Miscanthus, switchgrass and native prairie grasses. They also evaluated the impact of harvesting and using corn stover (the plant debris left over after corn is harvested) as a cellulosic biofuel source.

Their analysis showed that converting native land (grassland or forest) to sugarcane dramatically reduced soil carbon, creating a carbon deficit that would take decades to repay. While perennial grasses add carbon to the soil each year, DeLucia said, it could take up to a century for the sugar cane to rebuild soil carbon to former levels on native land.

Harvesting the corn residue for cellulosic ethanol production also reduced the carbon in the soil. The more plant residue was removed, the more the soil carbon declined.

Planting perennial grasses on existing agricultural lands had the most beneficial effect on soil carbon, the researchers found. –SPX via Biofuel Daily

Maybe you have and maybe you have not heard that corn-based ethanol is not the wisest choice for biofuels. First, you have the issue that 20% of American-grown corn is being diverted into ethanol production, and that is corn that is not being consumed as food, by Americans or anyone for that matter. Most ethanol is produced from corn kernels, so it’s not like this is waste plant matter that would be tossed or composted anyway. No, this is food stuff that no one is eating, which means if there is less corn in the supply side of the economic equation, the price of corn has gone up. With the price of corn rising, more and more farmers (yes, especially the big corporate farms) are planting corn.

With more corn going into the limited amount of arable farmland available to the US, that means less of everything else being planted. So, we now have an issue with other food crops supplies decreasing — pushing up the prices of well, everything. Have you noticed the cost of a loaf of bread lately? Less wheat is being planted and the decreased supply leads to increased prices, even if demand were to remain steady.. which it won’t as more and more people join us on this wacky blue marble in space.

So, what kind of biofuels are okay, for all us urban ecoists that want to help the planet, live lightly, be kind and rewind our consumption practices, etc? The latest study, that is going to be published in next month’s Global Change Biology Bioenergy journal (try saying that three times fast), details that every time the Earth is plowed or dug up, that action releases carbon. Soil acts as a carbon sink, and that carbon is what makes soil good for crops. Plants really, um, dig carbon dioxide, remember?

Hmm, what “crop” needs no plowing, or at least not yearly plowing? Perennial prairie grasses. The grasses grow during the growing season, can be cut or harvested at the end of that season, and the plants spend the winter dormant, and then grow again the next season. No plowing, no seeding, and little to no fertilizer required.

How ironic that so many farmers spent years and years and years plowing under the native prairie grasses of the Great Plains, only to find that those perennial grasses just may save the US transportation fleet one day…

bio-diesel, University of Illinois, biodiesel, biofuel, biofuels, corn, ethanol, perennial grasses, prairie grasses, carbon, carbon dioxide, crops, farms, farming, wheat, prices, food supply, carbon sink, plowing

I finally watched WALL-E last night. I write finally because I usually see Pixar films in the theatre, usually within the first two weeks of their release. I never got around to seeing WALL-E as I hate going to the cinema now that I have to sit through television commercials, and my boyfriend is a big poophead when it comes to seeing so-called kids films.

Now, there was some disgruntlement among some caused by WALL-E’s rampant environmentalism. Some said children shouldn’t be exposed to the Church of Al Gore, and some claimed that Disney was being hypocritical in regards to its merchandising habits when it comes to films like WALL-E. I happen to agree with the second issue, but the first is ridiculous.

Kids should be initiated into the world of environmentalism. You know, I have resented that label since I was young and idealistic, thinking that we could save the planet. I resent it even more now, as no one should not be an environmentalist. Being human and environmentally-mindful should be one and the same, and the fact that some don’t get that yet is why the Earth is in so much trouble. However, to be fair the beginning of the Industrial Age was a while ago, and I doubt that first person to burn coal or a gallon of gas could even imagine what devastation that act would cause. But there is so much more to the environmental crisis than just carbon dioxide — we do produce a lot of crap, both in the form of trash, but also in the form of dangerous chemicals and toxins that are destroying the planet and its inhabitants much faster than global warming.

The more children of today are exposed to the truth the better. Let’s get beyond the Bush Regime’s maybes and omissions and upcoming Republican party spokeswoman Sarah Palin’s not caring to know the causes of climate change.

I loved WALL-E, by the way. My boyfriend liked it, too, although he kept complaining about WALL-E having human emotions. He just doesn’t understand kids’ movies.

WALL-E, Disney, Pixar, environmentalism, environment, trash, chemicals, toxins, Al Gore, children, kids, movies, films, Republican, denial, Palin, Bush

So, last week, I wrote a post about turkeys, and I really meant to continue on the whole tip-sheet on being more sustainable in your giving of Thanks to our corporate benefactors. I was planning on writing about vegetables and their seasonality, making your own gravies and stocks and soups, buying organic, you know all that good stuff, but then I got other ideas for things to bitch write about, and here we are. I could try to cover things in this post today, maybe extend it through tomorrow, but you have most likely figured it all out last week when everyone else wrote about sustainable or “green” Thanksgivings.

Instead of rehashing what others are rehashing, today, I am thinking about generations, namely that of my grandparents and mine. I was raised by my grandparents, who were really fantastic people that made me who I am today, and their generation was born during the Great Depression. My grandfather fought in Korea and married my grandmother soon afterward in 1953. Their generation saw great hardship, and it was from this time that the Agricultural Revolution was born.

My great-grandparents passed down recipes and gardening skills to their children, and my grandparents were into farmers markets and making things from scratch. And then my grandmother started getting lazy…

She admitted, so it’s not like I am calling her out here. She started buying graham cracker crusts at the grocery store for her cheesecake. My grandfather would make little digs about it, saying it was not how he remembered it, or not as good as his mothers. My grandmother would remind him of his diabetes and maybe he shouldn’t be eating cheesecake.

The Agricultural Revolution did increase yields and provided this nation with a great deal of food, and some of that food went to countries around the world, preventing millions from starvation. But the AR also lead to the rise of the Processed Foods Industry. The Archer Daniels Midlands and Cargills lead to the Sara Lees and the Krafts, which filled our kitchen cupboards with all sorts of partially-hydrogenated deliciousness and high-fructose goodness. Just today, a new Government Accounting Office report finds that farm subsidies are profiting millionaires (and corporate farms) rather than that small, family-based farm, and health doesn’t get in the way of big profits.

Enter my generation. Actually, I doubt that I can speak that generally about my generation. I live in two bubbles when it comes to food. I live in Portland, which is a localvore’s dream, and I have spent many years working in pretty decent restaurants that at least tried to source locally, even in Michigan. That and being raised by an older generation that didn’t always rely on buying everything in a handy box-kit or frozen prepackaged, I may not be as common as I like to think I am. But the fact that more and more organic food is available and more and more people are talking about organic produce (and fabrics, furniture, cleaners, etc), I am convinced that my generation is making progress.

Funny how things come full circle. Now, it’s all the rage to make your own stocks and sauces, compost your vegetable peelings, recycle your glass jars. For my grandparents, and their parents, and their parents, you had to make your own stocks. Composting wasn’t called composting, it was just burying the kitchen scraps, because what else are you going to do with them. Jars were precious commodities for “canning” the vegetables from your summer garden, and insuring that you had food for February. Sure, the Agricultural Revolution may have freed us from the seasons, but at what cost?

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A Superfund site involves the cleanup of hazardous waste. It’s a term used by the US Environmental Protection Agency to designate a program to clean up abandoned hazardous waste. The Superfund program, full name being Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), was a result of disasters like toxic waste dumping sites Love Canal and Times Beach. You see, it seems that some business owners feel it is okay to dump toxic waste, and just cover it up and sell the land to unsuspecting buyers or mix toxic waste into something else, but not mention it to anyone until people start dying. Not that all Superfund sites are the result of such egregious behavior, but there is at least a degree or two of negliglence.

Do you know how many Superfund sites there are?

This map is not complete, but shows the worst of the bunch. Click on map for better detail.

Let me put it this way, as the Superfund site list (actually called the National Priorities List or NPL) is an ever-changing one, so far, assessments have been completed for over 40,000 sites. Are all of those terrible waste dumps — no, but they all have something toxic involved to some degree.

Actually, this is a little off topic, but when you talk about Superfund sites, it is hard to not also bring up the idea of environmental justice, or EJ for those in the know. Environmental Justice involves the whole issue of toxic waste and what neighborhoods or towns you find it in. Check out East St. Louis or West Dallas to see what I mean.

So you see, Superfund sites are often an urban problem.

Newtown Creek, an estuary between Queens and Brooklyn. Click here for story.

How can you find out where the Superfund sites are in your neck of the concrete woods?

May I recommend the EPA’s Superfund Sites Where You Live page (click on the title for the link)? I must warn you, it is somewhat depressing.

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Honestly, I think that is what Thanksgiving is all about — sustainability. The newly arrived, brass buckled English at Plymouth Rock had to learn that pretty quickly anyway.  It started out as then and still is a harvest festival, and to have a harvest year after decade after century, one must be sustainable.  Do your part even if you are not a farmer. Support the sustainable farmer.  Instead think of yourself as a pilgrim to brighter shores, a newcomer to an age of environmental awareness, a refugee to the land of green, a — ok, I’ll stop.

Today let’s talk Turkey.

Let’s face it, Americans love turkey for Thanksgiving. I am not exception. However, once I got older, I noticed that the dry turkey my mom made every year was not exactly her fault. She bought the brands she knew, namely Butterball. Granted, some years, it turned out pretty good, but I never really got into the Thanksgiving turkey thing (sorry, Mom).

Then I had wild turkey. And suddenly, turkey was good. I got it. But I still don’t get why so many people still go for the factory birds. My mom was a product of the 1950’s agricultural… cough, revolution that lead to the rise of the factory farm, so she could not really help it. Marketing works. It was funny that my parents were big farmers market people for produce, but didn’t know jack about where meat came from. And I don’t think it was just my parents. Americans have been kept in the dark when it comes to how our meats are produced, and most Americans liked it that way. Now, you have to look for organic, and free range, and no antibiotics.

Well, there’s a reason for that.

Even if you don’t want to get all hippie on the checklist of environmental buzz words, if there is any more compelling a reason to go with an organic turkey, I cannot think of it. Taste. Turkeys are not meant to be confined to cages. Turkeys are not meant to be so breast-heavy that the bird cannot reproduce without artificial insemination. Turkeys are not meant to be injected with oils and salt water in order to taste better.

The less you do to a turkey, the better it will taste. Turkeys are meant to cover a wide area, eating grubs and insects and small plants that turkeys eat. When you taste a turkey that is raised outside of the factory farm system, you will be a convert. Be careful not to fall for the word “natural” on the label. Look for the organic certification on the label. Unless you happen to get your turkey at a small local farm, since sometimes the smaller farms will not pay the cost of getting certified, and instead rely on talking to customers directly about their farming practices rather than a logo on a package.

Also, besides taste and flavor, there are other reasons to go organic. Factory farms feed their turkeys grain, which is grown with the use of unsustainable and ultimately detrimental farming practices, such as pesticides and genetically modified seed. The antibiotics that those turkeys are given ultimately end up in the water system.

And if you get your turkey from a local source, you can count on the fact that less fuel was needed to get that turkey to your table.

Factory Turkey Stats
Top 10 Turkey Producing States in 2007 (in order)

* Minnesota
* North Carolina
* Arkansas
* Virginia
* Missouri
* California
* Indiana
* Pennsylvania
* South Carolina
* Iowa

Top U.S. Turkey Processors
Live Weight Processed (Million Pounds) *
Butterball, LLC 1375
Jennie-O Turkey Store 1255
Cargill Value Added Meats 1112

*Estimates for 2007 from February 2008 Watt Poultry USA

The next farm on the list produces only 271 million pounds of turkey, which is still a lot, but Butterball, Jennie-O and Cargill are the big boys. I would avoid their products in general, and if you really care about your family and loves ones, give them a real feast on Thanksgiving.

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