Unofficial Conference Blog | Society of Environmental Journalists

Birds in Lubbock

Those birding SEJ members who aren't able to include the Muleshoe tour in their schedules, here's the bird list, http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/chekbird/r2/muleshoe.htm. Eat your hearts out.

I've arranged to meet with Jon McRoberts, a Texas Tech researcher who is studying Ocellated turkeys of the Yucatan. I wrote about his work a couple of years ago and I'm delighted to have the chance to visit with him in person. Contact me if you would like to join us Thursday evening at 7.

Biomass Conversation Skirts the Science

"The only thing green about biomass are the profits," said Margaret Sheehan at the Energy & Economy Session III this afternoon. Dave Atkins provided a different perspective; "If you don't grow it, you mine it … so biomass power is green, but various shades of green." So this debate is revolving around whether woody biomass (which is distinct from trash-based biomass) is a good thing in the combustion cycle. Does this sound like the complete biomass picture?

I was surprised that this panel of experts didn't touch on the advanced methodologies of the combustion cycle. We can accept the fact that, if you burn a tree, you produce more CO2 and NOX than from the same amount of coal. This is basically a question of the "carbon portfolio" in the host fuel. When I burn it (that is, break the carbon-carbon bonds), I get a different type of energy depending not the type of bonds that I break! But when considering emissions, the process that we use is a much more important variable.

With this in mind, why aren't we talking about carbon capture and sequestration? We have a handful of very effective methods (including gas adsorption, membrane separation, and CO₂-H₂O condensation) to separate carbon dioxide from the system, and we have made significant progress on sequestration technologies (including saline sinks, gas-in-shale injection, clathrate hydrate storage, and deepwater sequestration). If we look at using these technologies with biomass processes, then the carbon output is significantly reduced. Perhaps these folks can't touch that topic because it's outside their expertise, but the current discussion of biomass is incomplete.

More importantly, why aren't we talking about biofuels conversion? There is a new report from NREL that is incredibly exciting on this topic, and I would suggest that anybody interested in biomass read it!

Pollination, Pesticides, Fungus: Mini-tour, network lunch addresses threats to bees

A mysterious illness has decimated honeybees around the world. An article in the October 6 edition of The New York Times reported that new research blames a fungs tag-teaming with a virus for the die-off.

A Fortune story two days later took issue with this research.  Reporter Katherine Eban pointed to financial ties between Bromenshenk and Bayer AG, the chemical company that produces the pesticides blamed for the neurological disorders that make bees unable to navigate and work.

Janet Raloff, senior editor at Science News, and Beth Daley, environmental reporter for the Boston Globe, will co-host a Saturday mini-tour on this threat to bees, called "colony collapse disorder." Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula will lead the mini-tour. Also, a member of the Montana team will lead a network lunch on CCD.

I look forward to learning more about this urgent problem at these sessions. Thanks, Janet and Beth, for putting them together.

Climate Change Warms Montana

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer and First Dog Jag, his border collie, will be SEJ's guests at the opening reception and dinner Wednesday evening. Thomas Friedman, in Hot, Flat and Crowded, quotes Gov. Schweitzer at length on global warming. The governor and his wife, Nancy, are plugging an electric ZAP truck in this photo.

  

It turns out that Montanans get it: elk hunting season has had to be pushed back from October to November, because the heavy mountain snows that push elk to lower elevations where hunters can track and kill them don’t arrive in October any more.

 

“Changing the date for the start of elk hunting season is not being driven by scientists,” he said. It’s being driven by guys who want to hunt and are telling me, ‘I have not shot an elk in three years.’ These are just regular people, and they may not have the climate data, but they know what they know, and they know something is different.”

 

Montana’s getting less snow and it’s melting off earlier. Temperatures in trout streams are rising, not good for those cold-loving trout. Some rivers have been closed to fishing. Insects larvae that used to be killed by frigid winter temperatures are surviving warmer winters (relatively speaking – it’s still Montana), to eat up the trees. More dead trees means more devastating forest fires.

 

“We now have acres and acres of dead and dying trees in the Rockies,” said Schweitzer. “Nature has her way of dealing with that – lightning strikes. A healthy forest will burn a little and then a little rain will come and it will all stay in balance. Now, with so many dead and dying trees, you get a lightning strike and boom – 500,000 acres of trees are gone. It is changing the whole composition of the forest.”

 

See Chapter 5, Global Wierding, of Friedman’s book for more. I look forward to hearing Gov. Schweitzer at the dinner, and meeting Jag. The conference will have lots of sessions on subjects from wildfire to salmon. See you there.

 

Post script to dairy tour: Organic Valley reception

After spending the day Thursday at the Crave Brothers dairy - an innovative farm that uses conventional (non-organic) farming methods - I found it an interesting contrast Thursday night to meet an organic dairy farmer who lives just five minutes away from the Crave farm.

Jim Miller runs R&G Miller and Sons, Inc. farm in Columbus, Wisc., with his brother, cousins, and other relatives - 11 families in all. The farm has 300 dairy cows and 2,000 acres of crop land, plus a new grass-fed beef operation.

I met Miller at the SEJ conference at a reception put on by Organic Valley, a co-op of about 1,400 organic farmers started here in Wisconsin. The Thursday evening receptions are traditionally a time to mix and mingle with some important players in the environmental arena. The Organic Valley reception featured samples of milk, of course, along with tasty treats like carrot and parsnip cake with cream cheese frosting.

Miller, who has been on the Organic Valley board of directors for 11 years, was happy to tell his farm's story. He said his family decided to go organic after his father died of colon cancer at age 65 in 1992. His father was the one who did all the spraying of pesticides and other farm chemicals, and Miller had no desire to continue the practice. He blames the chemicals for the early demise of many farmers in his father's generation. 

"All his friends who did the spraying were either dead or had Parkinson's," Miller said.

Earlier today, Tom Crave told me his family considered going organic but decided against it. "We felt we'd have to give up too much technology," Crave said, referring to genetically modified seed for crops that feed the cows. (See my earlier post for more on the 1,000-cow Crave farm and their cheese-making business.)

In contrast, Miller said he didn't feel he was giving up anything to go organic. "Our crops are just as good," he said.

Miller said he gets $26 per hundredweight of milk, which is more than twice as much as the $12 conventional dairies get. The price differential makes up for the extra costs and paperwork associated with a certified organic farm and eliminates the dizzying price fluctuations that most dairy farmers live with, he said.

Miller also touted the nutritional value of his products, explaining that Organic Valley's "pasture butter," which is made only from milk obtained from pastured cows, has levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids as high as fish oil. All of Miller's livestock are put to pasture about seven months of the year, he said.

"We would never go back to conventional," Miller said.

Feeding Cities

Sustainable agriculture is such a great subject to write about – There’s always something new to learn. Today at Growing Power in Milwaukee, I learned that I put the wrong worms in my compost pile! As soon as I get home, I’m replacing those nightcrawlers with red wigglers. They live up to their name, showing off a vigorous wiggle for the assembled tour participants. 

Will Allen was selected as a MacArthur Fellow in 2008 for founding Growing Power. Talk about intensive agriculture – they’ve got fish ponds at the bottom, with the nitrogen-rich water pumped up into sprout trays that are harvested weekly. The water flows down to grow watercress at the next level. Then the water, now clean, flows back into the fish tank. 

 

This urban farm grows everything from two kinds of fish (tilapia and perch) to several kinds of sprouts, lots of greens such as chard, vegetables such as beets and tomatoes. Growing Power’s priority is to grow good dirt in order to grow good food. That’s where the red wigglers figure in. They work over the compost and wood chips to make dirt. Along the way, the decomposing compost produces enough heat to grow tropical plants, including bananas, figs and papyrus

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Chickens contribute twelve dozen eggs a day. Muscovy ducks, turkeys and goats (Saanen and Alpine) are raised for meat, and, from the goats, milk. 

Our lunch came from the gardens – salad, corn, beets (Will’s own recipe, spiced with cinnamon and cloves), braised cabbage with amazing flavor. Lasagna made with Wisconsin cheese. If you thought sprouts were evidence of self-denial, think again. These have varied, bright flavors, a delightful taste surprise. 

 We moved on to Walnut Way after lunch. It’s a project that reclaiming a Milwaukee neighborhood that the city tried to demolish. Literally. It was scheduled for demolition in the 1960s and more than 1,500 homes – and the heart of the black business district – were bulldozed. The justification was to make way for a freeway. That never got built, but the neighborhood was devastated. Some of the residents refused to leave, or, having left, came back. One of the older residential buildings, formerly a triplex, is now Walnut Way’s headquarters, right across the street from the house where co-founder Sharon Adams, shown here, in a photo from the Walnut Way site, was born.

   

 Walnut Way has its own gardens, and helps local residents grow food in their yards. Mrs. Adams points out that the gardens are not fenced, but the vegetables remain safe. She notes the lack of graffiti in the neighborhood as evidence of the peace the project has brought to the neighborhood. 

All the problems aren’t solved yet – two young men faced off in the street during our visit, until Mrs. Adams straightened them out. An backpack, torn open, contents scattered on the steps of a house, suggested some kind of tussle. But Walnut Way is leading the way not only to housing and community recovery, but improved nutrition and environmental stewardship. Thanks, Diane Hawkins-Cox and Karen Herzog for organizing this tour. 

Note: Because I did not bring my own camera equipment, I've posted photos from these organization's sites.

A visit to the Crave Brothers dairy farm

One of SEJ's many tours Thursday took participants to the Crave Brothers dairy farm in Waterloo, Wisc., less than an hour's drive from Madison. Our tour included a look at the barns where the farm's 1,000 dairy cows are kept, a peek into the cheese-making operation next door, and a delicious lunch featuring several kinds of cheese made on site.

SEJ-ers packed into an open-air wagon for a trip around the farm.  

Farmer Tom Crave told us how he and three of his brothers began the farm 30 years ago with 80 cows. In addition to its 1,000 cows, the operation now has 1,700 acres of crops and a cheese-making business.

 

The farm uses a digester to process cow manure and turn it into electricity. The $4 million facility helps manage odors, nutrients and greenhouse gas emissions, said Karl Crave, a second-generation member of the family. 

At Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese, the SEJ group enjoyed a lunch of sandwiches, salads with fresh mozzarella, and a variety of desserts using the farm's ricotta and mascarpone. Karl's wife Beth, a chef, prepared the food. 

Gordon Stevenson, chief of runoff management for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, challenged the idea that large concentrated animal feeding operations (called CAFOs) are the major source of agricultural pollution. Stevenson said the 200 CAFOs in Wisconsin are highly regulated, whereas the 30,000 smaller farms do not have to meet the same standards. 

Small family farms are perceived as "holy" and unassailable, while CAFOs are perceived as uncaring "factory farms," a term he thinks is unfair. "Here is the truth about Wisconsin," he said. "Those small farms are no more virtuous than large farms are villainous."