Category: Environment

Native Communities are Fighting for a More Inclusive Farm Bill

Civil Eats

Native Communities are Fighting for a More Inclusive Farm Bill

Farm policy has long ignored tribal governments and communities. A coalition of tribes aims to change that.

By Kim Baca       February 26, 2018

About 10 miles west from the Missouri border in the wooded, lush-green northeastern corner of Oklahoma sits the first tribally owned meat-processing plant in the country.

In addition to processing its own beef and bison, the 4,800-member Quapaw Tribe manages four greenhouses that grow fresh herbs and vegetables and a bee operation that both pollinates its plants and produces honey. The Quapaw people also roast their own coffee, which they package and sell, and earlier this year, they opened a craft brewery.

While participating in greater America’s enterprise system, the Quapaw also use some of what they produce to feed their own people and surrounding non-Native communities. In addition to supplying the steakhouse and restaurants at its casinos with freshly grown food, the tribe distributes bison to senior citizens and at the reservation’s daycare center.

The Quapaw tribe dedicating their meat-processing facility. (Photo courtesy of the Quapaw tribe)

The Quapaw tribe dedicating their meat-processing facility. (Photo courtesy of the Quapaw tribe)

“Our contention is tribes are not sovereign unless they can feed themselves,” said Ross Racine, executive director of the Intertribal Agriculture Council. “But today, $3.3 billion of Native American agricultural products go into the commodity market. [By contrast,] Quapaw is eating what they are growing.”

Although agriculture continues to play a big role in Native life today, the Quapaw’s ability to feed themselves is nearly unique. While the overwhelming majority of farm operators in the U.S. are white, among farmers of color an estimated 30 percent are Native American or Alaska Native, and together they generate $3.3 billion in sales each year. But Native producers have little access to critically important resources such as credit, insurance, or loan programs, and that fact limits their ability to be fully autonomous.

Hoping to ensure that the voices of the nation’s original caretakers are heard, Native American groups have come together to advocate for more inclusion, greater funding, and extensive revisions in the upcoming farm bill, which will replace the soon-to-expire Agricultural Act of 2014. For nearly a year, the Native Farm Bill Coalition—made up of more than 22 tribes, tribal organizations, and nonprofits across the country—has been meeting to craft policy for the $489 billion omnibus bill, which oversees food assistance for more than 46 million low-income Americans, as well as food safety, agriculture insurance and losses, agricultural research, and rural housing and economic development.

“The farm bill holds the potential for tribal governments and producers to feed their own people in their own tribal food systems,” said Colby Duren, co-author of a report commissioned by the Native Farm Bill Coalition, during a recent webinar. “All of this will help spur economic development [and] build critical infrastructure, which is lacking in a lot of communities. [It will] be able to support traditional foods and … improve health, nutrition, food access and food security.”

Designing a Bill to Support Native Communities

Native communities’ lack of access to resources is due partly to the status of Native lands, which are held in trust by the U.S. government, making traditional landowner financing difficult to obtain. Without access to capital, much of the food produced on those lands is processed and consumed outside the community. Additionally, while non-Native communities have had access to various U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs since the 1940s, only in 1990 were the first Native producers eligible for these programs, Racine said.

“We’re in a phase of catch-up,” he said.

The disadvantages Native Americans face when it comes to land and food access have roots that stretch back centuries. Starting in the late 1800s, the federal government used treaties to force many to convert to a western model of agrarianism and land management. The U.S. government assisted tribes in the transition—offering education, health care, and the right to self-govern, among other provisions—as a way to assimilate and settle Native people, who were seen as culturally inferior, in exchange for their land. Yet tribes already had their own traditional foraging and agricultural systems, and tribal land reduction and relocation destroyed many of those those foodways.

Eldrige Hoy, Choctaw Fresh Produce Farm Market Enterprise, Philadelphia, MS and Bryson Sam a member of the Choctaw Nation seed a high tunnel with Iron Clay peas as a cover crop to improve soil quality. (Photo courtesy of the USDA.

Eldrige Hoy, Choctaw Fresh Produce Farm Market Enterprise, Philadelphia, MS and Bryson Sam a member of the Choctaw Nation seed a high tunnel with Iron Clay peas as a cover crop to improve soil quality. (Photo courtesy of the USDA.

The effects were extremely detrimental to Native American wellbeing. With limits imposed on fishing, foraging, and hunting—and pushed out to rural areas with limited access to a commercial market—many tribal people became dependent on food distribution programs, which often contained processed food. As a result, Native Americans suffer some of the highest rates of diabetes and obesity in the country.

Those new SNAP boxes the Trump Administration proposed to near-universal outrage earlier this month? They’ve been regularly supplied to Native American reservations for 40 years.

Last summer, the Native Farm Bill Coalition published Regaining Our Future, a report detailing their recommendations to better support Native people in each of the bill’s 12 titles, or sections. Their suggestions include extending credit and conservation programs, allocating research dollars to land grant tribal colleges, and providing access to international markets for certified Native American products, among others.

The coalition also calls for tribes to issue their own Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly called food stamps, which makes up 80 percent of the overall farm bill. (Currently, a majority of states manage the SNAP programs on Native American reservations.) Tribes would also like traditional and locally grown foods included in food distribution programs to help curb diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diet-related illnesses that Native Americans experience at higher rates. In some Native communities, one-quarter of members are participating in a federal food program.

Making Room at the Table

Photo courtesy of The Seeds of Native Health.

Photo courtesy of The Seeds of Native Health.

As Congress begins the process of reviewing the mammoth bill this spring, staffers with the office of Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) said bipartisan discussions on tribal recommendations that could be incorporated in the omnibus legislation or through supplemental bills are now taking place.

Already, Udall—who serves as vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs—and three other Democratic senators have introduced the Tribal Nutrition Improvement Act, which provides funding and adds federally recognized tribes to the list of governments authorized to administer federal food programs including the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs, the Summer Food Service Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. The legislation would allow tribes to directly administer school food programs without having to go through state agencies.

Though President Trump’s proposed 2019 budget calls for large cuts to American Indian programs, tribes are still hopeful that their voices may be heard, citing several gains in the last farm bill and support from congressional leaders familiar with tribal issues.

“For too long, Indian Country has been knocking at the door of each new farm bill negotiation, asking for a seat at the table as sovereign governments alongside states and counties,” Udall said. “This year, there is bipartisan support for including Indian Country in the farm bill negotiations and adding provisions to support Indian Country through sections like those on nutrition and economic development to name a few,” he continued, adding that he and Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) have started discussions with tribes, the USDA, and Congress.

“I’m optimistic that we can continue to make progress,” Udall said. “We all need to come together to push the door open and make room at the table.”

Making progress on food sovereignty is of paramount importance to Racine and other Native leaders. “There has never been a society in the history of the world that has survived without the ability to feed itself,” said Racine during a recent Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing on agribusiness in Indian Country. “Agriculture is a tradition on our reservations, not the product.”

Students at Circle of Nations School in Wahpeton, ND gather vegetables that they grew in the school’s garden. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Students at Circle of Nations School in Wahpeton, ND gather vegetables that they grew in the school’s garden. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

This article is part of a series published by Civil Eats in partnership with GATHER, a documentary chronicling the movement for Native American Food Sovereignty.

Top photo courtesy of Seeds of Native Health.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and The High Cost of Bad Governance

John Hanno, www.tarbabys.com         February 22, 2018

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School                          and The High Cost of Bad Governance

Between deaths from opioids (65,000) and gun violence (35,000), 100,000 Americans die every single year; equivalent to a 9-11 terrorist attack every 11 days. Why? Because big Pharma and the National Rifle Association (NRA) are two of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. And because the Republi-con controlled congress and the trump administration refuses to allow or even discuss sensible legislation that could begin to remedy this national nightmare.

After 3,000 people perished on 9-11, the Bush administration and Congress turned the world upside down. They spent hundreds of billions to reorganized the entire federal intelligence apparatus into the Department of Homeland Security and coordinated that effort with every state government in the country. They also squandered more than $4 trillion invading 2 countries, seeking atonement for those attacks.

At this late date, we’ve done very little battling organized and legal distribution of boatloads of opioids into the poorest counties in America and absolutely nothing to pass even modest or sensible gun control laws. Mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting and still nothing.

Rupubli-cons in congress are especially conjoined with the NRA lobby and with a base of supporters, who’s primary goal in life, is protecting their right to bear any and all arms, no matter the consequences to the other 90% of the country.

80% of Americans (and now after Parkland, more than 90%) want sensible gun control; but that doesn’t matter, targeted campaign contributions and political extortion from the gun lobby and votes from obsessive gun nuts are much more important to Republi-cons in congress and to trump, who received many millions of dollars from the NRA for his campaign.

So what’s the legislative focus and governing agenda of this toxic, diabolical and incompetent administration and Republi-con controlled congress?

Job One is the systematic dismantling of any and all accomplishments which President Obama’s administration implemented to help women, the unemployed, wage earners, the uninsured, consumers, students, immigrants and Dreamers, the poor, America’s beleaguered middle class and the world’s environment.

Job Two is to make flourishing multi-national corporations even more prosperous with their partisan tax reform scam; likewise used to make millionaires and billionaires even wealthier. Ditto… for foreign investors, who reaped 30% of the windfall from the Republi-con tax fraud.

Job three is to dismantle the institutions and their hard won regulations America has created and relied on to protect its workers, consumers, the sick and disabled, senior citizens and the retired, public lands – and National Monuments and Parks and our environment. Every federal department’s mandate is under siege and is now controlled by the evil doers who had previously attacked the very regulations and programs that once protected us.

Job four is pandering to the oil and gas and extractive industries, who aim to rape, pillage and exploit every square inch of America’s sovereignty and every public land or protected National Park or Monument. If they can’t get their way through bullying and intimidation of land owners or public officials, they use pliant politicians and courts to take what they want through Eminent Domain.

Job five, and maybe the most beneficial to political donors like the Koch’s, is to strip away any and all social safety net and entitlement programs America uses to help its less fortunate and hardest working citizens. Republic-cons and especially House Speaker Paul Ryan, have “dreamed” of dismantling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare and unemployment programs since the day they were enacted. trump and Ryan claim they want to “Make America Great Again;” but their real goal is to make every worker so desperate that they’ll grab any crap job that comes along. I still believe that’s the primary reason they have, and are still, obsessed with crippling the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which once and forever freed the poorest American workers from the chains of employer controlled healthcare. They relish students burdened by decades of onerous student debt and consumers driven into bankruptcy. Workplace slavery and debtors prisons are on many corporate wish lists and are fully supported by their compliant paid representatives in congress and in the courts.

I just can’t think of one single thing trump world has done to “Make America Great Again,” for the bottom 80%.

Obama Tried to Heal America, trump’s Trying to Steal America!

trumps answer to the Parkland, Florida shooting is to arm 40% of the teachers in America. He says arming “highly adept” teachers is much less expensive than hiring guards to protect our children. That’s approximately 700,000 loaded weapons in our schools. The NRA is no doubt orgasming. We can’t possibly count the ways, this is a monumentally bad idea. trump also thinks all retired Marine generals and military officers should begin a second career as armed teachers and coaches in America’s schools. Ditto…..bad idea! And besides, they wouldn’t work for the peanuts that Republi-cons think our well trained teachers really deserve. They’re clearly obsessed with attacking teacher unions, their compensation and pensions and their well earned benefits. Ex military personal, freshly retired from the largest Socialist organization in the entire civilized world (The U.S. Military Forces) might not be receptive to working for stingy and greedy capitalists.

During an interview on MSNBC, Greg Pittman, a history teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, recited a dozen reasons why arming teachers is the worse idea he’s ever heard of. Even though he teaches the 2nd Amendment in his history classes and believes in those principles, he wants no part of the responsibility of carrying a weapon at school. He said he doesn’t get paid enough to be on a swat team, a police force or in the military. He doesn’t even get paid enough to be a teacher (“but that’s another story”). And I’m sure he and other teachers don’t want to be potential targets of swat teams rushing into a shooting crisis and looking for anyone brandishing a loaded weapon.

The NRA spokespersons have been out in force attempting to deflect the wrath of Parkland’s victims aimed directly at them. They’re attempting to pass the blame to the FBI, and the local police and even Obama and Hillary and especially the media for driving this mounting and very vocal opposition. But they fail to understand the anger.

This latest mass shooting and mass murder spree in Parkland Florida, seems to have broken the AR-15 camels back. These Parkland community protesters are clearly not going away; I don’t think these young folks, their parents and their teachers will allow their protests to die or fade. The carnage was just too raw, the injustice overwhelmed. These political and technically savvy high school students, fully supported by their school administration and the local police forces have stepped up the opposition to level DEFCON 3. They won’t be bullied by the tired stop gaps prescribed by the NRA gun nuts and their political apologists this time. These are not the low information voters that Republi-cons and trump typically rely on to advance their destructive agendas. These students and families are so angry “really pissed” and extremely savvy in social media platforms. Their crusade has spread across the country.

They, like an overwhelming majority of critical thinking Americans, understand the common denominator in this whole GD mess is the AR-15 rifle, a military weapon of mass destruction, based on the M-16 military rifle, a weapon that our domestic military forces keeps securely locked and “unloaded,” at all times. I qualified as a Army Sharpshooter on an M-16. We were never allowed to take our weapons or a single bullet off of the firing range, and were under constant supervision by drill sergeants and range spotters the entire time we were on that range. If our weapons were aimed anywhere but down range, we could end up in the brig. Our weapons were always locked and unloaded, even on the range. And they were always locked up when off the range. Thank goodness, after I qualified, I never touched that weapon the rest of my 3 years of service.

But the NRA has fondly labeled the AR-15, the “New American Minuteman Rifle.” Based on the military M-16, these are the primary weapons of choice for mass shootings. But these are not defensive weapons, they are weapons designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible.

These weapons were banned for 10 years, they should be banned again. 8,000,000 of them are in the hands of ordinary American gun owners. How many of them are securely locked up? How many are locked and unloaded? How many are used away from an official firing range? How many are easily available to children or irresponsible adults or folks with mental issues? How many are only used under strict supervision?

What’s in the make-up of rabid gun toting people that drives them to accumulate as many weapons of mass slaughter as they can possibly afford or even use. There are now more guns in America than people, more than 310 million. Yet the number of gun owning households is shrinking. Less than 30% of American households own a gun. Some individuals surprisingly own dozens or even hundreds of weapons. The desires and the  speculative and debatable needs of this small minority of obsessive’s are laying waste to America’s schools, its communities and its moral conscience.

We don’t allow people to drive drunk or under the influence of drugs. We don’t allow commercial drivers to transport people without a valid CDL license. We don’t allow commercial drivers to obtain a CDL license if they have certain medical conditions. We don’t allow commercial vehicles on the road if they aren’t safely maintained. We limit the number of hours they can drive. We don’t allow professionals to perform hundreds of different professions unless they’re properly trained and licensed. We require people who drive on our roads and highways to have insurance in case they harm someone. Why? Because we’ve determined, through research and law, that its in the best interests of the American public. Why, in heavens name do we allow people to purchase high powered killing machines at any age, even if they have mental disabilities and even if they don’t have money and can only buy them on credit? We also don’t require them to purchase liability insurance. If we did, maybe gun owners would be forced to be more responsible for the carnage.

Slate and others reported last week that “an ongoing Washington Post analysis has found that more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.”

And “after Wednesday’s rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, you can add 3,000 more kids to that list. Together, America’s school shooting survivors would make up a city the size of Savannah, Georgia or Syracuse, New York. A whole city knowing the trauma of what we still, wrongly, insist on calling the unthinkable. That’s to say nothing of another 300,000 parents, give or take, and tens of thousands of teachers and other adults who were there too.”

Another report by Everytown for Gun Safety claims: “the total number of school shootings in the United States since the beginning of the year is 18 (or roughly three per week).” Admittedly, some of these incidents were minor events, but clearly, the trend to violence in America’s breeding grounds for learning are going in the wrong direction.

On MSNBC’s February 22nd The Last Word with Lawrence ODonnell program, Lawrence reminded us that AR-15 rifles can effectively fire between 80 and 90 bullets per minute at 2,182 miles per hour or 3,200 ft per second, before highlighting a story written by Florida radiologist Heather Sher and published in The Atlantic Magazine. Heather writes:

“In a typical handgun injury that I diagnose almost daily, a bullet leaves a laceration through an organ like the liver. To a radiologist, it appears as a linear, thin, grey bullet track through the organ. There may be bleeding and some bullet fragments.

I was looking at a CT scan of one of the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, with extensive bleeding. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage?

“The reaction in the emergency room was the same. One of the trauma surgeons opened a young victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, a semi-automatic rifle which delivers a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. There was nothing left to repair, and utterly, devastatingly, nothing that could be done to fix the problem. The injury was fatal.”

“One of my ER colleagues was waiting nervously for his own children outside the school. While the shooting was still in progress, the first responders were gathering up victims whenever they could and carrying them outside the building. Even as a physician trained in trauma situations, though, there was nothing he could do at the scene to help to save the victims who had been shot with an AR-15. Most of them died on the spot, with no fighting chance at life.”

“Routine handgun injuries leave entry and exit wounds and linear tracks through the victim’s body that are roughly the size of the bullet. If the bullet does not directly hit something crucial like the heart or the aorta, and they do not bleed to death before being transported to our care at a trauma center, chances are, we can save the victim. The bullets fired by an AR-15 are different; they travel at higher velocity and are far more lethal. The damage they cause is a function of the energy they impart as they pass through the body. A typical AR-15 bullet leaves the barrel traveling almost three times faster than, and importing more than three times the energy of, a typical 9 mm bullet from a handgun. An AR-15 rifle outfitted with a magazine cartridge with 50 rounds allows many more lethal bullets to be delivered quickly without reloading.”

“As a doctor, I feel I have a duty to inform the public of what I have learned as I have observed these wounds and cared for these patients. It’s clear to me that AR-15 or other high-velocity weapons, especially when outfitted with a high-capacity magazine, have no place in a civilian’s gun cabinet. I have friends who own AR-15 rifles; they enjoy shooting them at target practice for sport, and fervently defend their right to own them. But I cannot accept that their right to enjoy their hobby supersedes my right to send my own children to school, to a movie theater, or to a concert and to know that they are safe. Can the answer really be to subject our school children to active shooter drills—to learn to hide under desks, turn off the lights, lock the door and be silent—instead of addressing the root cause of the problem and passing legislation to take AR-15-style weapons out of the hands of civilians?”

“As a radiologist, I have now seen high velocity AR-15 gunshot wounds firsthand, an experience that most radiologists in our country will never have. I pray that these are the last such wounds I have to see, and that AR-15-style weapons and high-capacity magazines are banned for use by civilians in the United States, once and for all.”

trump, NRA spokes persons and unrepentant Republi-con congress folks restate the same old tired remedies that haven’t worked since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban enacted in 1994 expired in 2004. It boils down to arming every good guy with a gun in order to discourage every bad guy with a gun.

Granted, police officials in Florida and the FBI dropped the ball by not taking more serious the pleas of folks worried about the Florida shooter, but the main factor in the carnage we witnessed last week can be laid at the feet of those who manufacture, promote and allow virtually anyone to purchase AR-15’s and other high powered weapons of mass murder.

We have a commander in chief and a congress who shirk their duty and oaths of office to defend America and our constitution.

trumps proposed budget cuts funding for schools security and proposes a 23% cut in Medicaid, which provides 25% of the cost for mental health treatment in the country.

The very first piece of legislation Trump signed was to make it easier for people with mental health issues to purchase guns.

Cuts in welfare programs and to SSI and Social Security Disability and Medicare only drives more folks into desperate situations.

The opioid crisis costs America $500 billion a year. I couldn’t even guess what security costs for our schools and public buildings. I’m sure it costs hundreds of billions more. The totals could be more than a trillion dollars for these two national plagues.

Its the primary job of elected representatives to responsibly pass legislation to solve these monumental problems, not to protect those who profit from these solvable calamities.

The well rehearsed post murder spree empty speeches no longer, if ever, comfort anyone except the maker.

In 1934, America banned machine guns because they were too dangerous. AR-15 are even more lethal.

Most of America knows what has to be done. An immediate first start must include universal background checks, banning AR-15’s and other high velocity assault weapons, banning high capacity magazines and keeping weapons out of the hands of folks with mental problems and criminal backgrounds. 3,000 angry and determined young people, their families and teachers, their police departments and medical trauma personnel from Parkland, Florida all know what has to be done. Administrators from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shouldn’t have to accept the sacrifice of their teachers who gave up their lives for their students.

trump, the NRA and the Republi-cons in congress are clearly part of the problem, not capable of any sensible solution. These morally and financially corrupt cowards, who empower and favor the worst parts of the gun industry over America’s children, must change or be removed from public office.

John Hanno, www.tarbabys.com

This ought a help!

Bramhall

Related:

Surrounded by Big Agriculture, Ron Rosmann Innovates and Inspires

Civil Eats

Surrounded by Big Agriculture, Ron Rosmann Innovates and Inspires

Long committed to biodiversity, this Iowa farmer stands out for his commitment to stewarding the land and teaching others.
By Twilight Greenaway – Agroecology, Farmer Profiles, February 21, 2018 

When I met Ron Rosmann last winter, he’d just had a small windfall. The Harlan, Iowa farmer was in the process of building a new hoop house for his farrow-to-finish pork operation and he’d come into some high-quality farrowing equipment—the parts needed to keep sows and their piglets warm and safe during the first weeks of their life—for a bargain. But the circumstances were bittersweet.

Rosmann’s friend and a fellow hog farmer in the area was selling off the equipment because he had gotten out of hog production. “It’s sad because he has a quarter of a million dollars worth of facilities,” Rosmann said. “He used to raise [hogs] conventionally and now there’s no money in it unless you’re huge.” The farmer in question was nearing retirement age and he had no family members willing to take over the operation, so he’d decided to shut it down completely. This was just the latest in a series of family farmers Rosmann has seen close up shop over the last few decades. “It’s just typical of what farming is like out here in the Midwest,” he told me.

Rosmann is in a different position. He and his wife Maria raise certified organic pork and beef under their own private label and for Organic Prairie, as well as corn, soy, and a range of other grains and hay in a diverse rotation on 700 acres. And as they look toward retirement—Ron Rosmann is about to turn 68—their sons, David and Daniel, are working to succeed them. In fact, their family was just chosen as Organic Farmers of the Year by the Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service (MOSES).

Ron and Maria Rosmann in their farm store.

You could say he’s one of the lucky ones. But, if you meet Rosmann and his family, you’ll quickly realize that luck has had very little to do with it.

Take their commitment to biodiversity. The farm is divided into around 40 different fields, and in order to maintain soil health and reduce pressure from pests, they grow corn, soy, hay, oats, popcorn, turnips, and other crops in a constantly changing rotation. Some of those crops leave the farm, but much of it gets fed to the pigs and cows they raise. “We don’t buy anything!” said Rosmann.

It can be a challenge to keep this ever-changing rotation straight, he adds. But that’s key to his approach. “You have to be willing to change your mind all the time,” said Rosmann. “You can’t be set in your ways. But that’s what I love about this kind of farming. You have to be responsive to the indicators and the information out there.”

For instance, the farm survived the farm crisis of the 1980s—a time when many families in the area lost their operations due to mounting debt—by expanding on a modest scale, and taking out a bank loan to put in a farrowing nursery. Then they were early in the transition to organic and secured a coveted contract with one of the only companies paying a consistent premium for organic meat on a national scale.

Rosmann's hogs eating. (Photo courtesy of the Iowa Food Systems Council)

Rosmann’s hogs eating. (Photo courtesy of the Iowa Food Systems Council)

Surrounded by miles and miles of conventional corn and soy, just 50 miles east of Omaha, Rosmann Family Farms also serves as a beacon for those looking for local food in the area. Maria runs a small on-farm store where she stocks everything from their farm’s meat and eggs to locally made gifts and holistic body products. Meanwhile, their son Daniel and his wife Ellen run a farm-to-table delivery service and a restaurant called Milk and Honey that sources many of its ingredients directly from the farm.

And aside from running his own business, and preparing to pass it on to his sons, Rosmann has also been an avid spokesman on the issues affecting small- and medium-scale farmers like himself.

After earning a degree in biology from Iowa State, Rosmann returned to his family farm for a trial year in 1973. But his parents gave him more autonomy than most, and he realized he decided to dig in and make it his own. “I was chastised by some people who said, ‘why did you come back, if you’re a college graduate?’ You’re supposed to leave the farm, leave rural areas to improve your life.” But Rosmann felt just the opposite; he stayed, in part, he said, because “you could make a difference in a small community” by sticking around.

Rosmann’s father was an early adopter when it came to using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, but after his father passed away, Rosmann says he began experimenting with alternative methods, and by 1983 he decided to reverse course.

One of the major revelations came when he went to a field day at the farm of fellow Iowan Dick Thompson, who had eschewed conventional pesticides and fertilizers in the late ‘60s.

“He had a cleaner farm than we did and he wasn’t using any pesticides. I said, ‘I can do what he’s doing,’” Rosmann recalled. He was also intrigued by Thompson’s use of on-farm research using replicable, randomized strips. “These were environmentally friendly practices that didn’t hurt your pocketbook—in fact they helped. The goal was to get the same yields using less pesticides and fertilizers and then have proof that it would work, and learn from other farmers who were experimenting as well.”

Three years later, in 1986, Rosmann joined Thompson as a founding board member of Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), a nonprofit organization that has remained dedicated to these goals ever since, and has grown from around 50 farmers to more than 3,000.

Farmers like Rosmann and Thompson relied on tools like the late-spring soil test, which allows them to measure the amount of nitrate in the top layer of soil when their corn plants were young, so they could accurately gauge the amount of nitrogen they would need to add to the soil before harvest time. “It helped us place that nitrogen very precisely. We were cutting our nitrogen 50-75 percent and sometimes we found that we didn’t need to add nitrogen at all.”

David Rosmann at the family's manure composting area. (Photo courtesy of Ron Rosmann)

David Rosmann at the family’s manure composting area. (Photo courtesy of Ron Rosmann)

The idea was to help farmers maintain autonomy in the face of massive farm consolidation and changes to the industry. Rosmann says that while there was a lot of interest in the late-spring soil test at the time, the tool’s popularity soon waned as the seed and chemical companies began to get a tighter hold on commodity agriculture.

“Biotech and Roundup came along. Farms were getting bigger, prices were low for commodities. The attrition of farmers kept going at a steady pace,” said Rosmann. Soon, he adds, “most farmers weren’t even willing to cultivate [as an alternative to using herbicide to control weeds] or test their nitrogen. They became paranoid, and said, ‘we’ve got to get this done in the fall.’ That’s the norm now. They put the nitrogen on in the fall, and 40-50 percent ends up in the groundwater because of leaching and warm weather.”

In Iowa, over the last few decades, this shift has had a nearly disastrous affect. Thirty years later, the ongoing nitrogen and phosphorous pollution has resulted in a high-profile lawsuit and a recent decision by state lawmakers to spend $282 million over the next 12 years on cleanup and prevention. Since then, PFI has played an important role in helping farmers diversify their farms, transition to organic in some cases, and just work in harmony with the natural world more generally.

Although PFI has remained an apolitical organization in an effort to reach farmers from both organic and conventional farms, Rosmann himself has always believed it was important to engage with policy. He and Maria have lobbied congress with organizations like the Pew Charitable Trust and Center for Rural Affairs on issues like farm consolidation and the overuse of antibiotics on farms. He also served as a board member and president of the Organic Farming Research Foundation for a number of years.

And he remains committed to on-farm research. For instance, Rosmann uses a lesser-known approach called ridge-tilling, which reduces the disturbance of the soil and helps retain organic matter—and he has produced data to support its efficacy. “I’ve done research trials comparing conventional disk-tilling and ridge-tilling. Every year, we get 5-7 percent more weeds in the area we disk till. So it’s a good tool for organic farmers,” said Rosmann, who adds that it’s hard to find the equipment because the practice has gone out of vogue in recent years.

Daniel Rosmann hand-counting weeds in a soybean field during the ridge-till vs. conventional till trial. (Photo courtesy Ron Rosmann)

Daniel Rosmann hand-counting weeds in a soybean field during the ridge-till vs. conventional till trial. (Photo courtesy Ron Rosmann)

He also prides himself on fixing his own farm equipment and acquiring much of the farm’s machinery used, an approach that is increasingly rare in the age of $250,000 tractors that can only be repaired by the companies that make them.

In all these ways, Rosmann stands out as a modern version of Jefferson’s educated yeoman farmer, “an enlightened citizen, trained in many fields,” motivated by the opportunity to be a steward the resources of land and community.

It’s a noble life, but also a lonely one, and Rosmann doesn’t always see eye to eye with many of the farmers in his community. So he relies on the PFI network as a way to stay connected to the handful of other “elder statesmen” farmers around Iowa and beyond.

“There are very few of us left with native knowledge passed down from our fathers,” said Rosmann. “But that’s the beauty of having Daniel and David here.” With his sons, he adds, the desire to stay curious and continue working at a human scale is a given.

Near the end of my visit to his farm—after I’d perused the hand-stitched tea towels in Maria’s shop, heard about the details of farrowing piglets, and toured the barn Rosmann’s father had built—we ducked into small stand of white pine trees he had planted in 1993 as a windbreak and wildlife refuge. The trees attract deer, a pest, but they also provide a rare home for pheasants, the occasional quail, and several other types of upland birds.

After a windy climb up a small hill, we stepped between the branches and the sound of the wind came to a stop. In that hushed environment, it was easy to imagine a time when many of Iowa’s diverse farms were dotted with trees. “We have more pheasants on our farm than any other in the county,” said Rosmann, lowering his voice so as not to scare off the visitors. And I pictured him and his family members stepping in among the trees every now and then when the day-to-day work of swimming against the agriculture tide becomes too much.

Then we turned and waded back through the February mud so Rosmann could take me to see his cows.

Top 2 photos by Twilight Greenaway.

Billionaire Bill Gates says his taxes are too low.

CNN
February 18, 2018

Bill Gates says he’s paid more than $10 billion in taxes but that the government should make wealthy people like him “pay significantly higher taxes” http://cnn.it/2Cuj7th

Billionaire Bill Gates says his taxes are too low

Bill Gates says he's paid more than $10 billion in taxes but that the government should make wealthy people like him "pay significantly higher taxes" http://cnn.it/2Cuj7th

Posted by CNN on Sunday, February 18, 2018

8 Presidents Who Most Shaped the U.S. Food System

Civil Eats

8 Presidents Who Most Shaped the U.S. Food System

Every president has played a role in making the food system what it is today, but these eight stand out, for better and for worse.

Nathaniel Currier lithograph, 1852.

By Karen Perry Stillerman – Commentary, Food Justice, Food Policy

February 19, 2018

As we prepare to observe Presidents Day, I’m thinking about a president’s role in shaping the way we grow food in the United States, and how we eat. Quite a few of our past presidents were farmers or ranchers at some point in their lives, and some had infamous relationships with certain foods, whether cheeseburgers or jelly beans or broccoli.

But a small number of presidents spanning the history of the republic have had particular influence on our food supply and culture, and its impact on the health and well-being of all Americans, including farmers. And notably, as we’re also observing Black History Month, the interventions of those past presidents in our food system have often particularly affected African Americans.

1. George Washington: First farmer, innovator, and slaveholder

Whether or not young George chopped down that famous fruit free, the post-presidency Washington grew cherries, along with apples, pears, other tree fruits, and a whole lot of other food at his Mount Vernon estate, which comprised five neighboring farms on 8,000 acres. An innovative farmer who kept meticulous records, Washington was an early proponent of composting for soil health, and eventually phased out tobacco (the plantation crop of his day in Virginia) in favor of a diversified seven-crop rotation system including wheat for sale, corn for domestic consumption, and fertility-enhancing legume crops. (Sounds like a good idea.)

The grim reality behind Washington’s farming success, though, is that his farms were worked by slaves. A slaveowner since age 11, when he inherited ten slaves from his father, Washington bought and sold Black people throughout his life (reportedly treating them severely and separating family members through sale), and 317 slaves worked on his estate at the time of his death.

The devastating legacy of racial injustice and inequality at Mount Vernon is still with us, but it is being gradually undone. The 126-acre historic Woodlawn estate—originally part of Washington’s farm network—was purchased by northern Quakers prior to the Civil War, expressly to prove that you could farm profitably without slavery. Today, the site is occupied by the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Agriculture, whose work includes a mobile market delivering fresh, healthy, affordable food to food-insecure neighborhoods like this one in the Washington DC area.

2. Thomas Jefferson: Experimentation, failure, and a legacy of slave-centered agriculture

The third president has been called America’s “first foodie” for his love of the table, and of French cuisine in particular. He ate a lot of vegetables, and introduced many new ones to the United States. On his Monticello estate, Jefferson introduced and experimented with a vast variety of food crops, including 330 varieties of eighty-nine species of vegetables and herbs and 170 varieties of the fruits. An avid experimenter, Jefferson’s trials often resulted in failure, leading neighbors to call him “the worst farmer in Virginia.” But in truth he promoted techniques to build soil health through adding organic matter, and by sharing seeds and techniques widely, he promoted commercial market gardening and spread new crops that expanded the young nation’s food traditions and palate.

Perhaps even more than Washington, Jefferson’s legacy is marred by the stain of his complicity in slavery, and his racial views. He embodied the inherent social contradictions at the birth of this nation that we have yet to resolve, by denouncing the institution of slavery while simultaneously profiting from it—he owned some 600 slaves who worked on his Monticello farm and other holdings, employed brutal overseers, and fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings through a relationship that, by definition, could not have been consensual. His goal of “improving” slavery as a step towards ending was misguided, as it was used during his time as an argument for its perpetuation.

3. Abraham Lincoln: The USDA and the land-grant college system

Born in that legendary log cabin on his father’s farm in Kentucky, Lincoln was, as he put it, “raised to farm work.” His father farmed frontier land in southern Indiana before moving the family to Illinois, where Abe later got his political start in the state legislature. A believer in technological progress in agriculture, Lincoln advocated for horse-drawn machines and steam plows to take the place of hand labor. As president, he advocated for and signed legislation creating the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which he later called “The People’s Department,” since about half of all Americans at the time lived on farms. And Lincoln’s early belief in the value of educating farmers came to fruition in 1862 when he signed the Morrill Land Grant College Act, which facilitated the transfer of public land to each of the states to establish colleges of agriculture and the mechanical arts.

Lincoln fought a war over slavery (perhaps we’re finally coming to agreement on that point?), issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and submitted the 13th Amendment prohibiting slavery to the states for ratification just a few month before his violent death in 1865. But it would be another quarter century before freed slaves in the former Confederate states would get the benefit of a land-grant education Lincoln envisioned. A second Morrill Act in 1890 required each state to show that race was not an admissions criterion for its land-grant colleges, or else to designate a separate institution for students of color. (See some of the achievements of some of the institutions known as 1890 schools here.)

4. Theodore Roosevelt: Cattle ranching and conservation

Teddy Roosevelt’s is known as one of the nation’s great conservationists, but that legacy was born out of a series of calamities. On a hunting trip in the Dakota Territory in 1883, the passionate outdoorsman discovered that native bison herds had been decimated by commercial hunters. Cattle ranching on the region’s vast grasslands was booming in bison’s wake, and he became interested in the cattle business, investing $14,000 (a huge sum at the time) in a ranch. Returning to politics in New York, Roosevelt was struck by tragedy with the death of both his mother and his wifeon the same day in 1884, and he turned to the West and the ranching life to forget. But cattle in the Badlands at the time was itself a looming disaster: a boom with no regulation quickly led to massive overgrazing, and a scorching summer followed by a harsh winter in 1886-87 proved deadly. Tens of thousands of cattle, about 80 percent of the region’s herds, froze and starved to death in a blizzard. Roosevelt himself lost over half his herd, and soon got out of the business.

But his experience with agricultural disaster helped shape the future president’s views on the importance of conservation and led to an inspiring conservation legacy. Using his presidential authority, Roosevelt gave federal protection to more than 230 million acres of public land, creating the National Forest Service (now part of the USDA) and five national parks, and setting aside 51 federal bird reservations, 18 national monuments, and four national game preserves. In his words in 1908: “We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources and we have just reason to be proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation.” (Nah, that couldn’t happen, could it?)

5. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Dust Bowl and soil conservation

In the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, FDR inherited economic and ecological catastrophes that hit farmers particularly hard. The Dust Bowl was caused by massive-scale plowing up of grasslands (the Great Plow-Up of the 1910s and ’20s) followed by four distinct drought eventsin the 1930s. It scorched the Plains and literally blew away its soil, leaving millions of acres of farmland useless, driving farmers into bankruptcy and off the land, and worsening the banking and unemployment crises.

An amateur forester, Roosevelt understood the importance of soil conservation, and soon after taking office he established the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Soil Erosion Service. The latter (now the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service) was the first major federal conservation effort to focus on privately owned natural resources. FDR also launched the Plains Shelterbelt Project effort that planted millions of trees, creating windbreaks (now at risk) on farms from the Canadian border to Texas. And he initiated farm policies to help farmers manage future boom-and-bust cycles by preventing overproduction. The Agricultural Adjustment Act enacted on his watch would grow into today’s wide-ranging farm bill, which still struggles with how to deal with overproduction while providing livelihood for the nation’s farmers and conserving soil and water.

6. Richard Nixon: Turning farming into big business

Nixon was a contradiction. Scholars continue to dissect his deep character flaws and divisiveness, but also his achievements. Among the latter, he created the EPA and signed the National Environmental Policy Act (both of which, one hopes, will survive the current administration’s manyassaults), and he made dozens of other environmental proposals.

But his lasting legacy in agriculture continues to haunt us. That’s because Nixon gave his blessing to his agriculture secretary, Earl Butz, to essentially undo decades of FDR’s supply management policy. The Nixon years would be all about maximizing and consolidating farm production. “Get big or get out,” Butz told farmers in 1973, and boy, did they. His policies encouraged farmers to plant as much corn and other commodities as they could, on every possible bit of land. Today, one might argue, we have Nixon and Butz to thank for persistent fertilizer pollution in our nation’s waterways, for high-fructose corn syrup and the power and deception of the food industry, and for our enduring crisis of obesity and diet-related disease. (Read the full story of Secretary Butz, entertainingly told by Tom Philpott back in 2008.) Buzz’s obit recounts how a nasty racist comment ended his political career.

7. George W. Bush: Justice for Black farmers denied

While George W. Bush spent a lot of his presidency clearing brush on his Texas ranch, he wasn’t particularly known for his agriculture policy. But during his administration, a long-simmering dispute between the USDA and Black farmers came to a head. The background: in 1997 a group of Black farmers sued the USDA, citing years of racial discrimination by the department, which denied Black producers loans and other assistance and failed to act on their claims for years. The farmers prevailed in 1999, winning a $2.3 billion settlement from the government, the biggest in civil rights history. But there were limitations on who could collect under the Pigford settlement (named for lead plaintiff Timothy Pigford, a Black corn and soybean farmer from North Carolina), and what kinds of documentation they would need to provide.

Under W’s watch, many of the 22,000 farmers who had joined the Pigford suit were denied payment; by one estimate, nine out of 10 farmers who sought damages were denied. And the Bush Department of Justice, representing the USDA, reportedly spent 56,000 office hours and $12 millioncontesting farmers’ claims. Many farmers believed their claims were rejected on technicalities.

8. Barack Obama: Justice and healthy food, served

Much of the Obama food and farming legacy (which is hers as much as his) is well known: the now permanent White House kitchen garden (which, incidentally, includes a section honoring Thomas Jefferson with favorite varieties from his own garden at Monticello) along with the (possibly less permanent) improvements to school meals that resulted from the bipartisan Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act they championed, and the Let’s Move! campaign. The USDA under the Obama administration also made other efforts to improve our nation’s food system by promoting local and regional farm economies, increasing agricultural research, and strengthening federal dietary guidelines.

He also fixed a lingering problem with the Pigford discrimination settlement described above. Failure to effectively notify and communicate with Black farmers eligible for payout under the 1999 settlement meant that many farmers were left out. Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Attorney General Eric Holder advocated for a fix, and in 2010, the administration announced a $1.25 billion settlement of the so-called “Pigford II” claims.

And now what?

These eight former presidents have made their mark on U.S. agriculture and food, delivering both progress and setbacks. Bottom line this Presidents Day? We still have a lot of work to do to achieve a healthy, sustainable, and just food system in this country.

Next time I’ll look at what happens when the occupant of the White House is not only not a farmer, but seems puzzlingly (if not cynically) indifferent to farmers’ concern. And when, instead of a healthy food advocate, he’s an unabashed proponent of the same processed and fast foods that are damaging the health—and even shortening the lives—of our nation’s children.

This post originally appeared on the Union of Concerned Scientists blog and is reprinted with permission.

How Industry Has Taken Over Scott Pruitt’s EPA

Mother Jones

How Industry Has Taken Over Scott Pruitt’s EPA

Most of its “deregulatory” actions and planned initiatives match up with specific industry requests.

Rachel Leven and Center for Public Integrity    February 16, 2018

This April 18, 2013 aerial photo shows a destroyed fertilizer plant, top, following an explosion in West, Texas. Tony Gutierrez/AP

First came the smoke. The explosion hit 20 minutes later—so massive it killed 15, injured 260, damaged or destroyed 150 buildings, shattered glass a mile out and set trees ablaze. Under stadium lights, the West, Texas, high school football field, home of the Trojans, was transformed into a makeshift triage center.

The 2013 disaster in West, a town of just 2,800, began with a fire at the local fertilizer plant, highlighting safety gaps at thousands of facilities nationwide that use or store high-risk chemicals. It took the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency nearly four years after that to issue a rule intended to prevent such accidents—a move strenuously opposed by industry groups such as the American Petroleum Institute.

Firefighters check a destroyed apartment complex near the fertilizer plant that exploded earlier in West, Texas, in this photo made early Thursday, April 18, 2013. LM Otero/AP

Just a week after the rule was issued, Donald Trump was sworn in as president. Businesses tried again, asking for a delay of the requirements. This time, they got what they asked for.

The EPA has granted more than a few private-sector wishes lately under the guise of regulatory reform. Roughly 62 percent of the agency’s “deregulatory” actionscompleted in Administrator Scott Pruitt’s first year and 85 percent of its planned initiatives match up with specific industry requests, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis. These changes targeted requirements ranging from air-pollution limits for oil and gas operations to water-pollution restrictions on coal-fired power plants.

Many of these steps followed entreaties from a small number of powerful lobbying groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Chemistry Council and the National Association of Manufacturers.

The EPA, which ignored a half-dozen requests for comment, has said officials are merely reigning in an agency that they assert routinely overstepped its authority. But there is another interpretation. The analysis shows the EPA has been captured by industry, said Alexandra Teitz, a former agency attorney.

“The idea that ‘We are for environmental protection, too, we just choose to do it a different way’ might be plausible if we’d seen anything to support that. But we haven’t seen them do anything positive. So, that claim is just a joke.”

“The idea that ‘We are for environmental protection, too, we just choose to do it a different way’ might be plausible if we’d seen anything to support that,” said Teitz, now a senior policy adviser for the Sierra Club. “But we haven’t seen them do anything positive. So, that claim is just a joke.”

Alex Howard, deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation, an open-government group, said the industry successes have come while the EPA is “operating under a veil of secrecy.” The agency has failed to routinely disclose day-to-day activities it previously made public, he said.

While Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt sued over 14 major EPA regulations and opposed others, including the chemical-safety rule. His legal interpretations tend to align with industry desires: a 2017 New York Times investigation revealed his deep ties to companies and propensity to use their arguments as his own.

In his first six months on the job, Pruitt was scheduled to meet 31 times more often with industry than with environmental or public-health groups, according to a Center analysis last year. The EPA’s internal watchdog is investigating his official travel, including a Morocco trip during which Pruitt promoted natural-gas exports. Asked in a January CBS News interview whether the EPA’s mission is to protect the environment or business, he responded, “It’s neither.”

“Our focus here should be on stewardship,” Pruitt said, adding that “to achieve what we want to achieve in environmental protection, environmental stewardship, we need the partnership of industry.”

Industry’s EPA scorecard

When Trump directed all federal agencies to reconsider existing rules a month into his term, Pruitt seized the opportunity. Regulatory reform would mean “listening to those directly impacted by regulations,” in contrast to the ways the Obama administration “abused the regulatory process,” he said in an EPA news release.

To see who has benefited so far, the Center examined the EPA’s list of completed deregulatory actions and its October agenda for future reform, comparing them to requests made by the private sector in comments to the agency in previous months.

The analysis focuses only on the agency’s stated deregulatory actions. It doesn’t capture other steps taken by the EPA that also went industry’s way, such as the March decision not to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, suspected of harming children’s brains. Agency scientists previously recommended prohibiting its use.

In April, the EPA asked the public what rules it ought to roll back. Americans flooded the agency with comments that urged officials to keep environmental-health safeguards intact, while numerous businesses pointed to rules they considered burdensome. The EPA said it drew from those comments to craft its regulatory reform agenda, released in October. But at least three of the four broad initiatives announced by the agency and all nine of the rules identified for reconsideration stemmed from industry requests—85 percent of the EPA’s reform plans.

Reopening a rule allows industry to make the case again that the regulations should be less stringent. Southern Co., for example, previously opposed regulations intended to limit water pollution from coal-fired power plants, asserting the agency relied on “faulty cost-benefit analyses.” Prior to Pruitt, the EPA disputed these claims. Now, it’s taking another look. Southern Co. declined to comment.

The broader EPA initiatives give industry a chance to fundamentally alter the way the nation fights pollution. The agency committed, for example, to evaluating the cumulative employment impacts of its environmental regulations, in response to business requests. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which didn’t reply to emails asking for comment, wrote last May that failing to properly analyze job impacts “stacks the deck against the possibility of producing a good regulation.”

Corporate influence is also apparent in at least 13 of the 21 actions the EPA has taken since Pruitt became administrator on Feb. 17 of last year. Six of these actions delayed, rescinded or reopened for consideration major regulations—wins for business interests. For instance, the agency delayed through May 2018 stricter requirements to protect people applying certain toxic pesticides, a move supported by companies such as Bayer Corp. Another seven industry victories came on narrower issues; manufacturers of wood products, for example, won a deadline extension to meet emission standards.

Industries didn’t always get what they wanted, of course. In part that’s because not all companies are on the same side of every issue. For example, the National Association of Manufacturers and other business groups that oppose the Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era rule aimed at limiting planet-warming pollution from the U.S. power sector, were pleased when the EPA said it would consider a repeal. Microsoft and Apple, on the other hand, supported the regulation in federal court.

Deregulation’s impact

Many companies and trade organizations say their outreach to the EPA is no different than in previous administrations. Some are employing the same arguments they used during the Obama era, including assertions that small environmental gains are coming at an outsize cost to business.

“We have lost the critical balance in our federal environmental policies between furthering progress and limiting unnecessary economic impacts,” the National Association of Manufacturers wrote to the EPA last year. The group didn’t respond to the Center’s requests for comment.

“We have lost the critical balance in our federal environmental policies between furthering progress and limiting unnecessary economic impacts,” the National Association of Manufacturers wrote to the EPA last year.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers’ members supported the EPA taking a second look at limits set for greenhouse-gas emissions from light-duty vehicles “to let the facts dictate the outcome,” wrote spokeswoman Gloria Bergquist. She added, “We are not prejudging the results.”

These reviews will aid the public, companies said. “A vibrant U.S. manufacturing base that helps American companies compete globally and keeps jobs here at home is what we all want,” wrote Laura Toole, a spokeswoman for General Motors.

But Teitz, the former EPA lawyer, said Pruitt is pushing agency norms. It’s not unheard of for new administrations to take another look at regulations that aren’t yet in effect, or even those that are, she said. But this EPA is reversing rules companies already must follow at an unprecedented rate, she said, causing confusion for officials in the field and leaving the public under-protected.

That, public advocacy groups and states such as New York and Massachusetts say, is exactly what has happened with the chemical-safety rule, delayed through February 2019. Since the rule was finalized in the waning days of the Obama administration, more than a dozen accidents, leaks, explosions and fires occurred at facilities that would have been covered by these new requirements, according to the Sierra Club. At least eight people died. More than 40 were injured.

A federal court will hear arguments about the delay in March. Industry opponents of the rule say in filings that it would cost companies money without providing benefits to the public. A Louisiana security official, in a court document filed by Oklahoma and 11 other states that support the rule delay, said that allowing it to take effect could expose chemical facilities to terrorism threats because of new disclosure requirements. (Military experts opposing the delay have said the rule would improve national security by better informing first responders.)

Whichever way the court rules, it likely won’t affect West, Texas. The town hasn’t replaced its fertilizer plant and has no intention of doing so, said John Crowder, a local pastor.

“The community would just not welcome that kind of business,” he said. It took nearly five years for West to rebuild, he noted, work that was just completed last month “to a collective sigh of relief.”

Crowder is no great fan of regulation. Now, though, he sees a need for more oversight.

He doesn’t know much about the requirements the EPA enacted and then put on ice, so he can’t say whether they would avert tragedies like the one in West.

“But if there were a rule that could prevent it,” he said, “I can’t imagine a valid reason for delay.”

FACT:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and the wealthy wouldn’t fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation so we can keep on doing the type of journalism that 2018 demands.

Who is Trump’s Budget Director Mick Mulvaney?

NowThis Politics‘s video to the group: Veterans against the G.O.P.

February 17, 2018

Who is Mick Mulvaney? Narrated by Elizabeth Warren. Unbelievable!

Who is Mick Mulvaney? Narrated by Elizabeth Warren

From Ronald Reagan’s envelope stuffer to Donald Trump’s budget director, meet the self-diagnosed right-wing nutjob Mick Mulvaney (via Who Is?)

Posted by NowThis Politics on Saturday, February 17, 2018

Trump Budget Would Undo Conservation Gains on Farms and Ranches

Civil Eats

Trump Budget Would Undo Conservation Gains on Farms and Ranches

Funding for farm conservation programs would be slashed by $13 billion over 10 years, impacting the environment and farmers alike.

By Ashley Dayer and Seth Lutter – Agroecology, Climate, Environment, Food Policy      February 16, 2018

Members of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are starting to shape the 2018 Farm Bill–a comprehensive food and agriculture bill passed about every five years. Most observers associate the farm bill with food policy, but its conservation section is the single largest source of funding for soil, water, and wildlife conservation on private land in the United States.

Farm bill conservation programs provide about $5.8 billion yearly for activities such as restoring wildlife habitat and using sustainable farming practices. These programs affect about 50 million acres of land nationwide. They conserve millions of acres of wildlife habitat and provide ecological services such as improved water quality, erosion control, and enhanced soil health that are worth billions of dollars.

Sixty percent of U.S. land is privately owned, and it contains a disproportionately high share of habitat for threatened and endangered species. This means that to conserve land and wildlife, it is critical to work with private landowners, particularly farmers and ranchers. Farm bill conservation programs provide cost shares, financial incentives, and technical assistance to farmers and other private landowners who voluntarily undertake conservation efforts on their land.

President Donald Trump’s 2019 budget request would slash funding for farm bill conservation programs by about $13 billion over 10 years, on top of cuts already sustained in the 2014 Farm Bill. In a recent study, we found that it is highly uncertain whether the benefits these programs have produced will be maintained if they are cut further.

Jim and DeAnn Sattelberg received Conservation Reserve Program funding to plant ‘filter strips’ that protect water sources on their Michigan farm. (Photo credit: USDA)Jim and DeAnn Sattelberg received Conservation Reserve Program funding to plant ‘filter strips’ that protect water sources on their Michigan farm. (Photo credit: USDA)

Funding Cuts and Future Prospects

Conservation on private land produces tangible benefits for wildlife, water quality, erosion control, and floodwater storage. The public value of these improvements extends far beyond the boundaries of any individual landowner’s property.

Studies have shown that farmers appreciate the direct benefits they receive from participating in these programs, such as more productive soil and better hunting and wildlife viewing on their lands. Conservation programs can also provide farmers with an important and stable income source during crop price downturns.

Congress made substantial cuts in farm bill conservation programs in 2014–the first reductions since the conservation title of the bill was created in 1985. In total, the 2014 farm bill reduced conservation spending by 6.4 percent, or about $3.97 billion over 10 years.

(Chart source: USDA/ERS.)

These cuts reduced the number of farmers who were able to enroll in the programs. For example, the Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers to take environmentally sensitive land out of agricultural production and convert cropland into ecologically beneficial grasses. In 2016, due to budget cuts, it accepted just 22 percent of acres that farmers offered for enrollment.

The Conservation Stewardship Program, which focuses on working lands in agricultural production, offers farmers financial incentives and technical advice for conservation measures such as cover crops or efficient irrigation systems. In 2015 USDA funded only 27 percent of CSP applications.

The Trump administration’s proposed cuts have drawn criticism from conservation groups and farmers. Meanwhile, these programs appear to have bipartisan support in Congress.

In a June 2017 hearing, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, said:

“I’ve heard repeatedly from farmers and ranchers about the importance of these programs, how they successfully incentivize farmers to take conservation to the next level, and the need for continued federal investment in these critical programs.”

In October 2017, Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, introduced a bipartisan bill to strengthen the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, which fosters private-public partnerships in regions of high conservation priority. The Trump administration has proposed to eliminate this program, along with the Conservation Stewardship Program.

Funding will be tight for the 2018 Farm Bill, as USDA has acknowledged. A set of guiding principlesthe department released on January 24 pledged to provide “a fiscally responsible Farm Bill that reflects the Administration’s budget goals.” Congress will soon face funding decisions that will have critical implications for conservation outcomes and landowners.

USDA employees help South Dakota cattle ranchers repair and replace ponds for watering livestock, an initiative of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. (Photo credit: USDA/NRCS South Dakota)USDA employees help South Dakota cattle ranchers repair and replace ponds for watering livestock, an initiative of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. (Photo credit: USDA/NRCS South Dakota)

Without Funding, Fewer Farmers Will Conserve

Further budget cuts in farm bill conservation programs would undermine environmental protection in multiple ways. Less land and wildlife would be protected, and fewer farmers would be able to enroll in these programs. Moreover, as our study concluded, landowners are unlikely to continue their conservation efforts when payments end.

Texas farmer Taylor Wilcox received USDA funding to flood his fallow rice fields, creating habitat for black-necked stilts and other birds. (Photo credit: USDA)Texas farmer Taylor Wilcox received USDA funding to flood his fallow rice fields, creating habitat for black-necked stilts and other birds. (Photo credit: USDA)

Federal agencies and environmental organizations generally would like to see owners keep up conservation practices even when they no longer receive federal incentives. We call this phenomenon “persistence.” Designing incentives so that they produce lasting behavior changes is a challenge in many fields, including agricultural conservation.

Our search of relevant scientific publications found very limited research on landowner behavior after incentive program contracts end. What research has been done indicates that persistence is highly variable and often does not occur.

Studies have found that after contracts expire, the percentage of landowners who continue conservation management can range from 31 to 85 percent. Persistence also depends on the practices landowners are required to perform. Structural actions like planting trees are more likely to have lasting effects than measures that landowners need to perform frequently and may abandon, such as treating invasive plants with herbicides.

Little is known about why landowners do or do not persist with conservation behaviors after incentive programs end. But we have identified several mechanisms that could support persistence behavior.

As landowners participate in conservation programs, they might develop positive views of conservation. They also may continue to use conservation practices because they want to be perceived as good land stewards. Practices that involve repeated action, such as moving cattle for prescribed grazing, might become habits. Finally, landowners with sufficient financial and technical resources are more likely to persist with conservation behaviors.

Long-Term Costs Of Defunding Conservation Programs

Our research shows that it is hard to predict how farmers and ranchers will respond if they are unable to re-enroll in farm bill conservation programs. Some might continue with conservation management, but it is likely that many landowners would resume farming formerly protected land or abandon conservation practices.

To promote conservation more effectively over time, it would make sense to consider farm bill policy changes such as issuing longer-duration contracts and designing post-contract transitions that encourage continued conservation. Further budget cuts will only reduce future conservation on private land, and could undo much of the good that these programs have already achieved.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Top photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Soil Conservationist Garrett Duyck and David Brewer examine a soil sample on the Emerson Dell farm near The Dalles, OR. USDA NRCS photo by Ron Nichols.

Renewables Now Contribute Nearly One-Fifth of U.S. Electricity Generation

EcoWatch – Renewable Energy

Renewables Now Contribute Nearly One-Fifth of U.S. Electricity Generation

Lorraine Chow     February 16, 2018

Renewable energy now makes up 18 percent of total electrical generation in the U.S., roughly double the amount a decade ago, a new report shows.

According to the sixth annual Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, which outlines key U.S. energy trends, renewable energy output in the power sector soared to a record high last year and could eventually rival nuclear.

The Factbook, produced for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), shows that renewable generation boomed 14 percent in 2017 to hit 717 terawatt hours (TWh). This increase was driven mostly by the West Coast’s rebound in hydropower generation after years of drought as well as new wind and solar projects built in 2016 coming online in 2017.

Rachel Luo, senior analyst for U.S. utilities and market reform at BNEF and lead author of the report, told Greentech Media that 18 percent might not sound like a lot but it brings renewable energy “within striking distance” of nuclear, which contributes about 20 of total annual U.S. electricity generation.

“In 2017 it’s a very significant story that renewables are making a lot of headway in pushing forward the decarbonization of the power sector, even as the natural gas share decreases,” she said.

Indeed, as this chart below shows, natural gas slipped 2 percent last year, from 34 percent in 2016 to 32 percent in 2017. Coal, which used to dominate the U.S. energy landscape, has also shrunk to 30 percent.

2018 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook

Even though natural gas is still the number one producer of U.S. power, “[its] downtick could be from a variety of factors [such as] the increasing penetration of renewables, but load growth is also stalling and … natural gas prices have recovered a little,” Luo told Greentech Media.

In summary, the Factbook said: “The massive and historic transformation of the U.S. energy sector clicked into a higher gear in 2017, despite new policy uncertainties. Renewable deployment grew at a near-record pace, energy productivity and GDP growth both accelerated, and the U.S. became a serious player in the global liquefied natural gas market. All of this combined to squeeze U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to a 25-year low, while keeping costs in check for consumers.”

Watch here to learn more:

World’s First Floating Wind Farm Exceeds Expectations

EcoWatch

World’s First Floating Wind Farm Exceeds Expectations

By Lorraine Chow      February 16, 2018

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The world’s first floating wind farm only switched on three months ago but it’s already performing better than expected—and that’s despite a hurricane, a powerful winter storm and waves as high as 8.2 meters (27 feet).

The 30-megawatt Hywind Scotland, located about 15 miles off the Aberdeenshire coast, churned out 65 percent of its maximum theoretical capacity during November, December and January, according to its operator, Statoil.

In comparison, the typical capacity factor for a bottom fixed offshore wind farm is 45-60 percent during the same winter months, Statoil pointed out.

“We have tested the Hywind technology in harsh weather conditions for many years and we know it works,” said Beate Myking, senior vice president of offshore wind operations in Statoil.

“It is very encouraging to see how well the turbines have performed so far. Hywind Scotland’s high availability has ensured that the volume of electricity generated is substantially higher than expected.”

These results show great promise for the emerging technology. As EcoWatch previously detailed, floating turbines have been deployed before, but mostly in small-scale projects, such as the 7-megawatt system built and operated by the Fukushima Wind Offshore Consortium. In contrast, the Hywind’s five floating turbines produce 6 megawatts each on top of waters more than 328 feet deep. At full capacity, the facility can generate enough power for 20,000 homes.

As Bloomberg explained, typical offshore wind farms are installed on seabeds in relatively shallow seas. But with a floating system, countries like Japan, the U.S. West Coast, and the Mediterranean—where seabeds drop steeply off the coast—can also utilize the technology.

Statoil sees “great potential” to build more floating wind farms on top of waters around 200 feet in depth, even in areas with extreme environments and weather conditions. In October, the Hywind survived Hurricane Ophelia‘s 77 mph winds. It then faced even stronger winds in December, with Storm Caroline’s 100 mph gusts and walls of large waves. Although the farm’s wind turbines were shut down during the worst of these winds, they automatically resumed operations afterwards, Statoil said.

“Knowing that up to 80 percent of the offshore wind resources globally are in deep waters (+60 meters) where traditional bottom fixed installations are not suitable, we see great potential for floating offshore wind, in Asia, on the west coast of North America and in Europe,” said Irene Rummelhoff, executive vice president for New Energy Solutions in Statoil.

The developers are looking to expand the technology and hope to reduce the costs of energy to €40-60 ($50-$75)/MWh by 2030, making it cost competitive with other renewable energy sources. The cost of onshore and offshore wind has seen significant reductions in recent years, with the UK’s latest renewable energy auction dropping to 57.50 pounds ($76) per megawatt-hour, Bloomberg noted.

“This is an ambitious, but realistic target. Optimized design, larger and more efficient turbines, technology development and larger wind parks will drive down costs, improve infrastructure and logistics,” Rummelhoff said.