Farming needs to go back to old fashioned methods to help the environment, says PM’s father as he takes on new climate change role
Helena Horton January 31, 2021
Stanley Johnson will be asking the government to commit to wilder farming at COP26 – Eddie Mulholland
Farming needs to go back to old-fashioned methods to help the environment, the Prime Minister’s father has said, as he takes on a new climate change role.
Stanley Johnson is today announcing that he is the new International Ambassador for the Conservative Environment Network (CEN).
The author has long been a campaigner on green issues, and is a passionate advocate of “rewilding”, recently visiting some reintroduced bears in Italy.
He is expected to lobby for wilder farming at the major climate change conference COP26, scheduled to take place in Glasgow this summer.
Mr Johnson, a passionate rewilder, told The Telegraph about his vision of farming, explaining: “It’s not rewilding as such but going back to methods of farming which are very much the way things were. Rain fed agriculture, grass fed agriculture, even not ploughing up. You may gain more in carbon terms from doing that than from planting a load of trees.
“There is an absolute need for a change in the farming system in Britain and as we come out of the EU that’s an amazing way to do that. I have just agreed to be the international ambassador for the Conservative Environmental Network. We are going to be focusing on the Climate Change Conference. It’s an honourary assignment of course I’m not going to ask to be paid at my age!”
His son, Boris Johnson, currently has no plans to ban intensive farming and force farmers to go back to ancient methods, though the government is bringing in a payments scheme for farms which use their land to improve the environment.
However, Stanley said that he has tried to make his land suitable for the rewilded creatures, but it has been a struggle, and he wants to be allowed to release them on the river running through his Exmoor estate. However, this is not allowed under current rules, in place to prevent the animals running amok.
He is pushing for his son to get the government to publish its National Beaver Strategy to enable them to be let loose up and down England’s waterways.
He told The Telegraph: “Beavers have been put on hold at the moment because of coronavirus, but I need to think about how I am going to do it. You have the pen, a biggish pen covering a couple of acres and some running water, you could just make a pond. I need to be very careful because the pond could dry up or the whole place could flood and they could be washed away down the river and I’d get in trouble. Of course I have the river, but they can’t be released there until we have a National Beaver Policy!”
To Help Save Bumble Bees, Plant These Flowers in Your Spring Garden
Madison Dapcevich January 30, 2020
The endangered yellow-faced bumble bee consistently chose the large-leaved lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus), seen above, even when others were available. vil.sandi / Flickr /CC BY-ND 2.0
In an effort to aid North American bumblebee conservation, a group of California researchers has identified which flowers certain bee species prefer.
There are nearly 20,000 known bee species in the world, 4,000 of which are native to the U.S., according to the U.S. Geological Society. Bees pollinate roughly three-quarters of all fruits, nuts and vegetables grown across the country and one of every four bites of food can be credited to bee pollination. But bees are in major decline as nearly 40 percent of honey bees have declined in the last year, according to ABC News. Populations have dropped for a number of reasons, including parasites, pesticides and a lack of flowers on the landscape — all factors that highlight a need for understanding habitat needed to sustain and recover populations.
Working with the Entomological Society of America, scientists set out to determine which flowers bumble bees prefer in an effort to aid land managers seeking to restore critical habitat.
“It’s important to consider the availability of plants when determining what’s selected for by bees,” Jerry Cole, study author and biologist with the Institute for Bird Populations (IBP), said. “Often studies will use the proportion of captures on a plant species alone to determine which plants are most important to bees. Without comparison to how available those plants are, you might think a plant is preferentially selected by bees, when it is simply very abundant.”
To come to their conclusions, researchers captured more than a dozen different species of bumblebees on more than 100 different species of flowers in the Sierra Nevada region of California. Researchers recorded what species of flower each bee was captured on and then estimated the number of plants found in each plot. The findings suggest that different bumblebee species select specific flowers even when foraging across the same landscape.
“We discovered plants that were big winners for all bumble bee species but, just as importantly, plant species that were very important for only a single bumble bee species,” said Helen Loffland, a meadow species specialist with the Institute for Bird Populations. “This study allowed us to provide a concise, scientifically based list of important plant species to use in habitat restoration that will meet the needs of multiple bumble bee species and provide blooms across the entire annual lifecycle.”
The yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) was most abundantly observed. The endangered insects preferred large-leaved lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus) and consistently chose the flowering plant even when others were available. Three of five bumblebee species were found to prefer A. urticifolia, a flowering plant in the mint family.
Some of other favorites? The fuzzy buzzing insects also preferred Oregon checker-mallow (Sidalcea oregana), Alpine mountainbalm (Monardella odoratissima), tall fringed bluebells (Mertensia ciliate) and cobwebby hedge nettle (Stachys albens).
It is important to note that bees likely don’t have natural preferences but instead choose flowers based on quality or quantity of nectar or pollen. People should interpret the results with caution because the researchers did not conclude whether plants were being used for pollen or nectar sources, CNN notes.
The U.S. Forest Service says that it is using the study results to identify areas where restoration efforts may make more ample bee habitat.
“This sort of knowledge can really increase the effectiveness of restoration for bumblebees in a way that is relatively easy and cost-effective to implement,” said Loffland, adding that the findings can be helpful to landowners who are restoring or managing areas that are habitat for native bees.
Farmers that use land to protect the environment have more stable incomes than those that focus on intensity
Helena Horton January 21, 2021
This is good news for the new environment-led payments scheme championed by the UK government – Gareth Fuller/PA Wire
Farmers who use land to protect the environment have more stable incomes than those who focus on intensity, a new study has suggested.
Scientists from Rothampsted Research and Reading and Newcastle Universities has found that farmers who grew diverse crops and livestock, and reduced pesticides, receive more consistent year-to-year incomes.
This will be seen as a boost for the government’s plan to phase out the EU land payment scheme and instead pay farmers for looking after their environment.
Researchers said the growers did better when they looked after their land because their farms were more resilient to extreme weather events and disease.
The researchers examined data from the government’s Farm Business Survey for 2333 farms in England and Wales, between 2007-2015, for a range of different farm types.
Using statistical models, the team examined the effect of farming practices and subsidies on the stability of farm income, and their relative importance over the nine-year period.
An increase in direct EU subsidies paid to farmers based on the area farmed was associated with less stable farm income, across most farm types.
Dr Jake Bishop, Lecturer in Crop Science and Production from the University of Reading’s School of Agriculture, Policy & Development said: “Our latest research is interesting as it shows that farms that were adopting environmental management actually benefitted financially from their stewardship. This is encouraging news for farmers as the UK moves to the Environmental Land Management scheme.
“Diversifying outputs and more efficient use of agrochemicals is also associated with environmental and ecological benefits, including for soils and pollinators, these benefits may have translated into more stable farm incomes over the nine years we examined.”
Lead author and PhD student, Caroline Harkness added: “Farmers are facing increasing pressures due to changes in climate, government policy and prices. Instability in farm income can be a real challenge. It was interesting, and encouraging, to find that farms adopting environmentally friendly practices also had more stable incomes.
“Farmers may be benefiting financially from their environmental management, while in contrast an increase in direct payments per hectare was associated with less stable farm income.
“Environmentally friendly farming practices including engaging in agri-environment schemes, diversifying outputs, and reducing the use of chemical inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides, are associated with ecological and environmental benefits and importantly could also increase the stability of farm income.”
Two-thirds of Earth’s land is on pace to lose water as the climate warms – that’s a problem for people, crops and forests
Yadu Pokhrel, Associate Prof. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University and Farshid Felfelani, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Michigan State University January 11, 2021
Cape Town residents queued up for water as the taps nearly ran dry in 2018. Morgana Wingard/Getty Images
The world watched with a sense of dread in 2018 as Cape Town, South Africa, counted down the days until the city would run out of water. The region’s surface reservoirs were going dry amid its worst drought on record, and the public countdown was a plea for help.
By drastically cutting their water use, Cape Town residents and farmers were able to push back “Day Zero” until the rain came, but the close call showed just how precarious water security can be. California also faced severe water restrictions during its recent multiyear drought. And Mexico City is now facing water restrictions after a year with little rain.
There are growing concerns that many regions of the world will face water crises like these in the coming decades as rising temperatures exacerbate drought conditions.
Understanding the risks ahead requires looking at the entire landscape of terrestrial water storage – not just the rivers, but also the water stored in soils, groundwater, snowpack, forest canopies, wetlands, lakes and reservoirs.
We study changes in the terrestrial water cycle as engineersand hydrologists. In a new study published Jan. 11, we and a team of colleagues from universities and institutes around the world showed for the first time how climate change will likely affect water availability on land from all water storage sources over the course of this century.
We found that the sum of this terrestrial water storage is on pace to decline across two-thirds of the land on the planet. The worst impacts will be in areas of the Southern Hemisphere where water scarcity is already threatening food security and leading to human migration and conflict. Globally, one in 12 people could face extreme drought related to water storage every year by the end of this century, compared to an average of about one in 33 at the end of the 20th century.
These findings have implications for water availability, not only for human needs, but also for trees, plants and the sustainability of agriculture.
Where the risks are highest
The water that keeps land healthy, crops growing and human needs met comes from a variety of sources. Mountain snow and rainfall feed streams that affect community water supplies. Soil water content directly affects plant growth. Groundwater resources are crucial for both drinking water supplies and crop productivity in irrigated regions.
While studies often focus just on river flow as an indicator of water availability and drought, our study instead provides a holistic picture of the changes in total water available on land. That allows us to capture nuances, such as the ability of forests to draw water from deep groundwater sources during years when the upper soil levels are drier.
The declines we found in land water storage are especially alarming in the Amazon River basin, Australia, southern Africa, the Mediterranean region and parts of the United States. In these regions, precipitation is expected to decline sharply with climate change, and rising temperatures will increase evaporation. At the same time, some other regions will become wetter, a process already seen today.
The map shows the projected change in terrestrial water storage by the end of the 21st century, compared to the 1975-2005 average, under a mid-range scenario for global warming. A continuum of yellow to orange to dark red reflects increasing severity of loss of stored water; teal to blue to dark blue reflects increasing gains in stored water.Yadu Pokhrel, et al, Nature Climate Change, 2021, CC By -ND
Our findings for the Amazon basin add to the longstanding debate over the fate of the rainforest in a warmer world. Many studies using climate model projections have warned of widespread forest die-off in the future as less rainfall and warmer temperatures lead to higher heat and moisture stress combined with forest fires.
In an earlier study, we found that the deep-rooted rainforests may be more resilient to short-term drought than they appear because they can tap water stored in soils deeper in the ground that aren’t considered in typical climate model projections. However, our new findings, using multiple models, indicate that the declines in total water storage, including deep groundwater stores, may lead to more water shortages during dry seasons when trees need stored water the most and exacerbate future droughts. All weaken the resilience of the rainforests.
A new way of looking at drought
Our study also provides a new perspective on future droughts.
There are different kinds of droughts. Meteorological droughts are caused by lack of precipitation. Agricultural droughts are caused by lack of water in soils. Hydrological droughts involve lack of water in rivers and groundwater. We provided a new perspective on droughts by looking at the total water storage.
Water in the environment. U.K. Met Office
We found that moderate to severe droughts involving water storage would increase until the middle of the 21st century and then remain stable under future scenarios in which countries cut their emissions, but extreme to exceptional water storage droughts could continue to increase until the end of the century.
That would further threaten water availability in regions where water storage is projected to decline.
Changes driven by global warming
These declines in water storage and increases in future droughts are primarily driven by climate change, not land-water management activities such as irrigation and groundwater pumping. This became clear when we examined simulations of what the future would look like if climate conditions were unchanged from preindustrial times. Without the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, terrestrial water storage would remain generally stable in most regions.
If future increases in groundwater use for irrigation and other needs are also considered, the projected reduction in water storage and increase in drought could be even more severe.
Last month, a federal appeals court ruled that it was proper for a jury to award monetary damages to neighbors of a Smithfield Foods controlled hog operation in Bladen County. The neighbors complained that the putrid odor and other adverse impacts adversely affected their rights to use and enjoy their property. In affirming damages are proper, one judge concluded: “It is past time to acknowledge the full harms that the unreformed practices of hog farming are inflicting.”
Twenty years after Smithfield entered a formal agreement with the North Carolina Attorney General to convert its primitive lagoon and sprayfield waste management systems on all company-owned and contract farms to environmentally superior systems that are economically feasible, Smithfield has not converted any.
Smithfield industrial hog facilities continue to store vast amounts of raw hog waste in excavated lagoons and then spray it on to neighboring fields – polluting water and air. For many neighbors, the stench and filth outside their homes is unbearable.
Now, Smithfield is proposing to cover hog lagoons on many of its hog operations, capture methane or biogas, and construct miles of pipelines to convey the gas to a processing facility it proposes to construct in Duplin County in a joint venture with Dominion Energy. The processed gas would be injected into a natural gas pipeline and used as an energy source. While removing emissions of methane that would otherwise contribute to climate change and utilizing it for energy has merit, Smithfield’s approach is dependent on perpetuating the flawed, harmful lagoon and sprayfield waste system.
Flushing millions of gallons of raw hog waste from industrial-scale barns into lagoons and then spraying on nearby fields has had, and continues to have, substantial adverse impacts on the environment and many communities in eastern North Carolina.
Numerous studies have tied the lagoon and sprayfield system to increased nutrient levels that plague our coastal waters, leading to periodic algal blooms and fish kills. Capping lagoons to collect methane will actually increase the amount of nutrients generated from the hog waste, leading to more water quality problems.
It doesn’t have to be this way. In Missouri, Smithfield now touts its “next generation technology” to manage waste that it agreed to install on all of its hog operations there. This wholesale conversion to improved waste management was forced by lawsuits from neighbors and that state’s attorney general. It is operational and profitable on hundreds of Smithfield hog operations in Missouri.
Smithfield’s new waste management technology in Missouri appears to have been enabled by the revenue generated from marketing biogas. In addition to capturing and utilizing methane from the waste, Smithfield’s Missouri hog operations converted to mechanical barn scrapers instead of barn flushing. This reduced the amount of waste laden water and reduced odor from operations by 59 to 87 percent.
Smithfield has requested that North Carolina state agencies approve necessary permits authorizing the proposed biogas project. The pending decision places eastern North Carolina at a significant fork in the road. As Smithfield has requested, the state can allow Smithfield to simply cover lagoons, capture and profit from biogas, and perpetuate the flawed lagoon and sprayfield system.
Or the Attorney General can hold Smithfield to its commitment to use economically feasible and superior waste management systems that substantially eliminate impacts to neighbors and the environment.
Before allowing Smithfield to develop its proposed biogas venture, the Department of Environmental Quality should ensure the company at a minimum employs a complete waste management system that not only taps methane but substantially reduces or eliminates odors, nutrients, and pollution.
It is past time that Smithfield acts responsibly. If it can clean up its act in Missouri, it can do the same in North Carolina.
Derb Carter is director of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s North Carolina offices.
Meet the South Poll cow: the healthier, naturally raised cattle of the future?
Georgie Smith November 25, 2020
Missouri rancher Greg Judy spots a six-month-old South Poll heifer calf in his herd that is a prime example of what he calls a “good doing cow”. A cow that will “do good” on grass alone.
She’s got a “big butt”, Judy says, meaning wide hips that will help her easily bear calves when grown. She sports a shiny, slick red hide that flies avoid landing on; cows stressed from fly bites – Judy has seen hundreds on a single cow – don’t grow well. She has a large “barrel” or gut, meaning enough stomach capacity to store large amounts of grass, which she will convert to energy and will keep her in good health, even during the winter with no extra feed. “This is the kind of heifer you want,” Judy says. “You can build a herd out of those.”
Judy raises cattle in a highly–managed, grass-only system that he believes is better for his cows and the environment. His 300-plus herd is kept together in a dense group, and moved often – Judy moves his cattle twice a day to fresh paddocks – creating a symbiotic relationship between cows and grasslands that soil scientists are finding encourages soil health and rapid grass growth.
But Judy has learned not all cows thrive on grass alone, especially the type of cattle favored by a US ranching industry that has grown largely dependent on feeding cattle grain rations.
In Judy’s system, those “common cows”, as he calls them, looked like they had been starved six months after he put them on a grass-only diet. Instead, Judy found success – after nearly going bankrupt in 1999 trying to raise cattle the conventional way – utilizing intensive, grass-based management with cows that had the “grass genetics” to thrive.
“At the end of the day, the money comes from animals that can excel on a grass diet,” says Judy, referring to the lower costs of raising cattle with a genetic predisposition to thrive on grass, since they don’t require the grain, growth hormones and antibiotics often used in traditional cattle ranching.
It’s a counterintuitive problem, considering cows evolved to eat grass. But today, approximately 97% of US beef cows spend the last four to six months in confined feedlots where they are fed grain rations until slaughter. Before that, they spend most of their lives out on the pasture, but even then some ranchers feed them grain to keep their weight up through winter or during stressful times like calving.
Meanwhile, the grass-only beef market is small, but growing rapidly, according to a report by Stone Barns Center. The intensively managed grazing Judy employs is a supercharged version of traditional cattle-grazing techniques. By moving his cows often, they do not have a chance to damage the grass by eating it too short. Instead, they encourage healthy root development increasing soil health, which some scientists have found allows the soil to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere – a process known as carbon sequestration.
This heavily managed grazing style – also called holistic grazing – is part of a growing worldwide interest in “regenerative agriculture”. By promoting multiple practices that build soil health, regenerative agriculture has been said to improve agricultural lands and ultimately sequester carbon, according to Rattan Lal PhD, an Ohio State University soil scientist and the 2020 World Food Prize winner.
But the growth of regenerative grazing systems has been slow, in part because, as the cattle industry turned to feeding grain, ranchers ended up breeding fewer cows that could thrive on grass alone, says Richard Teague PhD, a range ecologist with the Texas A&M University Agrilife Research center. Ranchers like Judy were put in a pickle, without the cows appropriate for their grass-only systems.
“People wanted to feed corn, [so] they bred huge animals that require very big inputs of corn and also pharmaceuticals,” says Teague. He argues that raising “cattle like that” comes at the expense of the health of consumers – and the health of the soil that nurtures them. “We have to go to animals that we know thrive under good management.”
The traditional ranching industry denies the charge that grass-raised cows are better for the climate than their grain-fed product. In a 2017 study by Oklahoma State University researchers found that grain-fed cattle – with their shorter lifespans – resulted in a 18.5 to 67.5% lower carbon footprint compared with grass-finished beef.
Meanwhile, a 2017 report from the Food, Climate and Research Network challenged the idea that grass-fed beef can be good for the environment at all, saying there was no evidence that grazing cattle helps sequester carbon except under the most ideal conditions.
However, Teague argues, “It’s not the cow, it’s the how.” A 2015 study in Georgia of dairy cows in an intensively grazed system recorded eight tons of carbon sequestered per hectare annually. The intensive livestock grazing systems such as Judy uses are one of the best ways within agricultural systems to sequester carbon, according to Teague. “Under decent management, sequestration exceeds emissions, and the better the grazing management, the more it exceeds it.”
For Judy, it comes down to raising cattle in a system that works with nature instead of against it. But to do that, he also had to find the best cattle to thrive in his environment. For him, that perfect cow is the South Poll.
A relative newcomer to the beef cattle scene, the South Poll is a small-framed, stout, highly fertile red cow, well adapted to hot and humid conditions. It has good mothering instincts that have earned it the nickname the “southern mama cow”. The breed also has a rock star – or at least, country music star – cachet; it was originally developed in the 1990s by Teddy Gentry, the bass player for the country music group Alabama.
Judy is far from alone in his enthusiasm for this up-and-coming breed. In mid-September, South Poll cattle fans from all over the US showed up in Copan, Oklahoma, for the annual South Poll cattle auction. The cows are becoming increasingly popular with grass-focused ranchers – especially in the south-eastern and mid-western US where the cattle are best adapted – according to Ann Demerath, secretary of the South Poll Grass Cattle Association.
Some of the animals purchased at the auction may be cross-bred with other cattle breeds. Ranchers hope to use the South Poll genes to adapt their existing cattle to do better on a grass diet, Judy says. He advises ranchers to start by purchasing the “best South Poll bull you can afford” and breed it to the best females in their existing herd. Then, ranchers should select the best females from that generation and breed those with a South Poll sire – a technique called “line-breeding” that quickly focuses on desirable traits without risking genetic defects.
Judy also advises ranchers to cull – or remove – any animals that don’t fit their standards for health and disposition, even if they “look at you funny”, from their breeding stock. His mantra? “You’ll never have a herd any better than what you are willing to cull for.”
Relentlessly selecting for the best-adapted cows within his own system has allowed Judy to produce South Poll mother cows so well-adapted that they stay healthy through the winter. That means, unlike most ranchers, Judy can give the mothers more time with their calves during the winter, which gives those calves an extra boost of growth and leaves him with a stronger, bigger calf in the spring.
For Judy, that is the goal – a cow that needs nothing but well-managed grass, passing their health and wellbeing on to the next generation.
Butter Is Booming, Whole Milk Is Back and Dairy Is Surviving
Justin Fox November 15, 2020
(Bloomberg Opinion) — With Americans staying home more than usual because of the pandemic, and doing lots of baking and cooking to pass the time, this has been a banner year for butter.
Land O’Lakes, the Minnesota-based dairy cooperative, expects to sell 275 million to 300 million pounds of the stuff this year — a 20% increase — as rising retail demand more than makes up for lost restaurant business. Nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, butter production is up 6% over the first nine months of the year and is on track to top two billion pounds for the first time since 1943.
This year’s boom is, as is apparent from the chart, part of a longer-term comeback. On a per-capita basis, Americans eat far less butter than they did in the early decades of the 20th century. But they eat more than they did in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
After staving off competition from margarine with nearly a century of lobbying for margarine bans, taxes and color restrictions, butter producers lost their regulatory advantages in the 1940’s and 1950’s and ceded a lot of market share to the cheaper spread — which had originally been derived from beef fat but was by then mainly made out of vegetable oil. As medical researchers began to link consumption of animal fats with heart disease in the 1950’s and 1960’s, margarine gained even more ground as a purportedly healthier alternative.
Those health claims were later mostly debunked, and the price difference between butter and margarine began to matter less as incomes rose and families shrank (food purchased for off-premises consumption accounted for more than 18% of consumer spending in the early 1950’s and just 6% in 2019).
Butter also benefited from the emphasis on genuine ingredients accompanying the good-food revival that began in the 1960’s (Julia Child certainly wasn’t going to use margarine). And let’s be honest, it tastes better. Corn oil, olive oil and other vegetable oils now play a much bigger role in American diets than they used to, so butter will probably never regain its central status of a century ago. But it’s not going away.
“It’s a survivor story,” says Peter Vitaliano, vice president of economic policy and market research at the National Milk Producers Federation.
The same goes for the dairy industry in general. It can seem awfully embattled from time to time, and for good reason. Giant, highly productive dairies have been driving lots of smaller farmers out of business. Competition from “milks” made of almonds, oats, soybeans and other plants has taken market share from the real thing and led to a dairy industry lobbying campaign reminiscent of the margarine wars of yore. President Donald Trump’s trade policies have caused problems too. Two big milk marketers, Borden Dairy Co. and Dean Foods Inc., have filed for bankruptcy in the past 12 months.
But the big picture for the industry since 1980 or so is of declining demand for its core product (milk, that is) being more than offset by rising sales of almost everything that can be made out of milk.
Even within milk sales there’s been an interesting shift lately, with whole milk outselling 2% milk for the first time in 15 years in 2018 and building on its lead in 2019, and skim milk sales drifting downward. If you’re going to drink milk, and not smashed-up almonds mixed with water, then you might as well drink the milkiest kind of milk.
Whole milk happens to be the most profitable product for dairy farmers, as it’s basically just what comes out of the cow and thus doesn’t require them to share much revenue with processors. It also has benefited from the new eat-at-home normal of the pandemic, with sales up 4.1% through August (2% milk sales are up too, with skim and 1% down).
But on the whole, it is products made of milk that have kept the industry going. The butter revival is one aspect of this. The rise of yogurt, which was close to nonexistent in the U.S. before the 1970’s, is another, even though it has faded a bit lately.
The main driver of the dairy industry’s resilience, though, has been cheese. Americans consume almost three times as much of it per-person as they did in 1970.
Not all of this is the result of what you’d call organic consumer demand. Yes, the big gains in Italian cheese consumption seem to reflect the fact that we eat a lot more pizza than we used to. One can also see hints in the data of the rising popularity of Mexican food (which in its north-of-the-border incarnation contains lots of Cheddar and Jack cheese), bagels’ emergence from regional-food status (cream cheese!) and other fun food trends.
But as cheese can be stored for longer than milk or butter or yogurt, it’s also something the dairy industry makes when it has more milk than it knows what to do with, resulting in the infamous “cheese mountain” that is occasionally reduced in size by big government purchases. Those have been especially big this year, with the Agriculture Department so far delivering more than 118 million food boxes — each containing several pounds of dairy products, mainly cheese — to food banks and other charities as part of pandemic-relief efforts.
The industry has also found new things to sell beyond milk, butter, yogurt and cheese, and new places to sell them. Forty years ago the U.S. hardly exported any dairy products. Now it exports a fair amount of cheese, mainly to Mexico, South Korea and Japan, and even bigger quantities of cheese-making byproducts such as whey powder, whey protein isolate and lactose, all of which are used in manufacturing foods and dietary supplements.
The main byproduct of modern butter-making is skim milk powder, most of which is exported to Mexico and Southeast Asia to be reconstituted, often in combination with vegetable oils, into various milk-like drinks. Overall, says Vitaliano, the U.S. exports about 4% of the milk fat it produces and 19% of the skim solids.
To bring things back to butter, the U.S. actually imports more of the stuff than it exports, with Ireland’s Kerrygold the No. 2 butter brand in the U.S. after Land O’Lakes. But the import quantities are still small relative to domestic production. So this year of high butter demand has been good for U.S. dairy cooperatives that specialize in the stuff, such as Land O’Lakes and No. 1 producer California Dairies Inc., which makes Challenge and Danish Creamery butter. (Both Land O’Lakes and California Dairies also produce private-label butter for retailers, so their role in supplying the country with butter goes way beyond their own brands.)
It has also been a good year for California dairies in general, given that the state accounts for just over 30% of U.S. butter production, with Land O’Lakes a big presence there too. Wisconsin, “America’s Dairyland,” focuses more on cheese, with a quarter of U.S. production. New York is tops in yogurt, with about 15% of production.
In terms of milk output for all purposes, California is No. 1 at more than 18% of the national total. It has held the top spot since passing Wisconsin in 1993, but the latter has been narrowing the gap lately. Idaho recently overtook New York for third place, and Texas may be nipping at its heels soon. For an ancient, not exactly fast-growing industry, dairy has a lot more drama than you might expect.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He was the editorial director of Harvard Business Review and wrote for Time, Fortune and American Banker. He is the author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”
A third of our food contains a cocktail of pesticides, report finds due to fruit and veg imports
Helena Horton, The Telegraph November 12, 2020
Imported fruit and vegetables were found to contain pesticides which are banned for use in the UK – Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
A third of our food products contain multiple harmful pesticides, a new report has found, with imported fruit and vegetables frequently containing chemicals banned for use in the UK.
More fresh produce than ever now features a ‘cocktail’ of more than one types of pesticide, the Pesticide Action Network revealed.
Using government testing data, the campaign group ranks the fruit and vegetables that are most likely to contain multiple pesticide residues.
Strawberries top the list, with 89.92 per cent containing multiple pesticide residues, and they are closely followed by lemons, of which 83.72 per cent feature a ‘cocktail’ of pesticides.
A spokesperson for PAN said that the rise could be because of a rise in pesticide use in the UK.
He explained: “This could be due to the rise in UK pesticide use. For example, the area of UK land treated with pesticides rose by 63 per cent from 1990 to 2016 (the latest figures from the Government).
“Many crops are sprayed with pesticides far more times in a growing season than they used to be. As an example, in 1990 only 30 per cent of cereals were treated more than 4 times in a growing season. By 2016, that figure had almost doubled to 55 per cent.”
Almost a third (32 per cent) of all food tested by the government in 2019 (including meat, fish, grains and dairy) contained multiple pesticides, up from 23.5 per cent the previous year.
Fruit and vegetables contain even more; 48 per cent of those tested contained a mixture of pesticides, up from 36 per cent. Fruit is one of the worst offenders, with 67 per cent containing multiple pesticides, and with 94 per cent of oats and 27 per cent of bread contained the cocktail of chemicals.
Campaigning groups including the Soil Association and the Wildlife Trusts have asked the government to force farmers to curb their use of pesticides and herbicides, as they are harmful for biodiversity
The government is due to publish its National Action Plan on the Sustainable Use of Pesticide, which will introduce a pesticide reduction target and increase financial and other support to British farmers to adopt non-chemical alternatives.
The PAN has said that consumers find it difficult to avoid these chemicals, as they are not mentioned on food labels.
Nick Mole, policy officer at the group, said: “Pesticide residues aren’t listed anywhere on food labels so the Dirty Dozen is the only way for British consumers to get a sense of which pesticides appear in their food.
“Most of us can’t access a fully organic diet so we hope this information will help people work out which produce to prioritise”.
Pesticides found on the produce include the insecticide Chlorpyrifos, which is banned for use in the EU but was found on produce imported into the UK. In multiple epidemiological studies, chlorpyrifos exposure during pregnancy or childhood has been linked with lower birth weight and neurological changes such as slower motor development and attention problems.
Possible human carcinogen Difenconazole is a fungicide used to control a variety of problems including blight and seed rot. It appears as a residue on the majority of the Dirty Dozen, and herbicide Glyphosate is one of the most widely used chemicals. It has been banned in countries around the world, but not yet in the UK.
A government spokesperson said part of the reason the pesticide data was going up is better testing.
They explained that it “uses the latest technology for analysis, which is constantly improving, and means that each year we can look for more pesticides at lower levels. For these reasons we expect to see a rise in the number of samples with residues detected”.
Farmers are depleting the Ogallala Aquifer because the government pays them to do it
Matthew R Sanderson, Professor of Sociology and Professor of Geography and Geospatial Sciences, Kansas State University, Jacob A. Miller, PhD Student in Sociology, Kansas State University, and Burke Griggs, Associate Professor of Law, Washburn University
A center-pivot sprinkler with precision application drop nozzles irrigates cotton in Texas. USDA NRCS/Wipedia
A slow-moving crisis threatens the U.S. Central Plains, which grow a quarter of the nation’s crops. Underground, the region’s lifeblood – water – is disappearing, placing one of the world’s major food-producing regions at risk.
The Ogallala-High Plains Aquifer is one of the world’s largest groundwater sources, extending from South Dakota down through the Texas Panhandle across portions of eight states. Its water supports US$35 billion in crop production each year.
But farmers are pulling water out of the Ogallala faster than rain and snow can recharge it. Between 1900 and 2008 they drained some 89 trillion gallons from the aquifer – equivalent to two-thirds of Lake Erie. Depletion is threatening drinking water supplies and undermining local communities already struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic, the opioid crisis, hospital closures, soaring farm loses and rising suicide rates.
Map showing changing Ogallala Aquifer water levels over the past century
In Kansas, “Day Zero” – the day wells run dry – has arrived for about 30% of the aquifer. Within 50 years, the entire aquifer is expected be 70% depleted.
Some observers blame this situation on periodic drought. Others point to farmers, since irrigation accounts for 90% of Ogallala groundwater withdrawals. But our research, which focuses on social and legal aspects of water use in agricultural communities, shows that farmers are draining the Ogallala because state and federal policies encourage them to do it.
A production treadmill
At first glance, farmers on the Plains appear to be doing well in 2020. Crop production increased this year. Corn, the largest crop in the U.S., had a near-record year, and farm incomes increased by 5.7% over 2019.
Our research finds that subsidies put farmers on a treadmill, working harder to produce more while draining the resource that supports their livelihood. Government payments create a vicious cycle of overproduction that intensifies water use. Subsidies encourage farmers to expand and buy expensive equipment to irrigate larger areas.
Irrigation pump in field
With low market prices for many crops, production does not cover expenses on most farms. To stay afloat, many farmers buy or lease more acres. Growing larger amounts floods the market, further reducing crop prices and farm incomes. Subsidies support this cycle.
While these initiatives are important, they haven’t stemmed the aquifer’s decline. In our view, what the Ogallala Aquifer region really needs is policy change.
Nor should Congress propose to eliminate agricultural subsidies, as some environmental organizations and free-market advocates have proposed. Given the thin margins of farming and longstanding political realities, federal support is simply part of modern production agriculture.
With these cautions in mind, three initiatives could help ease pressure on farmers to keep expanding production. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers to allow environmentally sensitive farmland to lie fallow for at least 10 years. With new provisions, the program could reduce water use by prohibiting expansion of irrigated acreage, permanently retiring marginal lands and linking subsidies to production of less water-intensive crops.
These initiatives could be implemented through the federal farm bill, which also sets funding levels for nonfarm subsidies such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. SNAP payments, which increase needy families’ food budgets, are an important tool for addressing poverty. Increasing these payments and adding financial assistance to local communities could offset lower tax revenues that result from from farming less acreage.
Amending federal farm credit rates could also slow the treadmill. Generous terms promote borrowing for irrigation equipment; to pay that debt, borrowers farm more land. Offering lower rates for equipment that reduces water use and withholding loans for standard, wasteful equipment could nudge farmers toward conservation.
The most powerful tool is the tax code. Currently, farmers receive deductions for declining groundwater levels and can write off depreciation on irrigation equipment. Replacing these perks with a tax credit for stabilizing groundwater and substituting a depreciation schedule favoring more efficient irrigation equipment could provide strong incentives to conserve water.
Rewriting state water laws
Water rights are mostly determined by state law, so reforming state water policies is crucial. Case law demonstrates that simply owning water rights does not grant the legal right to waste water. For more than a century courts have upheld state restrictions on waste, with rulings that allow for adaptation by modifying the definitions of “beneficial use” and “waste” over time.
Using these precedents, state water agencies could designate thirsty crops, such as rice, cotton or corn, as wasteful in certain regions. Regulations preventing unreasonable water use are not unconstitutional.
Allowing farmers some flexibility will maximize profits, as long as they stabilize overall water use. If they irrigate less – or not at all – in years with low market prices, rules could allow more irrigation in better years. Ultimately, many farmers – and their bankers – are willing to exchange lower annual yields for a longer water supply.
As our research has shown, the vast majority of farmers in the region want to save groundwater. They will need help from policymakers to do it. Forty years is long enough to learn that the Ogallala Aquifer’s decline is not driven by weather or by individual farmers’ preferences. Depletion is a structural problem embedded in agricultural policies. Groundwater depletion is a policy choice made by federal, state and local officials.
Stephen Lauer and Vivian Aranda-Hughes, former doctoral students at Kansas State University, contributed to several of the studies cited in this article.
Sinking your teeth into a crisp apple or chomping on a stalk of celery is something you should be able to do without thinking. After all, the best nutritional science shows that eating a variety of fruits and vegetables—and plenty of them—is a crucial component of good health. But produce sometimes comes with potentially harmful pesticide levels.
That’s according to a new Consumer Reports analysis of five years of data from the Department of Agriculture collected from tests on fruits and vegetables to detect about 450 pesticides. In some cases, those levels exceed what CR’s experts consider safe.
The solution isn’t to eat less produce. More than 80 percent of Americans already fall short of the recommended amounts: at least 2½ cups of vegetables and 2 cups of fruits per day for most adults. Instead, you can minimize the risk by choosing fruits and vegetables grown with fewer and safer pesticides.
One way is to choose organic produce. “CR recommends buying organic when possible, to reduce your pesticide exposure and protect the environment and farm-workers,” says Charlotte Vallaeys, the senior policy analyst at CR who led our new pesticides study. Organic standards permit some pesticides, but they can be used only after nonchemical methods, such as crop rotation, have failed. Even then, farmers can’t use pesticides that could be harmful to people or the environment.
“Still, we realize organic can cost more, and that means it isn’t always an option,” Vallaeys says. And in many low-income communities, access to fruits and vegetables in general—let alone organic—may be limited.
To help consumers identify which produce poses the biggest risk from pesticides, CR experts developed ratings for 35 fruits and vegetables. They were organic and nonorganic, grown in the U.S. and imported. We also rated some frozen, canned, and dried items, for a total of 49 products. (See CR’s produce ratings and find out which fruits and vegetables to pick, below.)
The good news: Almost half of the nonorganic fruits and vegetables pose little risk. But about 20 percent, such as fresh green beans, peaches, and potatoes, received our worst scores; those are the ones it’s most important to try to buy organic. Even some organic products, such as fresh spinach, had worrisome pesticide residue. “For the lowest-scoring items, eating a half of a serving or less per day poses long-term health risks to a young child,” Vallaeys says.
Pesticides and Your Health
“Pesticides are chemicals that are specifically designed to kill living organisms,” says Devon Payne-Sturges, DrPH, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health in College Park. Some of the clearest evidence of harm comes from people who work with pesticides or live in agricultural areas. The Environmental Protection Agency says agricultural pesticide exposure is tied to asthma, bronchitis, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, and prostate and lung cancers.
Industry groups say that such residue on food doesn’t pose a risk. “A farmer’s first consumer is his or her own family, so food safety is always their top priority,” says Teresa Thorne, executive director of the Alliance for Food and Farming. And CropLife America, a pesticide industry group, said that half or more of items tested by the USDA show no pesticide residue.
But many experts remain concerned. Payne-Sturges says pesticides can damage the brain and nervous system. And even low levels have been linked to cancer, reproductive issues, and other health problems, she says.
Plenty of research bears this out. A 2019 study in JAMA Internal Medicine found that people with the highest levels of exposure to pyrethroid pesticides were three times as likely to die from cardiovascular disease during the 14-year study than those with less exposure. In a 2010 study in the journal Pediatrics, children with a greater exposure to organophosphate pesticides were more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD. And a 2016 analysis in Scientific Reports found a link between pesticides and an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Other evidence suggests that pesticides disrupt the endocrine system, which is made up of hormones, the glands that produce them, and the receptors in the body that respond to them. Experts think this may contribute to some cancers and other health problems. And because this system is delicate, even small amounts of endocrine disruptors could have outsized effects, says Michael Hansen, PhD, CR’s senior scientist.
Yet the overall health impact of pesticides may be even greater because there are still many unanswered questions about the effects of long-term, low-dose exposure.
What Research Can’t Tell Us
Scientists studying pesticides are limited in the kind of research they can conduct. Giving a group of people a pesticide-laden diet and another a pesticide-free one would provide clearer answers—but would also be unethical. So scientists turn to other types of studies.
Animal studies, which can provide clues to potential harms, are limited by significant biological differences between, say, rats and humans. And epidemiological studies—which look at groups of people, their pesticide exposure, and their health outcomes over long periods of time—can link pesticides and illness but can’t prove that the chemicals caused the diseases.
Another limitation: Pesticides are usually regulated and studied by considering the effects of just a product’s active ingredient. Yet pesticide formulas contain many other substances. “Some of these are called inert ingredients, which gives you the impression that they’re not harmful,” Payne-Sturges says. But how they might affect health is largely unknown.
Also, health effects may be compounded when multiple pesticides are used together, which frequently happens. But most studies evaluate only the effects of a single type or class of pesticide, says Brenda Eskenazi, PhD, director of the Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health at the University of California, Berkeley. “What we should be looking at is the whole swimming pool of chemicals that we’re exposed to,” she says.
What does this mean for consumers? “Sadly, there’s a lot we don’t know about the human health effects of pesticides in food,” says CR’s Vallaeys. “Given this, it makes sense that we should err on the side of caution and base decisions about pesticide use not just on what we know but also on what we don’t yet know.”
Pesticides and Farmworkers
Pesticides pose special dangers to people who work with them on farms and in factories, as well as to their families and people who live nearby.
A long-running project from the University of California, Berkeley, known as the CHAMACOS study is a key source of evidence. (The name is an acronym for the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas, and means “little children” in Mexican Spanish.) Starting in 1999, researchers began following hundreds of Latino children—many from before they were even born—in Salinas, Calif., an area where much of U.S. produce is grown.
The findings show that pesticide exposure in pregnant women and during childhood is linked to poor reflexes in infants (a sign of brain and nervous system problems), lower IQ, attention disorders, poorer lung function, and more. People facing greater economic and social challenges are also more likely to suffer harm from pesticide exposure, says Brenda Eskenazi, PhD, the study’s director.
“The effects of pesticides on the people who grow and harvest our food is a big part of the reason CR recommends buying organic when you can,” says Charlotte Vallaeys, CR’s senior policy analyst.
Pesticide Regulation
Laws governing the use of pesticides on produce in the U.S. are based, at least in theory, on a philosophy of avoiding potential risk in the absence of definitive proof of their harm. But CR’s experts say the government hasn’t upheld its responsibility to protect consumers.
The EPA, which is responsible for overseeing pesticides, sets limits on how much residue is allowed on food. The USDA and the Food and Drug Administration separately test fruits and vegetables for pesticides. Both agencies say that by and large, testing shows that levels are almost always below legal limits. But the research used to set these tolerances is imperfect, and they’re often too high, says CR’s Hansen.
At a baseline, the limits are set at one one-hundredth of the amount of a pesticide that doesn’t cause apparent harm to animals in laboratory testing. That safety factor is meant to account for the uncertainty that arises when the results of animal studies are applied to long-term human exposure, and the fact that some people are more sensitive than others to pesticides.
The 1996 Food Quality Protection Act requires the EPA to apply extra protection when science doesn’t conclusively show that a chemical is safe for infants and children. Known as the “FQPA safety factor,” it lowers the cap on pesticide residue from one one-hundredth to one one-thousandth of the amount found not to harm lab animals. But with the exception of organophosphates, this safety margin has rarely been used.
A February 2020 analysis in the journal Environmental Health looked at 59 pesticide risk assessments from the EPA between 2011 and 2019. It found that the agency didn’t apply the FQPA safety factor to more than 85 percent of nonorganophosphate pesticides.
The agency told CR it makes decisions about whether to apply the FQPA safety factor based on a variety of research, “a wealth of high-quality, peer-reviewed data.” When it decides not to, it has determined that a particular pesticide doesn’t affect infants and children any differently from adults.
But CR’s scientists think that in many cases the EPA isn’t looking at the entire spectrum of possible harm. The 1996 law instructs it to screen for endocrine-disrupting effects. But as of 2020, it has completed full endocrine screenings on only 52 pesticides.
Nor is it using the latest science, according to Hansen. “The tests the EPA uses to approve pesticides don’t take into account new evidence on pesticide harms, and it hasn’t incorporated many new scientific techniques,” he says.
James Hewitt, an EPA spokesperson, says the agency’s standard evaluations include some assessment of endocrine effects. And he says that while screening pesticides for endocrine-disruption potential is slow and resource intensive, the agency is working on developing newer, faster screening techniques, and that it refines its safety evaluation methods as science evolves.
What CR’s Analysis Found
In our ratings, the “cleanest” produce receives an Excellent or Very Good score, while fruits and vegetables that carry the most risk are rated Fair or Poor. They factor in the total number of pesticides, the level of each on fruits and vegetables, the frequency with which they were detected, and their toxicity.
To account for toxicity, we used the EPA’s chronic reference dose for each pesticide (the amount it considers not likely to cause harm over a lifetime), then applied the FQPA safety factor to known neurological toxins or suspected endocrine disruptors—even when the EPA doesn’t. The goal was to “minimize the chance that risks are underestimated,” says Chuck Benbrook, PhD, a consultant who helped develop CR’s risk scores.
This means that fruits and vegetables with residue of many different pesticides can still receive a rating of Very Good or even Excellent if the amounts are low compared with the level we consider harmful, or if the pesticides have a low toxicity. But others rate poorly if they have even a very small amount of a more dangerous pesticide.
For example, fresh nonorganic tomatoes have a Very Good rating despite having residue of 65 pesticides because the amounts weren’t concerning and/or were found on only a few samples. On the other hand, imported nonorganic summer squash rated Poor because it had worrisome amounts of a particularly harmful pesticide on just one sample.
Thirty-one of 49 nonorganic fruits and vegetables—which include fresh, frozen, dried, and canned—earn a rating of Good or higher in domestic and/or imported forms.
But for the 18 nonorganic fruits and vegetables with a Fair or Poor rating, CR’s experts say everyone, especially pregnant women, infants, and young children, should try to eat the organic versions. If you can’t find them at a price you can afford, choose a higher-rated similar alternative, such as broccoli instead of green beans. Still, if that’s not possible, occasionally eating a low-rated fruit or vegetable doesn’t pose a serious health risk.
There were a few items for which organic produce got a score lower than Excellent. For those rated Very Good, the likely reason is that pesticides banned in organic farming drifted from fields where nonorganic crops were grown. But drift probably doesn’t account for the Fair or Poor scores for three organic items: imported frozen cherries, imported fresh snap peas, and U.S.-grown fresh spinach.
All but one of the contaminated frozen cherry samples were imported from Turkey. In recent years, questions have been raised about the integrity of the organic label on Turkish imports.
Organic imported snap peas are rated Fair because one of the 15 samples was contaminated with high levels of dimethoate, a potent neurotoxin.
And last, organic U.S.-grown spinach received a Poor score because 33 pesticides were found on 76 percent of the samples. For some of these, the levels were similar to nonorganic. That includes famoxadone, a pesticide banned in organic farming and a possible hormone disruptor.
“The vast majority of the USDA data show that while pesticides are sometimes found on organic foods, the levels are usually 10 percent or less of what’s found on nonorganic, which would be consistent with drift from a neighboring field,” CR’s Hansen says. “When levels on organic and nonorganic are similar, government agencies should take a closer look.”
A spokesperson for the USDA’s National Organic Program says fewer organic fruits and vegetables are tested than nonorganic, which may skew findings. And when it has questions about compliance, it first contacts the certifier for that operation, who can usually help identify underlying issues and quickly bring the farm or business back into compliance. When there’s indication of fraud or other serious problems, the program investigates and, when the evidence warrants, removes the offender from the organic system.
What Needs to Change
“Many federal policies should be altered to protect consumers from the harms of pesticides,” says Brian Ronholm, CR’s director of food policy. Particularly important is a system to quickly identify banned pesticides on imported produce to keep it out of the country. “The USDA must also take steps to maintain the integrity of the organic program and help farmers transition to organic, which will make organic options more widely available.”
In addition, CR says that government agencies and Congress should take the following steps:
• Ban the agricultural use of the riskiest pesticides. This falls under the EPA’s purview, although CR also supports legislation proposed in the U.S. House or Representatives and Senate known as the Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act (PDF) of 2020. This bill would ban many of the pesticides that contributed the most to the risk from pesticides on fruits and vegetables in CR’s analysis. (It would also provide stronger protections for farm workers and communities at the greatest risk of pesticide exposure.)
• Apply the FQPA safety factor to all neurotoxins, suspected endocrine disruptors, and any pesticide for which there’s uncertainty about its safety. That’s already required under the Food Quality Protection Act. CR says the EPA needs to apply the law consistently.
• Provide the public with an easy-to-search database of the pesticides currently registered with the EPA, including information for each pesticide on whether the FQPA tenfold safety factor was applied when setting tolerance levels.
• Place an import alert on fruits and vegetables that test positive for banned pesticides, because pesticides that are banned in the U.S. sometimes appear on imported produce samples in the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program. To make this happen, the USDA should alert the FDA, the agency responsible for enacting and enforcing import alerts, when residues of a banned pesticide are detected in imported samples.
Which Produce Should You Pick?
To create CR’s ratings, we analyzed five years of data—from 2014 to 2018, the latest available—from the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program, which tests fruits and vegetables for pesticides, about 24,000 samples in all. Then we calculated a rating based on four factors: the number of pesticides detected on each item, the frequency with which pesticides were found on samples, the average amount of residue of each pesticide found on the items, and the toxicity of the pesticides.
The ratings reflect the number of servings of a particular fruit or vegetable a person can eat per day over a lifetime before the pesticides pose potential harm. We based our risk analysis on the levels that could harm a 35-pound child, about the size of a 4-year-old. The serving sizes represent a child’s portion, about two-thirds of an adult serving. While adults may have more servings, the relative risk remains the same; that is, an item rated Poor carries a higher risk than one rated Fair or better. The risk comes from chronic exposure. Choosing produce with the best ratings most of the time can reduce the chance of future harm.
