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Daily Record - Spring 2021
Ag Journal
April is National Safe Digging Month April marks the beginning of outdoor projects – both large and small – for many property owners. National Safe Digging Month serves to remind all people planning digging or dirt-moving activities to call 811 or visit Call811.com, at least 3 business days before your start your project, to have the approximate location of utility lines marked for free. • Nationwide, an underground utility line is damaged about every 5 minutes. • In any year, approximately 40% of property owners plan to dig on their property for an outdoor project. • Nearly half of these property owners will not make the free call to 811 to request the approximate location of underground utility lines to be marked. Do your part to help prevent injuries, property damage, and utility outages: • Call 811 or visit Call811.com at least 3 business days before you plan to dig to schedule the approximate location of utility lines to be marked. • You will be asked a few simple questions and making the request should take less than 5 minutes. Remember these things before you start any outdoor digging project: • There is no minimum depth you can safely dig without calling 811. Sometimes utility services may be buried just a few inches below the surface. • Even if you have had lines marked before, they could have shifted due to erosion or roots – be sure to call each time you plan a digging job. • There may be lines running through or close to your property that do not serve your home, and that you may not be aware of.
Thank you for doing your part to keep yourself and our community safe as you work on your property improvement projects this year!
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Ag Journal Editor Michael Gallagher
Table of contents n Scientists in U.S. and Canada set to battle murder hornets ......................P4
Publisher Heather Hernandez
n Global shipping problems impact Kittitas County exporters .....................P5
Advertising Contact us: Ag Journal 401 N. Main Street Ellensburg, WA 98926 509-925-1414
n U.S. judge blocks Nevada grazing; sage grouse totals dwindling..............P6
The Ag Journal is published three times a year by Kittitas County Publishing LLC. Contents copyrighted 2021 unless otherwise noted.
n Study: U.S. pesticide use falls but harms pollinators more .........................P8 n Gardeners in Tijuana River Valley cultivate food security.............................P10 n New problems arise for crop storage as planet gets warmer...................P12 n A strike against global warming or a Big Ag giveaway?.................................P14
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Scientists in U.S. and Canada set to battle murder hornets An Asian giant hornet from Japan is held on a pin by Sven Spichiger, an entomologist with the Washington state Dept. of Agriculture in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File) By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS Associated Press SPOKANE (AP) — Scientists in the U.S. and Canada are opening new fronts in the war against so-called murder hornets as the giant insects begin establishing nests this spring. The scientists said Wednesday that the battle to prevent the apex predators from establishing a foothold in North America is being fought mostly in Whatcom County, Washington, and the nearby Fraser Valley of British Columbia, where the hornets have been spotted in recent years. “This is not a species we want to tolerate here in the United States,” said Sven-Erik Spichiger of the Washington state Department of Agriculture, which eradicated a nest of the Asian giant hornets last year. “The Asian giant hornet is not supposed to be here.” “We may not get them all, but we will get as many as we can,” he said of eradication efforts this year. Paul van Westendorp of the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries said the hornets pose threats to human life, to valuable bee populations needed to pollinate crops and to other insects. “It’s an absolutely serious danger to our health and wellbeing,” he said. “These are intimidating insects.” One major front will be setting thousands of traps this spring to capture queens that are trying to establish nests, officials said. Both government agencies and private citizens will set traps, they said. Another effort is underway to determine exactly where in
Asia these hornets came from, to try and learn how they are getting across the Pacific Ocean, scientists said. The theory is they are crossing on cargo ships, Spichiger said. While hundreds of the hornets were killed when the nest in Whatcom County was destroyed last October, only a handful of the hornets were spotted in British Columbia last year, van Westendorp said. Scientists have been studying the genetics of captured hornets and comparing them with those that exist in South Korea, Japan and China, Spichiger said. Initial findings indicate the hornets found in the U.S. were linked to hornets in South Korea, while those in British Columbia were linked to hornets found in Japan, Spichiger said. But it is not clear that the hornets found in North America actually migrated directly from those countries, said Anne LeBrun, a scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency is working to pin down the origin of murder hornets found here. Hornet queens tend to emerge from winter quarters in the spring and establish nests to birth worker hornets. The hornets start attacking and destroying beneficial honey bees later in the year, eating the bees for protein as they raise more hornets, Soichiger said. Whatcom County is about 55 miles (88 kilometers) south of Vancouver, British Columbia. The Washington state agency will continue using orange juice and rice cooking wine in traps this year, while citizens can use either orange juice or a brown sugar-based bait, 4 | 2021 Ag Journal - Spring
officials said. Residents in Whatcom, Skagit, San Juan, Island, Jefferson, and Clallam counties in Washington have been encouraged to make their own traps starting in July. Half of the confirmed reports of the species in the state last year and all of the reports about the hornets in British Columbia came from members of the public, officials said. The first confirmed detection of an Asian giant hornet in Washington was made in December 2019 and the first hornet was trapped last July. Several more were subsequently caught, all in Whatcom County, which is in the northwestern corner of the state. Asian giant hornets, an invasive pest not native to the U.S., are the world’s largest hornet and a predator of honey bees and other insects. A small group of Asian giant hornets can kill an entire honey bee hive in a matter of hours. The honey bees pollinate many of the crops in Washington’s multibilliondollar agriculture industry. Asian giant hornets can deliver painful stings to people and spit venom. Despite their nickname and the hype that has stirred fears, the world’s largest hornets kill at most a few dozen people a year in Asian countries, and experts say it is probably far less. Meanwhile, hornets, wasps and bees typically found in the United States kill an average of 62 people a year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said. The real threat from Asian giant hornets — which are 2 inches (5 centimeters) long — is their devastating attacks on honeybees, which are already under siege from problems like mites, diseases, pesticides and the loss of food. n
Global shipping problems impact Kittitas County exporters By KARL HOLAPPA staff writer Although growers can rejoice in the positive news related to water supply going into the 2021 growing season, exporters are looking at an entirely separate headache: how to get local crops shipped to consumers overseas. In interviews with Kittitas Valley exporters, the logistic issue created by the pandemic is far from resolving itself, with West Coast ports still clogged and struggling to get containers matched with ships traveling to Asia. Agricultural commodities, including Kittitas Valley timothy hay and alfalfa are not immune to these issues, and the struggle has both exporters and purchasers working on finding creative solutions to ensure animals get fed on the other side of the ocean. “There’s not a glimmer of hope on the near-term horizon,” Wesco International President Don Schilling said of the shipping crunch. In a meeting last week with 8th District U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier’s office and shipping terminal operators, Schilling said the conversation pivoted to the need to reroute container ships from the Port of Long Beach in California to the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma due to capacity issues. “That’s only going to make our situation worse,” he said. Mike Hajny with Hajny Trading said the shipping issue has been the major challenge coming out of the pandemic. He said his company has had to hire extra employees to handle the logistics issues related to getting the hay to customers. “We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time managing bookings and adjusting
A Washington state ferry sails past a loaded container ship anchored in Elliott Bay near downtown in this 2014 photo. The pandemic has caused worldwide shipping problems which are impacting Kittitas County growers. schedules to match customer’s needs,” he said. Anderson Hay & Grain CEO Mark Anderson said the alligator closest to his outfit’s boat is working on getting product that currently sits on the lot shipped to customers as soon as possible. He said the shipping crunch has made it so the product can’t even be considered carryover, because it would have been gone already had it not been for the logistical headache being dealt with now. “Shipping is a complete nightmare right now,” he said. “We don’t even know what can be delivered to the port from day to day. Terminals are all backed up, and the plan changes every day. It’s creating all kinds of chaos.” Although Anderson said the challenges related to shipping really began to develop last fall, the bottleneck accelerated in January and has progressively gotten worse since then. “There’s ships anchored in Los Angeles,” he said. “There’s blank sailings and they don’t know when they’re calling ports. Once they do, it’s happening all at once and the terminals can’t handle the capacity.” The inability of the ports to handle the erratic shipping schedules from a capacity perspective means exporter’s trucks and containers are stuck in the bottleneck. The recent grounding of the container ship in the Suez Canal isn’t helping things either. Anderson said they anticipate shipping schedules to change in the coming weeks to accommodate the backup created by that incident. “The shipping thing was nothing in early fall compared to what it is today,” he said. As the 2021 growing season kicks off, Anderson said the main challenge for
him is getting the customers product they already purchased and badly need. As for the shipping situation, he said there is word that it could start improving by mid-summer. In a possible preview of what’s to come, Anderson said high-end alfalfa coming out of the Southwest region is coming in at stronger demand than last year. Although that could play out as positive news for Kittitas Valley producers,
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he said it is far too early to tell. “It’s not a demand issue, it’s a shipping issue,” he said. “When you start talking about a new crop market, you’re not talking about a new crop market right now. You’re just struggling to get last year’s crop shipped out. I think it’s going to take some time to develop a new crop market on timothy for sure as we go into summer.” n
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U.S. judge blocks Nevada grazing; sage grouse totals dwindling By SCOTT SONNER Associated Press RENO, Nev. (AP) — A federal judge has blocked a Nevada project that would expand livestock grazing across 400 squares miles of some of the highest priority sage-grouse habitat in the West and accused the government of deliberately misleading the public by underestimating damage the cattle could do to the land. The ruling comes as scientists continue to document dramatic declines in greater sage-grouse populations across 11 western states — down 65% since 1986 and 37% since 2002, according to a new report by the U.S. Geological Survey. Its numbers have shrunk to less than a quarter of
Male greater sage grouse perform mating rituals for a female grouse, not pictured, on a lake outside Walden, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
what they were a half century ago, the USGS said March 30. If current trends continue, there’s only a 50% chance most of their remaining breeding grounds known as “leks” will still be productive in 60 years, it said. Citing concerns about grouse, U.S. administrative judge Harvey Sweitzer sided with conservationists in Nevada and suspended approval of new grazing permits for a swath of rangeland larger than Rhode Island. It stretches to Utah and includes a ranch once owned by Bing Crosby.
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The senior judge at the Interior Department’s Office of Hearings and Appeals in Salt Lake City ruled March 19 the Bureau of Land Management failed to adequately examine potential harm to the grouse as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. An administrative judge since 1970, when President Nixon signed the act into law, Sweitzer’s decision could have ramifications for several permits approved across the West in the final months of the Trump administration under a 2017 initiative dubbed
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“Outcome-Based Grazing.” Then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said it loosened restrictions on ranchers to provide more flexibility to meet long-term rangeland health goals. Critics called it a “public land grab.” “Instead of living up to its promise to conserve, enhance and restore sage-grouse habitat, BLM embraced habitat-destroying livestock grazing actions guaranteed to drive down bird numbers,” said Katie Fite, public lands director for WildLands Defense, which won the stay of the permits pending administrative appeal. She said Sweitzer’s decision is a “well-justified rebuke to BLM’s industry-biased grazing program that goes to great lengths to circle the wagons around livestock interests at the expense of wildlife, biodiversity, watersheds and myriad public uses.” Interior Department press secretary Tyler Cherry declined comment on the administrative ruling in an email March 31 to The Associated Press. But the department said in a statement Tuesday the decline of sage grouse documented by USGS reflects the overall loss of sagebrush habitat over decades from a variety of forces ranging from wildfires to energy development. “The Interior Department is reviewing actions the Trump administration took to undermine carefully
constructed land management plans to help conserve sagebrush habitat,” spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz said. Nevada’s Winecup-Gamble ranch was among 11 designated as demonstration projects in 2018 under the “Outcome-Based” initiative along with ranches in Oregon, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Sweitzer agreed with WildLands Defense’s argument the grazing levels approved for WinecupGamble in December are substantially higher than the average number of cattle that actually grazed there the past decade. The stay he ordered is akin to a temporary injunction in U.S. district court. He said the agency ignored rangeland health assessments its own experts conducted in June when they determined the allotments “are not currently meeting the seasonal habitat needs of sage-grouse.” USGS says the latest study is the most expansive ever on the declining status of the hen-sized bird, which is considered an indicator species for the overall health of sagebrush-related ecosystems from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra. The Nevada project covers 1,460 square miles (3,781 square kilometers) of public and private land, including 860 square miles (2,227 square kilometers) of federal land with priority grouse habitat. More than one-third of those U.S. lands are considered
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sage-grouse strongholds with the highest densities of grouse and other criteria key to the species’ survival. Sweitzer said the misrepresentations in the bureau’s environmental assessment stem from the baseline it used to calculate increases or decreases in cattle numbers permitted under various alternatives. The agency’s comparisons are based on maximum allowable levels established in earlier allotments, sometimes decades ago, he said. Instead, the baseline should be the average actual use the previous 10 years. As a result, he said, the 30% reduction the agency cites in what it portrayed as a grazing-reduction alternative “is illusory.” Likewise, the bureau never addressed the effects of the real increase anticipated under the “OutcomeBased” alternative it adopted, he said. “In fact, the EA goes farther than silence on the subject and actively misleads the public.” Environmentalists said the new USGS study highlights the urgency of addressing loss of grouse habitat regionwide. “We cannot ignore this alarm bell,” said David Willms of the National Wildlife Federation in Denver. “This report shows that much more needs to be done to restore sagebrush habitat so that sage grouse populations recover and that all wildlife that lives in this ecosystem thrives.” n
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Study: U.S. pesticide use falls but harms pollinators more
By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer American farmers are using smaller amounts of better targeted pesticides, but these are harming pollinators, aquatic insects and some plants far more than decades ago, a new study finds. Toxicity levels have more than doubled since 2005 for important species, including honeybees, mayflies and buttercup flowers, as the country switched to a new generation of pesticides. But dangerous chemical levels in birds and mammals have plummeted at the same time, according to a paper in Thursday’s journal Science. “The bottom line is that these pesticides, once believed to be relatively benign and so shortlived that they would not damage ecosystems, are anything but,” said Dr. Lynn Goldman, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assistant administrator for toxic substances who wasn’t part of the study and is now dean of George Washington University’s school of public health German scientists examined 381 pesticides used
in the United States between 1992 and 2016, combining EPA data that calculates toxic dosage effects for eight types of animals and plants with U.S. Geological Survey data on how much of the chemicals were used year by year for dozens of agricultural crops. The scientists calculated a new measurement they call total applied toxicity for the eight groupings of species and trends over time. “Very often politicians, media, scientists just talk about amounts. They always argue ‘OK, the amount pesticides we use is reduced so things are getting better’ and this is not necessarily true,” said lead author Ralf Schulz, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Kolenz-Landau. “It’s sometimes true, but not always,” Industry keeps developing new pesticides and “very often these new compounds are more toxic,” Schulz said. They include neonicotinoids, which have been connected to one of the many causes of dwindling honeybee numbers. The newer pesticides are aimed more toward animals without backbones to spare birds 8 | 2021 Ag Journal - Spring
and mammals, but this means insects such as pollinators get poisoned, Schulz said. The same goes for some land plants and for aquatic invertebrates including dragonflies and mayflies, which birds and mammals eat, he said, adding that future studies should look at the harm higher up the food chain. Chris Novak, president of the pesticide industry group CropLife America, said in an email that “it is critical to note that the study found great reductions in acute toxicity have been achieved for humans and mammals over the past few decades.” Novak noted pesticides go through extensive studies and “only one in 10,000 discoveries make the 11-year journey from the lab to the market.” It’s not surprising that newer generations of pesticides generally are more harmful to insects, which are undergoing a massive decline for many reasons, said University of Connecticut entomologist David Wagner, who wasn’t part of the study. But Wagner said this newest research doesn’t provide data needed to show “that pesticides are the major driver of insect declines.” n
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Gardeners in Tijuana River Valley cultivate food security Wendy Fry The San Diego Union-Tribune SAN DIEGO — Jim Usita didn’t have to pay for anything he used to build his community garden — his sink, flower pots, drip irrigation system, white picket fence, even his American flag décor. “That wood came from McDonald’s. McDonald’s was renovating, so I asked if I could take that plywood and I made a flag out of it,” he said, chuckling. The irony isn’t lost on the 59-yearold contractor from Chula Vista, who advocates for a slower, healthier way of life away from the hustle of the city and fast-food chains. Usita uses apps like OfferUp to find discarded items, and his work in the construction trades as a painter gives him access to material his clients are throwing away. “I wanted to show people that you can build a garden for free and have it look really nice,” he said. Usita is one of the hundreds of people who have staked out plots in the Tijuana River Community Garden, San Diego’s largest community garden. It is located within the larger Tijuana River Valley Regional Park, in the southernmost portion of San Diego. Strolling between the trellises of the 25-acre community garden, you are likely to hear many languages: Spanish, Filipino, English and Vietnamese. The crops these community gardeners are growing are just as diverse. Nopales. Cilantro. Tomatoes. Calabaza. Bok Choy. Sunflowers. Inside his 30-by-30 foot patch of earth, Usita — who moved here from Guam as a child — grows sugar snaps, beets, butternut squash, potatoes, cauliflower and mini-Chinese cabbage. The garden is a reminder of the
Tijuana River Valley’s long agricultural history. Dating back to the 1860s, farmsteads once freckled the valley. Its rich and fertile bottom soil still makes it a perfect place to learn gardening. It’s also located in a place where access to fresh, healthy food is lacking — a gap the gardeners aim to help fill. The garden is open to the public from dawn to dusk and is surrounded by walking and horse-riding trails. It contains 210 large plots for individual use — the largest allotments available in any community garden in San Diego — and 10 quarter-acre plots that are “incubator farms” for education and demonstration. “We certainly think of it as a safe and healthy activity to be doing during COVID,” said Andy Williamson, the manager and farming and gardening program assistant. “It’s a safe place to walk. There’s plenty of open space to practice social distancing and it’s always nice to get some fresh air.” The 30-by-30-foot gardening plots go for $235 a year with a waiting list of more than 120 people. Williamson estimated it will take about four years for someone on the waiting list to get a spot, which are only available to South Bay residents. “We go through about one or two new people a month,” he said. The garden is managed by the Resource Conservation District, which is where someone can get on the waiting list for a spot. Although the Tijuana River Valley community garden is currently full, there are spaces and lots available at the nearby Sweetwater Community Garden in Bonita, according to Williamson. Erik Rodriguez found serenity in gardening after he was furloughed from his job at the YMCA when coronavirus
San Diego resident Maria Enriqueta Muñoz 74, looks for weeds in her garden at The Tijuana River Valley Community Garden in San Diego, California (Alejandro Tamayo/The San Diego Union-Tribune/TNS)
shut the world down. Rodriguez, 41, has so enjoyed working on his garden and at Pixca, a community-supported urban farm operating within the community garden — that he didn’t return to his 9-5 job when they called him to come back after they reopened. “I didn’t like that uncertainty,” he said about the on-again, off-again COVID restrictions. “Even though it was hard leaving my job of 15 years, we’re doing such a good thing here, feeding the community.” Community-supported agriculture connects local food producers and consumers by allowing the customer to subscribe or pre-pay for the harvest from a specific farm. University Heights resident Amber Guisti, 31, was among dozens who went to the Pixca farm on a recent Saturday morning to pick up a bag of fresh produce. “I eat a lot of veggies and produce anyway and I love the idea of strengthening the community and finding people near me who are also doing that work,” she said. Rodriguez, who grew up on a farm in Rosarito, said he sees urban farming and community-supported agriculture as something aimed not just at cultivating fruits and vegetables, but
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also justice and equity for the region. International organizations define food insecurity as when people lack secure access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food for normal growth and an active, healthy life. In 2017, an estimated 443,000 — or one in seven — people in San Diego County experienced food insecurity, according to data with the county and the United States Department of Agriculture. “Try to find a grocery store here,” said Rodriguez, referring to the 92154 south San Diego ZIP code where the garden is located. “You have to go two or three miles that way or two or three miles the other way to find fresh food. ... And it’s fresh, but it’s also from far away.” Living in a so-called food desert has been linked to poor diet and greater risk of obesity, a risk factor for complications with COVID-19. According to the San Diego Hunger Coalition and San Diego County’s 2019 State of the Food System report, there is disproportionality when it comes to the food-insecure population. Forty-three percent of low-income African Americans and 42 percent of low-income Latinos in the San Diego region experienced food insecurity,
15 minutes if I could go through the border wall,” said Rendón, who lives about a mile south in Tijuana’s El Mirador neighborhood. The pair first began gardening on a smaller lot and then upgraded to one of the quarter-acre plots. Pichardo estimates they could feed up to 20 families a week off the land, if they maximized its resources. They use some of their land to grow flowers, which are “healthy for the soul,” they said. “We take a lot of pride in our sunflowers,” said Rendón, as a Monarch butterfly landed nearby. The cousins said they donate to FoodShed, a City Heights organization working to enhance the quality of life there. “Around July 2020, we donated weekly boxes of tomatoes to an impromptu home distribution food site in Sherman Heights called La Mesa de la Justicia y Esperanza,” said Rendón. Because he works as a teacher during the week in Tijuana, Rendón’s mom started helping out dropping off veggies during the middle of the week. n
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compared to 39 percent of low-income Whites and 33 percent low-income Asians, the report says. “I remember one time I was at Vons and I looked at this bell pepper, and it said it was from Hungary. It had the sticker from Hungary. And I thought, ‘Dude, this bell pepper has been farther than I have in my life. Why am I eating a bell pepper from Hungary?’” said Rodriguez. That prompted him to change his life and pursue a certification as a master gardener from the University of California system. “I don’t know how it happened, but I just started falling back in love with plants,” he said Saturday. Rodriguez said his group is actively looking for more land to grow even more food for the local community. Cousins Edwin Rendón, 46, of Tijuana and Israel Pichardo, 31, of San Ysidro meet every weekend in the community garden to work the land and spend time with their families, bringing along their small nieces and nephews. “I could ride my bike over here in
New problems arise for crop storage as planet gets warmer By John Flesher AP Environmental Writer MECOSTA, Mich. (AP) — For generations, Brian Sackett’s family has farmed potatoes that are made into chips found on grocery shelves in much of the eastern U.S. About 25% of the nation’s potato chips get their start in Michigan, where reliably cool air during September harvest and late spring has been ideal for crop storage. That’s a big reason why the state produces more chipping potatoes than any other. But with temperatures edging higher, Sackett had to buy several small refrigeration units for his sprawling warehouses. Last year, he paid $125,000 for a bigger one. It’s expensive to operate, but beats having his potatoes rot. “Our good, fresh, cool air is getting less all the time, it seems like,” he said on a recent morning as a front-end loader scooped up piles of plump, light-brown potatoes that would be packed into a tractor trailer for shipment to chip factories. The situation here illustrates a little-noticed hazard that climate change is posing for agriculture in much of the world. Once harvested, crops not immediately consumed or processed are stored — sometimes for months. The warming climate is making that job harder and costlier. The annual period with outdoor air cool enough to store potatoes in Michigan’s primary production area likely will shrink by up to 17 days by mid-century and up to a month by the late 2100s, according to an analysis by Julie Winkler, a Michigan State University geography and climate scientist. The window for unrefrigerated storage is also narrowing for apples in the Northwest and Northeast, peanuts in the Southeast, lettuce
Potato farmer Brian Sackett watches as potatoes are moved from a storage bin at his farm in Mecosta, Mich. For generations, Sackett’s family has farmed potatoes that are made into chips. About 25% of the nation’s potato chips get their start in Michigan, which historically has had reliably cool air during September harvest and late spring but now is getting warmer temperatures. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
in the Southwest and tomatoes in the Ohio valley, according to follow-up research published last year by plant physiology scientist Courtney Leisner at Auburn University. Techmark Inc., an agricultural engineering company based in Lansing, Michigan, designed the Sackett farm’s equipment. Co-owner Todd Forbush, whose customers also include growers of sugar beets, onions and carrots, said storage of those crops increasingly will need refrigeration. Growers will face tough choices about the economics of their operations. Producers who install equipment to regulate temperature and humidity will see power costs rising as the outside air gets hotter. “Whose pocket is it going to come out of? Probably the consumer,” Leisner said, adding
that the potential effects of global warming on storage had been “largely ignored.” “There’s a big disconnect in our minds about the chain of events between the field and the grocery store and onto our plate,” she said. “Just a few degrees can make all the difference in whether it’s economical to store the fruits and vegetables that we expect to have on our dinner table 365 days a year.” Aside from potentially higher prices, climate change may worsen food shortages caused by spoilage. About 14% of food produced globally — and 20% of fruits and vegetables — goes bad between harvest and retail, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Wasted food is a significant source of greenhouse gases.
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In Sub-Saharan Africa, small farmers lose up to one-third of their stored grain to insects and mold, which can produce toxins. Rising temperatures will make it easier for pests to survive winters, said Tanya Strathers, an associate professor with the University of Greenwich’s Natural Resources Institute in London. Stored grain will be more susceptible to rotting, Strathers said. “When people are getting production off just an acre or two of land, their margin for error is very low,” said Jake Ricker-Gilbert, a Purdue University agricultural economist who has worked in several African nations including Malawi and Tanzania. For delicate fruits and vegetables in the U.S. and Europe, a leading storage hurdle comes immediately
Potatoes are examined along a conveyor belt before being loaded into a tractor trailer at the Sackett Potato farm in Mecosta, Mich.
During the 1990s, there were three years when Michigan’s average temperature in September and October was above normal. The 2000s had six such years. From 2010-2020, the total rose to eight. Sackett began investing in small refrigeration units about a decade ago. The larger, custommade device he got last year can be wheeled around to different bins, helping cool things down as needed. “Definitely not a cheap purchase,” he said, adding that another may become necessary. What all this means for the price of a bag of potato chip isn’t clear. But producers will have to offset their rising costs somehow, said Forbush of Techmark, the equipment company. “We as a society need to do a better job of not wasting food,” he said. “If we don’t put the necessary energy into storing that product, it could get worse.” n
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after harvest, when temperatures must be lowered quickly to avoid decay. Lettuce and leafy greens such as kale are especially vulnerable, said Deirdre Holcroft, a plant biologist who worked previously for Dole Food Co. Inc. Climate change is “going to add more and more pressure into the system,” Holcroft said. In Mecosta, Michigan, the Sackett potato operation long needed only fans to cool down freshly dug potatoes to 60 degrees (15.5 degrees Celsius) or lower, and keep them there for months. A computer-controlled system pulls in outside air, which industrial-sized wall fans blow across a humidifying pad. Floor slats in the 16 storage bins enable the air to rise through mounds of potatoes, regulating their temperature and moisture so they won’t dry out or get too wet and spoil. But as the weather warms, it isn’t always enough.
A strike against global warming or a Big Ag giveaway? Evan Halper Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON — Dominic Bruno is not closely tracking the greenhouse gas soaking into the dirt beneath the walnut trees, sunflowers and melon vines at River Garden Farms in Yolo County, where the state of California spent $97,000 this year to create a 15,000-acre emissions sponge. Bruno is focused on how the state’s promotion of “regenerative” soils on his and 333 other farms has made the land healthier and more productive. “It is awesome that it is incentivizing people to venture out and try these different approaches,” said Bruno, assistant general manager at River Garden. “As far as the carbon things go? I don’t know.” The state offers its own surprisingly precise accounting: It credits River Garden with keeping 458 metric tons of harmful carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere per year. It is an impressive number, but one that could be wildly inflated. Scientists caution that calculations of emissions consumed by soil are often wrong. Yet the Biden administration is so impressed by the kinds of numbers posted by pilot projects such as California’s $21.8 million Healthy Soils Program that it is angling to replicate them on a much grander scale, creating a potentially billiondollar “carbon bank” that would make payments available not just to modest companies like River Garden, but also to the nation’s industrial farming giants. The uneven evidence supporting the climate promises of carbon bank proponents, who include Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and top environmental advisers in the Biden administration, is raising red flags among some climate economists and other sustainability experts. They worry that what the administration is pitching as a bold step to confront warming could turn into a giveaway
to Big Ag. “The science just isn’t there yet to show these agricultural practices can sequester large amounts of carbon in the soil,” said Anne Schechinger, senior economic analyst at the Environmental Working Group. “It seems another way to line farmers’ pockets with taxpayer dollars, while masquerading as a climate change solution.” There is broad agreement that better soil management has environmental benefits: reducing soil erosion, improving water quality and making for more sustainable agriculture. But there is concern that its effectiveness at combating climate change has been overblown. Some scientific studies found that, over the long term, the trapped greenhouse gases ultimately made their way back into the atmosphere. The World Resources Institute took a deep dive into the science behind soil sequestration last year and found it is “unlikely to achieve large-scale emissions reductions.” The idea is to cut back on the release of greenhouse gases from the ground that happens when farm soil is disturbed, whether it be through bulldozing or erosion. This often involves no-till farming, drilling seeds into the soil to avoid the plowing that releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as earth is broken. Another strategy is planting cover crops after harvests, ostensibly trapping carbon in the ground. The plan for the Department of Agriculture to pay farms for shifting to such methods is mapped out in a memo co-authored by Robert Bonnie, who led the department’s transition team and is now its senior climate adviser. The memo says that within the first 100 days of the Biden administration, the USDA could unveil a system “to buy tons of carbon and [greenhouse gas] reductions from producers and forest landowners generated through improved land management practices.” The USDA declined to make any
Farmworkers pick bok choy in a field on Jan. 22, 2021, in Calexico, California. The Biden administration is considering a “carbon bank” program that would include paying farmers to use strategies that could potentially help reduce emissions. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images/TNS)
officials available to be interviewed, referring instead to public comments made by Vilsack. He vowed at his confirmation hearing last month and in a recent exchange with reporters that any subsidies would start as a pilot program, and would have to be supported by science verifying the payments would, indeed, result in verifiable climate action. During a virtual seminar hosted by AGree, a group that promotes sustainable farming, Bonnie acknowledged the difficulty of verifying that any farming practice changes are actually resulting in emissions reductions. “The question is can we make investments to reduce that uncertainty so that we can actually prove [climate benefits of ] these actions producers take?” Bonnie said. The carbon bank plan, which is championed by a coalition of large agriculture interests, environmental organizations and Biden administration insiders, is positioned to become an early climate initiative of the administration. It is among a handful of climate action subsidies that the new administration can dole out without a vote of Congress, by tapping the same $30 billion agriculture fund that the Trump administration used to subsidize growers who sustained losses amid the trade war with China.
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As the Biden administration reviews every sector of the economy for its impact on climate, agriculture is a rich target. It is one of the nation’s largest drivers of global warming, accounting for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet regulatory, financial and political hurdles have made farms slower to embrace climate-friendly polices than some other industries. The move to make the payments into a “carbon bank” underscores the limited toolkit the Biden administration has to pursue climate action as Congress balks amid opposition from lawmakers skeptical of climate science, fossil fuel company resistance, and disagreement over the best approach for regulating greenhouse gases. Absent national caps on carbon that would force industries to take bolder steps to reduce their emissions, the fallback is a patchwork of imperfect credits and other incentives that can be vulnerable to manipulation. One specific point of concern for skeptics of government payments to farms is the private “carbon credit” brokers the USDA is considering involving. When a farm enrolls in the USDA program, the government could sell such brokers credits for the greenhouse gas reductions at that farm. The brokers would then sell the credits to corporations outside the farming sector, such as oil companies or large
the Trump era. The Environmental Defense Fund, for example, has joined with the farm lobby in advocating the carbon bank, even as it acknowledges the uncertain science around using soil to absorb greenhouse gases. “The Environmental Defense Fund is still in early days of trying to figure out how to structure a carbon bank,” said Callie Eideberg, the group’s director of agricultural policy. “But we generally want to go down this path.” She said the organization will be pushing the bank to initially focus on agricultural practices already proven to reduce emissions, such as use of climate-friendly fertilizers that reduce the amount of potent nitrous oxide released into the atmosphere, while the USDA further explores whether methods such as no-till farming and cover cropping are viable options for curbing climate change. But others are already forging ahead, lobbying the USDA to start paying farmers who transition to tending their soil with methods purported
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the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His concern is that the program as envisioned by Bonnie and other promoters will prove durable, and become a racket through which farms are given big payments for activities that aren’t helping the climate. “There is a history with these types of programs that makes me nervous,” said Paarlberg, author of “Resetting the Table: Straight Talk About the Food We Grow and Eat.” He pointed to ethanol subsidies to farms, which environmental groups have come to regret supporting amid evidence the environmental benefits of the fuel are erased by all the energy that goes into producing it. “Lots of environmentalists got on board believing it has got to be better for the environment than fossil fuels,” he said. “But the science in the end just did not bear that out. And now we have a law that mandates we continue its use as a fuel.” n
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to slow warming. This includes prominent senators across party lines who are championing legislation to authorize the payments. The idea is gaining traction because it is one of the simplest transitions farmers can make and it could be scaled up quickly. The uncertainty around it all has moved agriculture firms to push the administration to enlist more bipartisan backing before launching any program. “The worst-case scenario is you get farmers interested and bought into the concept without it having some type of bipartisan signoff,” said Andrew Walmsley, director of congressional relations at the American Farm Bureau Federation. Then, he said, a new administration could come along and cancel the program in a few years, leaving farmers who have made longterm investment in it “left holding the bag.” That’s not the worry of Robert Paarlberg, an associate in the sustainability science program at
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manufacturers. The corporate buyer of the credits from the farm can then use them to claim they have reduced their own net emissions — or even gone carbon neutral — while they continue to pollute. The fledgling credit brokerage industry is largely unregulated, and some watchdogs are alarmed by the prospect that it would be entrusted to determine when farms have actually reduced emissions. “It is really difficult to verify any type of payment to a farmer results in long-term net greenhouse gas reductions,” said Dan Blaustein-Rejto, director of food and agriculture at the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland think tank focused on environmental innovation. He said if brokers start selling emissions credits based on activity by a USDA carbon bank, “then I think we are going in the wrong direction.” It all makes for a vexing challenge for climate advocates who are anxious for action after all the backsliding of
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