Last week, the Waterkeeper’s Alliance, troubled over the health of the Chesapeake Bay, sued the Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA) to obtain access to farmers’ manure handling plans.

What’s the beef with manure, you ask? Animal manure has high levels of both nitrogren and phosphorous. As explained in our Gulf of Mexico dead zone post, run-off of these nutrients feed algae blooms, which decay and produce low oxygen, or hypoxic, zones in the water.

Declining crab populations in the Chesapeake Bay are being chalked up to overloading of nutrients as well as overfishing. Because algae decay occurs mainly on the ocean floor, hypoxic zones are concentrated where crustaceans (like the crabs) and mollusks (oysters, clams) live.

The east side of Chesapeake Bay is home to a number of large scale chicken operations (Tyson), and nitrogen and phosphorous from grain fertilizer and animal manure are running off into the Bay. Maryland’s Nutrient Management Initiative requires farmers with more than 8,000 pounds of livestock to submit a nutrient management plan to the MDA - but what those plans are remains a mystery - hence the Waterkeeper Alliance’s lawsuit.

With the demand for fair trade items on the rise, more companies are jumping on the fair trade train, especially candy companies. For chocolate lovers concerned about ethically-sourced cocoa, deciphering what fair trade means to each company may soon become tricky.

Ethically-sourced?

According to Global Exchange, hundreds of thousands of children are working cocoa farms in hazardous conditions, applying pesticides and using machetes, keeping them out of school and trapped in a life of poverty. One report found that thousands of children on cocoa farms were without relatives in the area, a sign that trafficking may be at play. The largest producer of cocoa is the Ivory Coast (more than 40% of its export revenues), followed by Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, and Cameroon.

While it's indisputable that providing better working conditions and fair prices to cocoa-producing communities is a good thing, Charlotte Eyre, editor of Confectionerynews.com and bakeryandsnacks.com, argues that as more and more companies use different marketing schemes to promote fair trade cocoa, they risk "muddying the issue and puzzling chocolate fans." She says a consistent standard and fair way of communicating this standard to consumers is needed. (Sound familiar? This same discussion prompted a federal regulatory system for organic products – the National Organic Program.)

Small-scale farmers on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines have been responding to climate change by going organic and pioneering new sustainable agriculture techniques. In the past decade, annual drought, flash floods, and pest infestations have increased malnutrition on this island which used to have three growing seasons. In recent years, farmers have been replacing synthetic pesticides with their own natural mix of deterrents, and paying off debts with the savings they get from lower inputs. This past week, a group of organic and sustainable farming proponents called Magsasaka at Siyentipiko para sa Pag-unlad ng Agrikultura (MASIPAG), criticized the Court of Appeals for issuing a writ of preliminary injunction against a Davao City ordinance banning aerial spraying. The MASIPAG – which is made up of 400 organizations including farmers, scientists, and NGOs – says that aerial spraying used by large banana plantations contaminates organic crops and makes water undrinkable.

The Court of Appeals based in Cagayan de Oro City ordered the writ after the temporary restraining order on aerial spraying expired. The MASIPAG is asking the CA to let Davao City take care of the health of its residence and not to favor large plantation farmers over poorer farmers who now work hard to keep their crops organic. One young villager named Rasid Naim, 28, helped push for organic, sustainable agriculture and has found that his new practices not only save him from overbearing pests, but that his rice fields are able to withstand extreme weather like flooding. Some Mindanao farmers don't just see organic farming techniques as a way to save their crops, they also see it as an environmental health issue. Oxfam America reported that one woman who makes fertilizers and pesticides remarked: “We need to save Mother Earth.”

The criticism of the CA isn't the first time Mindanao farmers have spoken out about their farming rights. In May of 2004, more than a thousand farmers, lumads, workers and students stormed the gates of Monsanto Philippines in General Santos City, South Cotabato to protest the large amounts of Bt-corn being planted and sold. They were upset because they claimed that the biotech corn was causing illness and degrading the environment. In light of this political protest, it will be interesting to see if – with the rise of sustainable agriculture on Mindanao -- there will be much more tolerance for courts overthrowing aerial spraying bans -- especially when those bans are so important to the economic and general health of more and more farmers.

Via Oxfam America and Minda News

The Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) has released its rule on dairy labeling in the state, leaving some consumer groups and dairy companies who support rBGH-free labeling a bit confused. Last week Envirovore reported on Monsanto's effort to pull labels for rBGH-free (or rBST) labels in several states. Ohio is the most recent battleground for this debate.

Although the ODA's proposed rule (PDF) says that labels indicating the absence of hormones, such as "No Hormones," "rBGH free," and "rBST free" are "false and misleading," the department will approve labels making production claims, including "from cows not supplemented with rBST." Not surprising, this claim must be coupled with a U.S. Food and Drug Administration disclaimer (appearing in the same font, color, and size) stating, "no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-supplemented and non-rBST-supplemented cows." (The word choice is quite deliberate, as "supplemented" infers a health or food supplement rather than a genetically engineered drug.)

Governor Ted Strickland issued the emergency rule – effective immediately – through an executive order. This raises a series of questions for companies doing business in more than one state, especially those whose current labels are now technically illegal. (It's not like they can print new labels overnight.)

According to the ODA's press release (PDF), the emergency rule is in effect for 90 days. The department will hold a public hearing to allow stakeholders an opportunity to provide additional input. Stay tuned.
 

More than five years have passed since the National Organic Program (NOP) made its debut, and the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), which oversees the NOP, is reorganizing the program to keep up with one of the fastest growing segments of the food industry. Organic sales in the U.S. are still growing by about 20 percent each year, compared to a 2 – 3 percent growth in the conventional food marketplace, with no sign of slowing.

Deep in a natural cave in Tennessee, where there once was a field of hydroponically grown dope - complete with an entire built complex of offices and bedrooms for caretakers - there will now be master artisans massaging salt on aging blue cheese rounds.

The gourmet cheesemaker Roth Kase of Southern Wisconsin bought the notorious “marijuana cave” forty miles out of Nashville after police busted the growers.

Caves have traditionally been used to age wine and cheese because they provide dark spaces with consistent moisture levels and cool temperatures. Today, aging of wine and cheese is usually conducted in a much more energy intensive way, in buildings with highly controlled thermoregulatory systems.

But Roth Kase is interested in attempting to rekindle the old cave aging tradition – as well as perhaps create a local foods tourist attraction. And although it appears that the famous Wisconsin cheese will have to be shipped to Tennessee to age (carbon footprint, ouch) the company is working with local food groups in Tennessee to find a regional market for their products.

Via: Nashville Business Journal

A recent summary of a study published online (it will be published in Science later this month) from the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy shows that the clearing of native ecosystems for biofuel crops is not helpful for mitigating climate change. In fact, when rainforests, peatlands, grasslands and savannas are replaced with ethanol or biodiesel crops, the massive amount of C02 released during the process completely outweighs the C02 reduction benefits that the fuel crops are supposed to provide. In this way, replacing natural ecosystems with fuel crops creates a kind of carbon debt that would take energy crops many years to pay off before they could start contributing to greenhouse gas reduction.

Surprisingly, it was the clearing of peatlands -- not rainforests -- that caused the most carbon loss, according to the study -- specifically when the peatlands were converted into palm oil plantations, which is something being done in Indonesia. Clearing of peatlands would send so much C02 into the atmosphere that the “carbon debt” would take the replacement biofuel 423 years to repay. Soybean biodiesel production in the Amazon would take 319 years to pay off. Sounds like another case where we're leaving the problem to upcoming generations, right? Obviously the crux of the problem here is not the growing of biofuels themselves, but the loss of the ecosystems they replace. Already, over 5 billion hectares of the earth’s surface is used for agriculture and grazing – nearly 50% of all the productive land we have. Biofuels will only demand that we clear more.

The good news (yes, there's a silver lining here) is that not all agricultural fuel crops are this ineffective for mitigation. Biofuels that can be grown on marginal land that isn't being used otherwise will, according to the study, be helpful in mitigation efforts. Farm land waste, woody biomass grown on degraded lands, and native prairie plants grown diversely seem to be the smartest biofuels for our carbon pocketbook.

Farmers and consumer and conservation groups have filed a suit in federal court challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture's approval of Monsanto's Roundup Ready (RR) sugar beets. Growers stretching from Michigan to Oregon are poised to plant GE beets for a 2008 harvest. And nobody quite knows what to expect.