Iowa’s Largest City Sues Over Farm Fertilizer Runoff In Rivers
Fertilizer runoff has provoked a confrontation between Des Moines and the farms that surround it. The city’s water utility wants to sue neighboring counties for nitrates in the Raccoon River.
S2T mailings ongoing – follow me on Twitter for more
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Eggs Not Always What They’re Cracked Up To Be
Egg cartons these days are often plastered with an array of terms that can confuse and even mislead consumers. Here’s a glossary of carton jargon for the wannabe informed egg buyer.
Farm Fresh
What You Might Think It Means: Your friendly local farmer rises at dawn to harvest a dozen (still warm) eggs and puts them into this egg carton, which is rushed to your local store.
What It Actually Means: “It literally means nothing,” says Paul Shapiro, vice president of the Humane Society of the U.S. and an expert on commercial egg production. He says the term is probably meant to conjure up a favorable image in the consumer’s mind, but it has no substance whatsoever.
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All Natural
What You Might Think It Means: Chickens eating a “natural” diet and doing what chickens, you know, naturally do.
What It Actually Means: Once again, this phrase has no real meaning. Shapiro says it’s an ironic term, too, “because [conventional chickens] are raised in the least natural conditions imaginable.” According to the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply, a group that includes commercial egg producers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and several universities, 95 percent of eggs in the U.S. come from chickens raised in something called battery cages. These cages house anywhere from four to 12 birds, giving each bird roughly 67 square inches of floor space (that’s about the size of an iPad).
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Cage-Free
What You Might Think It Means: Chickens happily wandering around a big red barn, pecking at corn kernels on a hay-covered floor — like the feeding farm I used to visit with my grandma.
What It Actually Means: Exactly what it sounds like: The hens don’t live in cages. But they don’t live in bucolic red barns, either. They usually live in aviaries: massive industrial barns that house thousands of birds. Each bird has, on average, 1 square foot of space.Shapiro and other animal welfare advocates believe cage-free birds are better off than their caged counterparts. “They’re not exactly living on Old McDonald’s farm, but they’re able to walk around, perch, lay their eggs in a nest and spread their wings — all important natural behaviors,” he says. But the science around the health of cage-free birds is less clear. Janice Swanson, an animal scientist at Michigan State University, has been leading a three-year study of egg production techniques.
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No Hormones
What You Might Think It Means: These birds were spared injections of nasty hormones that might cause them to sprout hair in unusual places and render them unhealthful for us to eat.
What It Actually Means: This term is rather misleading, because it’s illegal to give hormones to poultry, and no large-scale farms in the U.S. do so. It’s like putting a label on a cereal box that says, “No toxic waste.”
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No Antibiotics
What You Might Think It Means: These birds don’t need antibiotics because they are healthy and clean.
What It Actually Means: Once again, this is a somewhat misleading term, because antibiotics are rarely used in the egg industry, says Shapiro. Chickens that are raised for their meat, on the other hand, do commonly get antibiotics to fend off disease and increase animal growth.
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Free-Range
What You Might Think It Means: Hens playfully strolling and tumbling down green hills, home on the range.
What It Actually Means: Free-range means cage-free plus “access to the outdoors.” But as Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute notes, this “access” typically means a few small doors that lead to a screened-in porch with cement, dirt or a modicum of grass. And often, Kastel says, industrial fans that suck ammonia out of the building create “hurricane winds” through the small doorways, “and the birds don’t really want to walk through that." Kastel claims that the vast majority of free-range birds in commercial egg facilities never actually go outside. So in most cases, he says, free-range means the same thing as cage-free. Unlike in poultry production, there’s no government oversight of the term "free range” when it comes to eggs, so companies can more or less interpret it as they see fit.
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Vegetarian Diet
What You Might Think It Means: Chickens enjoying a salad bar of grass, herbs, Brussels sprouts and kale — you know, their natural diet.
What It Actually Means: This is perhaps the most confusing claim because chickens are not vegetarian. They’re omnivores that, in the wild, get most of their protein from worms, grasshoppers and other insects. Hens that are fed a “vegetarian diet” are probably eating corn fortified with amino acids.
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Omega-3
What You Might Think It Means: The hens are fed a more healthful diet, which leads to eggs rich in omega-3 acids, which make me smarter.
What It Actually Means: The hens are probably given a bit of flaxseed mixed in with their corn feed, possibly leading to higher levels of omega-3s in their eggs.
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Organic:
What You Might Think It Means: Chickens with hemp bracelets and yoga pants change the sign on their coop from “Chicken Coop” to “Chicken Co-op,” then begin composting.
What It Actually Means: “Organic” actually means something very specific, and egg producers who use it are subject to USDA regulation. Organic eggs must come from chickens that are free-range (cage-free plus access to the outdoors), fed organic feed (no synthetic pesticides) and receive no hormones or antibiotics.But as was the case with “free-range” eggs, Kastel says “organic” eggs are usually coming from birds that live in crowded, industrial aviaries. His organization has created an egg scorecard that rates organic egg farms on a much wider variety of factors.
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Pasture-Raised:
What You Might Think It Means: Chickens dashing between the legs of friendly cows and sheep on a sprawling pasture of peace and harmony.
What It Actually Means: In terms of replicating chickens’ natural environment and way of life, pasture-raised is pretty much the gold standard. Pasture-raised birds spend most of their life outdoors, with a fair amount of space plus access to a barn. Many are able to eat a diet of worms, insects and grass, along with corn feed (which may or may not be organic).
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Certified Humane/Animal Welfare Approved:
What You Might Think It Means: The animals on these farms are treated humanely.
What It Actually Means: What constitutes “humane” treatment is subjective — and a topic of much debate. But the third-party auditing organizations Certified Humane,Animal Welfare Approved and American Humane Certified assess egg farms according to a robust set of animal welfare guidelines.
ECONOMIST | Institutional investors see farmland as fertile ground
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Institutional investors such as pension funds see farmland as fertile ground to plough, either doing their own deals or farming them out to specialist funds. Some act as landlords by buying land and leasing it out. Others buy plots of low-value land, such as pastures, and upgrade them to higher-yielding orchards. Investors who are keen on even bigger risks and rewards flock to places such as Brazil, Ukraine and Zambia, where farming techniques are often still underdeveloped and potential productivity gains immense.
Farmland has been a great investment over the past 20 years, certainly in America, where annual returns of 12% caused some to dub it “gold with a coupon”. In America and Britain, where tax incentives have distorted the market, it outperformed most major asset classes over the past decade, and with low volatility to boot (see chart). Those going against the grain warn of a land-price bubble. Believers argue that increasing demand and shrinking supply—as well as urbanisation, poor soil management and pressure on water systems that are threats to farmland—mean the investment case is on solid ground.
It is not just the asset appreciation and yields that attract outside capital, says Bruce Sherrick of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: as important is the diversification to portfolios that farmland offers. It is uncorrelated with paper assets such as stocks and bonds, has proven relatively resistant to inflation, and is less sensitive to economic shocks (people continue to eat even during downturns) and to interest-rate hikes. Moreover, in the aftermath of the financial crisis investors are reassured by assets they can touch and sniff.
The private-equity approach can take the form of simple improvements, such as changing irrigation from antiquated dykes and canal networks to automatic spray systems: these are the equivalent of picking low-hanging fruit. Pricey robots can boost milk per cow by 10-15%. Using “big-data” analytics to plant and cultivate seeds can push crop yields up 5%. “This is an industry where the gap between the top and bottom quartile is greater than anywhere else,” says Detlef Schoen of Aquila Capital, an alternative-investment firm.
And yet the 36 agriculture-focused funds, with $15 billion under management, pale in comparison to the 144 funds focused on infrastructure ($89 billion) and 473 targeting real estate ($163 billion), according to Preqin, a data provider. TIAA-CREF, an American financial group, is a market leader with $5 billion in farmland, from Australia to Brazil, and its own agricultural academic centre at the University of Illinois. Canadian pension funds and Britain’s Welcome Trust are among those bolstering their farming savvy.
For more money to flow in, financiers and farmers will have to learn a lot more about each other. Money managers need to get their hands dirty and find out more about crops. Only a handful have the expertise needed; farmers gleefully share stories of Wall Street types wondering how chicks are planted. And farmers can do more to attract capital, for example by seeking out financial deals where investors’ incentives are aligned with their own, such as through joint ventures.
The past year was the most dynamic in the history of American craft brewing. The combination of entrepreneurial spirit, creative energy and consumer thirst means this will be another explosive year for American beer makers.
Here’s a six-pack of predictions for the beer scene in Boston and around the country in the year ahead.
1. There will be a backlash against craft brewery taprooms — Twenty years ago, small breweries made beer that they distributed to pubs and restaurants. They sometimes offered small samples of their beers to visitors, usually for free.Then there were brewpubs — fully functioning restaurants that sold food made in their kitchens and served full-sized, full-priced beers brewed on-site. There was a clear line between breweries and brewery/restaurants. Expect the restaurant industry in New England to make noise about this issue in 2015.
2. Expansive canned beer programs will hit local restaurants — Craft brewers continued the race to can their beers last year. But high-end beer lists at local pubs and restaurants still focus on bottled beers. Canned beers merely accent the selection. That dynamic will change. Bar managers will introduce expansive beer programs centered on canned drinks.
3. You’ll find more sour beers and fewer imperial IPAs — India pale ale has dominated the craft beer industry for more than a decade, and the pace has only accelerated in recent years. IPAs have grown bigger, stronger and more bitter, to the point that they can’t go much further.
4. Consumers will dish out bigger bucks for beer at fancy restaurants — Upscale local eateries have tested consumers’ breaking points in recent years. It’s easy now to find beers that cost well over $100, usually in corked, wine-style 750-milliliter bottles. Those high prices have become a status-symbol selling point, much like they’ve been with wine: Folks with disposable incomes are happy to dish out big bucks to feel special or to show off. A reader poll this week at BeerAdvocate.com, meanwhile, revealed that half of respondents spent more than $2,500 on beer in 2014.
5. Mother Nature will impact the price and quality of your beer — The 2014 barley-growing season in North America was one of the worst on record, which will have a ripple effect on the industry. According to the Brewers Association, harvested acreage was down 20 percent in 2014. But that was only the start of the issues. Historic late-season rains across the U.S. and Canada rendered unusable much of the harvested crop.
6. Old-school restaurateurs will upgrade their beer lists — Younger chefs, those under age 40, have spent their entire drinking lives exposed to craft beer. They tend to build great beer programs when they open new eateries. Quality beer is harder to finder at legacy restaurants, sumptuous steakhouses and eateries owned by an older generation of chefs — folks who came of age before the craft-beer revolution. Those chefs will come around this year, fueled by consumer demand and by the realization that they can charge big bucks for high-quality suds.
A Young Generation sees Greener Pastures in Agriculture
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America’s heartland is graying. The average age of a farmer in the U.S. is 58.3 — and that number has been steadily ticking upward for more than 30 years.
Overall, fewer young people are choosing a life on the land. But in some places around the country, like Maine, that trend is reversing. Small agriculture may be getting big again — and there’s new crop of farmers to thank for it.
A Cultural Shift Towards Valuing Agriculture
In Maine, farmers under the age of 35 have increased by 40 percent, says John Rebar, executive director of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension: “Nationally, that increase is 1.5 percent.” And young farmers are being drawn to other rural Northeastern states as well, he says. Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont were all hotbeds of activity during the previous back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s. Many of those pioneers stayed and helped create farming and gardening organizations that now offer support and encouragement for new farmers.
The social climate now is very different than the one Rebar encountered 30 years ago when he himself was an aspiring producer of cattle and sheep. "I was called ‘Farmer’ by my classmates in high school. That was okay with me, but you could tell it wasn’t a term of endearment,“ he says. "There was a lot of negativity about encouraging young people to go into farming.
"So it’s a cultural shift that says we value this as part of our society. We want this to be part of our social fabric, so we’re going to figure out ways to make it work.” Part of making it work means access to land. On their coastal farm, where acreage is more expensive than it is inland, Gelvosa and Gerritsen say they’re luckier than most; Gerritsen’s parents had bought the property years before, which made starting up for the couple a lot easier.
In Iowa, farmland prices are inching toward $9,000 per acre, which has some financial experts talking about a farmland bubble. But sparsely developed states like Maine still possess affordable lands, which savvy young farmers with a little money — and a lot of elbow grease — are starting to acquire.
Farm bill, GMOs, RFS, among top issues for agriculture in 2014
Finally, a Farm Bill – Farmers and ranchers all across the nation breathed a sigh of relief on Feb. 7 when President Obama signed theAgriculture Act of 2014, after more than three years of heated debate in Congress and among agricultural stakeholders. Better known as the 2014 Farm Bill, the measure set agriculture policy for the years 2014-2018, and authorized almost a trillion dollars in spending if measured over a 10-year period. The lion’s share of the funding, almost 80 percent, goes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) and other nutrition programs…
GOP election victories – Republicans won big time in the fall elections, gaining a strong majority in the U.S. Senate and increasing the chances that agricultural interests can block some of the Obama administration’s regulatory agenda, including a proposed rule issued last spring to define the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. The Republican-controlled House advanced a bill to block the “waters of the United States” rule but the legislation went nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate. A Republican-controlled Senate is almost certain to address the issue next year during the fiscal 2016 appropriations process. Guided by Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, the GOP-controlled Senate also may attempt to roll back some of the school nutrition standards imposed by USDA after passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act…
President takes executive actions – President Obama responded to the Republican sweep in the midterm elections by announcing executive actions onimmigration and Cuba, angering some GOP lawmakers. In November, he issued orders that would protect the parents of legal U.S. residents from deportation and expand an earlier program that shields from deportation people who were brought to the country illegally as children. At the same time, he called for Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform, which would include provisions to increase the number of foreign workers to help gather the nation’s crops…
COOL saga continues – In October, a World Trade Organization panel ruled that USDA’s latest effort to bring country-of-origin meat labeling (COOL) rules into compliance with global trade regulations only further exacerbated the rule’s “detrimental impact on the competitive opportunities of imported livestock in the U.S. market.” The panel said requiring labels to inform where an animal was born, raised, and slaughtered gave Mexican and Canadian livestock “less favorable treatment” than that accorded to U.S. livestock. The ruling sparked calls for congressional repeal and threats of Canadian retaliation before the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative appealed the ruling in late November…
Rail backlogs – At the end of 2013, grain elevator operators in the Midwest noticed it was taking longer than usual to move their crops by rail and farmers were suffering the consequences. The issue came to a head in early 2014 as the region’s two main carriers, Canadian Pacific and BNSF Railway, began moving fertilizer for spring 2014 planting along with grain from the 2013 harvest, all while trying to maintain transport for oil production in North Dakota and ethanol from points across the Midwest…
Rise of Big Data – The role of “big data” agriculture became more important during 2014, with farmers expressing increasing interest in how they can benefit from the information they provide to technology companies and increasing concerns about how to protect their data. During the year, the American Farm Bureau Federation organized meetings with a variety of companies to allow them to explain their technology and ease concerns about data privacy. Big movers in the industry include Monsanto, which acquired Silicon Valley Big Data startup, the Climate Corporation, for approximately $930 million late last year, and DuPont Pioneer and John Deere, which announced a combination service to link a suite of precision agronomy software with data transfer technology…
Debate over GMO foods heats up – The war over bioengineered products in food erupted in several battles in 2014, most noticeably in Vermont, which in the spring enacted the nation’s first law requiring mandatory labeling of foods made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). If it survives legal challenges, it will take effect in 2016. More recently, voters in Maui County, Hawaii, approved a moratorium on growing genetically modified crops until further health and environmental tests are conducted. Voters in Colorado and Oregon, however, defeated ballot measures to label GMO foods. Meanwhile, the Coalition for Safe Affordable Food, which consists of 37 trade groups including the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Biotechnology Industry Organization, pushed for passage of a federal labeling bill introduced by Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan…
Battle over school nutrition – Michelle Obama made headlines again this year, jumping into the fray over what children eat and school nutrition standards. The standards, which took effect at the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year, require school lunch programs to offer more fruits, vegetables, and whole grain rich foods; offer only fat-free or low-fat milk; limit saturated fat, sodium and trans fat, as well as limit the calories offered in a meal. The first lady made the standards a centerpiece of her “Let’s Move” anti-obesity campaign for children. However, criticism soon surfaced from schools struggling to meet the standards under tight budgets as well as from student athletes who said they needed more calories than the standards provide. Congressional Republicans sought to weaken the requirements…
Waiting…and waiting… for the RFS – For much of this year, farmers, environmentalists and the U.S. biofuels and petroleum industries waited… and waited…. and waited for the EPA to announce its final targets for the Renewable Fuel Standard – for 2014 – but the announcement never came. Instead, a top agency official told a House hearing earlier this month that EPA plans to finalize its 2014 targets for biofuels use sometime in 2015 and issue targets for 2015 and 2016 as well. That will “get the program back on track so that refiners and all other stakeholders will have the certainty that the statute calls for,” the official told a group of unhappy lawmakers…
Beef checkoff squabble continues – The $1.1 trillion spending bill passed by Congress this month forced Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack towithdraw his attempts to create a parallel beef checkoff, leaving an industry working group to continue its slow-moving discussions. Vilsack’s action would have created a concurrent beef promotion and research program governed under 1996 general farm commodities legislation rather than the 1985 law specific to the beef industry. The administrative act was seen as a victory for groups such as the National Farmers Union (NFU), who called negotiations occurring in the Beef Checkoff Enhancement Working Group (BCEWG) “a waste of time and money” shortly before withdrawing from the group in September…
Where Does Fat Go When You Lose Weight? Mostly Into Thin Air
More specifically, 84 percent of those fat molecules get exhaled as colorless, odorless carbon dioxide.
A couple of years ago, Ruben Meerman took off 40 pounds. And that got him wondering: What exactly happened to all that fat?
Conventional wisdom was that he “burned” it off. Or sweated it off. Or excreted it. None of that satisfied Meerman, who has a physics degree and makes his living explaining science to schoolkids and for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. So Meerman tackled the problem and eventually came up with a surprising answer: Most of the lost fat disappears into thin air.
Bourbon of proof: Is Kentucky’s heritage spirit compromised by GMO corn?
curator: By no means a period worthy of expertise, I’ve been sipping good brown liquor for about a decade. That said, I’ve got a good palate, a strong sense of smell, some training and now reaching 40 – I know what I like. My choice, like many other business-guys out there, small-batch wheat vs. rye Kentucky Bourbon.
About six years back, some good friends and I went down to what has become the grand daddy of Kentucky distiller success – Buffalo Trace in Frankfort, KY. If you’re not as familiar with Buffalo Trace, they’re the maker of now iconic Kentucky Bourbon whiskey – Pappy Van Winkle . We toured the processing facilities, mash-room, the grand stills, aging rooms, chemistry lab, the executive offices, museum and more. A full day spent sipping and talking fine Bourbon. Proof (potency pun intended) is in the pudding with this smooth sipping stuff, where Billy D Williams legendary advert for Colt45 “don’t let the smooth taste fool you” has come to mind more than once while drinking my fair share of the Pappy aged varieties. While in Frankfort, after sharing a full bottle of the 23 year-old “nectar of the gods”, a moniker offered up by Buffalo Trace master-taster Nigel, we let the afternoon pass on the back porch of Buffalo Trace’s lodge sharing stories of years past and plans of those to come in the company of great friends. More drink, more beer ads enveloped our influenced minds, and the power of a persuasive lifestyle marketing campaign “it doesn’t get much better than this” was slurred by a few yankees that day at an uber-hospitable Kentucky distiller. The staff must have had some laughs watching our interactions, but had the opportunity to witness first hand why their amrita would skyrocket to global acclaim.
Virtually unattainable thanks to recent product demand, scarcity and price, I’ve had to discover alternative GMO-free Bourbons other than Pappy Van Winkle to melt my two ice-cubes during the holiday season (true purest will tell you neat, but the owner and maker says the best way to enjoy Pappy is the way you like it). You see, Bourbon vs. other Whiskies by law must be 1. from Kentucky (similar to classification of Scotch from Scotland vs. other whiskey, or for sparkling wines from the French Champagne region vs. other bubbly headache potion), and 2. be at least 51% corn. The latter has forced the increasingly higher-end US corn-spirit world into a state of flux as the last bottles of small batch “aged-Kentucky-Gold” has reached the maturity of the onset of GMO corn in the late 1990s. Other top makers of Corn/Wheat Bourbons, i.e. Maker’s Mark, have a different view than Buffalo Trace re: engineered crops compromising their products. As a past Maker’s drinker who looks at these remarks as only justification to save money at the expense of addressing consumer’s evolving interests, they’ve lost me as a customer, and probably many more to come/go.
Simply, we need more companies like Buffalo Trace to stick to their authentic practices and to those of their raw material producers for the benefit of their master-crafted products and for the benefit their consumers. For others to stop compromising the value of their products, and invest in the retention of those consumer advocates – we must return to the proof truly being in the pudding where the reality of our taste buds, our sense of smell and our commitment to ecological best practices cannot be fooled! If more businesses start again to listen to the interests of their customers, we’ll see more wonderful success stories like Buffalo Trace from other spirit makers, food producers and vendors meeting the needs of an evolving world.
Alas, this success has been nearly too great. Buffalo Trace couldn’t have planned for this type of demand 23, 20 or 15 years ago – and between the heavy-hand of the angel’s share and trying to plan accordingly to operate a pragmatic business through the years when demand wasn’t so overwhelming – there isn’t enough Pappy to go around! Here are a few GMO-free options alternative to Olde Grand Dad, and further evidence & rationale to why the influence of modified seed vendors continue to hurt industries, negatively influence lifestyle choices, and tarnish the authentic spirit of the American Business.
For purpose of an informed consumer, and brand loyalty – just label it! If the government won’t – smart businesses will find ways to promote their commitment to their customer desires.
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As an American, corn-based spirit, bourbon has changed rapidly in recent decades. Now, the question is: How long do we have until it’s all made with genetically engineered grain? more…
Food is to be enjoyed, not Instagrammed – live your peripherals
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… of course, looks do matter, because they influence the experience that comes next. They narrow expectations. It’s important that things taste, and smell, and feel on the tongue at least as good as they look. But no one would ever eat say, fish pie, let alone turkey and brussels sprouts, if it were only about looks. In fact if you only ate food that looked beautiful you’d be more or less stuck with fresh fruit, raw vegetables and very expensive restaurants. Taking pictures of food is really just one more way of bragging.
And you know what? That “you are what you eat” thing? It’s not meant to be taken literally. And since the rouble is in freefall, maybe the oligarchs will just have to clear the plates and go home.
