Agricultural Pollution

Agricultural pollution occurs when a farmer saturates their watershed with excessive nutrient run off.  Agricultural runoff typically comes from either livestock waste or fertilizers.  Both of these materials contain nutrients that help plants and microbes grow, especially phosphorus and nitrogen.  When applied to growing crops, nutrient loading can increase yields and profit.  However, when they are deposited in marine and aquatic environments they cause eutrophication.  Eutrophication results in blooms of nuisance populations, especially algae, followed by crashes.  Eutrophication causes murky green water that is actually congested with photosynthetic life and hypoxic zones beneath the light penetration zone.  Animals that are subjected to the hypoxic zone die and oxygen is further depleted as decomposers respire while breaking down their bodies.

Citizens in North Carolina were outraged when the hog industry invaded their homes and marshes.  In 1992, North Carolina was home to 2 million hogs.  Within 6 years, the state became home to 10 million (North Carolina in the Global Economy).  Facilities called concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, are machine-like complexes that pack animals together as tightly as possible without harming their profit. Sows are stored in sow stalls so small that the animals cannot even turn around.  In North Carolina, hog CAFOs require lagoons, which are basically cesspools of hog excrement.  When Hurricane Floyd struck the coast of North Carolina, the content of the lagoons contaminated the water supply.  One operation leaked 20 million gallons of hog excrement into the New River in 1995 (North Carolina in the Global Economy).  “CAFOs house them as tightly as possible where they never see grass or sunlight. If you can envision one thousand chickens in your bathroom, in cages stacked to the ceiling, you're honestly getting the picture. (Actually a six-foot by eight room could house 1,152)” (Kingsolver).  Feeding operations like these have no use for the animal waste, so they either store it indefinitely or allow it to seep into the water table either through leaks or during storms.  Uncontrollable animal waste is dangerous for people in the community because it pollutes the water source.  It also threatens the environments that ultimately absorb the chemicals contained in the waste.

 

Traditionally, farms grew both livestock and crops.  When both animals and plants coexisted on the same properties, manure composting was more common than it is today.  Composting is a microbial process that breaks down dead plants and animal waste, thereby releasing organic nutrients.  Once composted, the nutrients can be taken by plant roots.  Farm waste was once produced, composted, and applied to plants as fertilizer at the same facility.  Now most farms either grow crops or livestock but not both.  Furthermore, many plant-growing farms grow monocultures of just one crop, and many CAFOs house one type of animal.  When food production is segregated by species, farms produce massive quantities of useless waste.  Since they cannot use it, they have to store it in manure lagoons, which are unreliable at preventing the waste from entering the water table.

Corn, the primary crop grown in the United States, is a plant with a tremendous appetite for fertilizer.  According to Michael Pollan, traditional methods of growing food were less expensive for farmers but took longer to grow a smaller harvest.  Therefore, farmers treat their plants with synthetic fertilizers that typically include nitrogen and phosphorus.  Vegetable farmers squeeze every ounce of profit that they can from their land by saturating their soil with fertilizers.  Nitrogen is among the most limiting nutrients for plant growth, so fertilizers add it to fields in shocking numbers.  “Worldwide, humans create about 160 million metric tons of nitrogen each year, compared to natural rates of terrestrial biological nitrogen fixation, which are between 90 and 120 million metric tons annually” (Dybas).  American farmers now feel pressure to grow crops using methods that they themselves do not trust for their own health.  Peggy Naylor, wife of a corn farmer close to the Des Moines River, does not drink water from her own well without filtering it through a special reverse-osmosis faucet to remove the excess nitrates from fertilizers on the farm (Pollan).  Sadly, the fertilizers impact the healthfulness of her own resources, but they also flow down the Des Moines River which eventually joins the Mississippi River.  The Mississippi River carries fertilizers accumulated from, “31 states and 40 percent of the contiguous United States” (Dybas). The Mississippi River delta marshes cannot sufficiently filter the quantity of agricultural pollution it is subjected to.  Fertilizer companies recommend using a hundred pounds of fertilizer per acre, but farmers like Peggy Naylor’s husband exceed the recommended use by an additional 80 percent to ensure a lucrative harvest (Pollan).  This may be the quickest way for Naylor to turn a profit, but it’s a short term method.  Ultimately, it is harmful to the environment because it causes eutrophication.  Eutrophication occurs when microbial life grows faster than their habitat can sustain.  It causes nuisance blooms which rapidly deplete oxygen.

Eutrophication can cause nuisance blooms and hypoxic zones on a small scale, but it also causes massive lifeless zones in the oceans.  The Gulf dead zone is a hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico that experiences progressively lower levels of oxygen every summer.  Dead zones destroy and displace marine life.  Either animals flee the hypoxic zones, or they are trapped and suffocate.    Dan Leonard, a clam farmer interviewed by Cheryl Lyn Dybas, sees the impact of farm runoff on his business every year.  Fertilizer runoff is heaviest following spring fertilization, when most farmers have applied it to seedlings and young crops to nourish them for the rest of the growing season.  Populations bloom following the runoff, and the hypoxic zones are most depraved of oxygen by the summer.  Leonard says that, “’Every summer, the dead zone grows, snuffing out more fish, crabs, and other animals.  And we’re the perpetrators of the crime, with our excess fertilizer and untreated sewage and other waste flowing into the gulf’” (Dybas).  Sadly, the Gulf of Mexico is only one of 146 dead zones reported by Cheryl Dybas.  Even more sadly, this figure doubles every decade.  Furthermore, 43 of 146 reported dead zones occur in United States waters (Dybas).  These figures illustrate that popular farming methods in the United States, which transmit untreated livestock waste and fertilizer runoff to the water table, deposit gluttonous quantities of agricultural pollution into oceans and salt marshes.

In addition to causing dead zones, agricultural pollution erodes soil.  R. Eugene Turner describes the effects of nutrient inundation, “One way is that the belowground biomass may be inversely related to the nutrient loading.  Root and rhizome biomass declines with increased nutrient loading in many freshwater, brackish, and saltwater coastal wetlands.”  Because nitrogen and phosphorus are abundant in polluted soils, plants expend less energy developing root structures to seek nutrients.  Instead, they focus their energy on growing aboveground biomass.  Although the aboveground vegetation seems healthy, the soil and sediment disintegrate without the root mats to hold them together.

Farms that keep openly pastured livestock are less likely to accumulate hazardous amounts of waste than CAFO’s because the waste is less concentrated and can break down more rapidly.  A more sustainable approach to farming would incorporate livestock and vegetable growing at the same facility so that livestock waste could be composted on site for vegetable fertilizer.  A system like this does not rely on synthetic fertilizers because the plants get all of the nutrients they need from the compost.  Plants that use industrial fertilizers only absorb about 20 percent of the amount applied to the soil (Pollan).  Livestock waste runs off from both CAFOs and sustainably managed livestock-vegetable farms.  However, more waste runs off from CAFOs because they house far more animals in far smaller spaces and there is typically no need for them to compost the waste and apply it to plants.  Furthermore, farms that rely on compost for fertilizer do not transmit additional nutrients to the water basin, whereas 80 percent of commercial fertilizers, on top of CAFO livestock waste, flows through salt marshes.

Sustainable farming is not only possible but pragmatic.  “According to the USDA records from the 1990s, farms less than four acres in size had an average net income of $1,400 per acre.  The per-acre profit declines steadily as farm size grows, to less than $40 per acre for farms above a thousand acres” (Kingsolver).  Small scale farms do not need to rely on fertilizers in order to make a profit because of three factors.  First, they grow diverse products, instead of monocultures which are susceptible to disease and parasites.  They also use their space more efficiently and carefully, without trashing areas that seem unimportant.  Lastly, they sell more directly to customers than major corporations who have nation-wide distribution through supermarkets. 

Sources

Alvarez-Rogel, J., F.J. Jiminez-Carceles, and C. Egea Nicolas.  “Phosphorus and Nitrogen Content in the Water of a Coastal Wetland in the Mar Menor Lagoon (Se Spain):  Relationships with Effluents from Urban and Agricultural Areas.”  Water, Air, and Soil Pollution, Volume 173 (2006): 21-38.

Butler, Carol A., & Weis, Judith S.  Salt Marshes: A Natural and Unnatural History.  New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.  2009.

Callaway, John C. “The Challenge of Restoring Functioning Salt Marsh Ecosystems.”  Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 40 (2005): 24-35.

Corman, Sarah S., Charles T. Roman, John W. King, and Peter G. Appleby.  “Salt Marsh Mosquito-Control Ditches:  Sedimentation, Landscape Change, and Restoration Implications.”  Journal of Coastal Research, 28.4 (2012): 874-880.

Dybas, Cheryl Lyn.  “Dead Zones Spreading in World Oceans.”  BioScience 55.7 (2005): 552-557.

Kingsolver, Barbara.  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  New York: Harper Perennial.  2007.

Nelson, Joanna L. and Erika S. Zavaleta.  “Salt Marsh as a Coastal Filter for the Oceans:  Changes in Function with Experimental Increases in Nitrogen Loading and Sea-Level Rise.”  PLoS ONE, 7.8 (2012): 1-14.

“Overview.”  North Carolina in the Global Economy.  Duke University Center on Globalization, Competitiveness & Governance, 2011.  Web 18 April 2013.  <http://www.soc.duke.edu/NC_GlobalEconomy/hog/overview.shtml>.

Pollan, Michael.  The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  New York: Penguin Books.  2006.

Stagg, Camille L. and Irving A Mendelssohn.  “Restoring Ecological Function to a Submerged Salt Marsh.”  Restoration Ecology, 18.S1 (2010): 10-17.

Turner, R. Eugene.  “Beneath the Salt Marsh Canopy:  Loss of Soil Strength with Increasing Nutrient Loads.”  Estuaries and Coasts, Volume 34 (2011): 1084-1093.

Easy All Natural Spaghetti Recipe

Spaghetti from scratch is a lot easier to make than most people would imagine.  It's great because it's an easy one to make from 100% local/natural/organic ingredients, and it's even better the day after you make it.  Here's how I make mine.

I collected tomatoes from my tomato plants all week.  I have found that Italian strains of many vegetable species excel in my area.  For instance, Rosa Bianca eggplant, Roma tomatoes, and Italian Rose beans are some of my favorites.  Most of the tomatoes that I used are Roma, but I supplemented with Black Krim and a few others.  I cut each tomato in half and tossed them in a pot on low-medium heat.  In all, I used about 6 cups of halved tomatoes.  I added about 1 cup of water for them to simmer in.  Add seasoning to your taste.  I like to go heavy-handed with whole peppercorns.  I also add a dash of salt and a tablespoon of honey.  Add a dash of balsamic vinegar.  Later on, I'll add fresh herbs.  Cover the pot, and stir occasionally.

I browned 1 pound of ground beef with ground pepper and chopped garlic.  Drain the fat and mix into the tomato mixture.  Turn the heat to medium.  Mix together and mash the tomatoes a bit.  They should liquefy somewhat as you stir in the beef.

Here is where I get kind of creative with my ingredients.  Basically, I just clear veggies out of my fridge and throw them in the pot.  I really like using mushrooms, peppers, squash, and eggplant.  I've even tried beans, which I thought was great, but wasn't very popular with the boyfriend.  Add lots of garlic and fresh herbs.  Oregano, basil, and scallions are my favorites.  Tonight, I used some cubes of pesto that I had frozen in an ice cube tray.  I used 3 cubes of pesto.  (My pesto ingredients were just olive oil, garlic, and fresh basil.)  I like to add about 1 glass of red wine to my stomach while I cook, and 1 more to the sauce while it simmers.

Gradually turn the heat up to medium-high as the pot gets full of ingredients.  Let it simmer for as long as your stomach allows.  The sauces get richer and more flavorful the longer they cook-- just make sure that it doesn't burn as you turn the heat up.  Enjoy with noodles the same night, and make sure to leave enough for lunch or dinner the next day.

I Found Out What Happened to Los Tres Hermanos Grocery

I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.  When I was a teenager, it seemed as though there was a Mexican grocery store in practically every neighborhood.  Atlanta had many Hispanic communities, so it made sense that these chains of grocery stores were so successful.  I moved out of Atlanta in 2009 to go to college.  I rarely went home during my first year away from my motherland.  Honestly, I didn't start feeling homesick until 2011.  During my frequent visits to Atlanta in 2011, I gradually realized that former Mexican grocery stores were no longer in business.  I always assumed that they had lost their markets or given way to competitors, but I recently found out that there's a more complicated reason for the closure of Los Tres Hermanos groceries.  It involves the Tyson corporation and exploitation of human workers in industrial food manufacturing.  Naturally, I was intrigued.

Steve Striffler explained the history behind Los Tres Hermanos in Chicken: the dangerous transformation of America's favorite food.  To understand why the groceries closed, you must know a little bit about food production in the USA.  Amador Anchondo-Rascon is a Mexican immigrant who slipped the border to pursue agricultural work in California.  Finding season work and high living expenses, he eventually moved to Florida where married and became a US citizen.  In 1990, he began working for the Tyson corporation in Shelbyville, Tennessee.  Shelbyville experienced a boom in its Hispanic population in following years.

Amador opened the first Los Tres Hermanos in Shelbyville.  In addition to selling groceries, he sold illegal documents for immigrants.  Striffler says, "If a town's Latino population is large enough to support a Los Tres Hermanos, then it is almost certain that this sort of store will either provide these kinds of services or know where to arrange for them."   His business was so successful that he became a wealthy man who owned 5 homes, until some of the false documents caught the attention of local authorities.  He sold illegal documents to undercover INS agents.  Subsequently, he cooperated with the authorities and confided that Tyson offered him up to $200 "recruitment fees" if he furnished illegal workers with false documents.  In a sting, a Tyson executive asked Amador and an undercover agent to provide 2,000 illegal Guatemalans with documents.  They were offered either $100 or $200 per head.

According to United States Justice Department, 15 Tyson plants conspired to smuggle and provide illegal documentation for Mexican immigrants.  They exploited the workers' fear of deportation to force them to work intolerable conditions for low wages.  A meat-packing supervisor even expressed that he preferred his workers "right off the bus."  Initially, the senior vice president of the Tyson corporation denied the company's involvement with immigrant smuggling.  Three Tyson managers eventually confessed, and one committed suicide.  Ultimately the case passed without much distinction.  Although the company was caught paying for large numbers of illegals workers (fortified by 3 confessions), the highest levels of management were able to evade the accusations.

Ultimately, small business owners like Amador pay the price for the corruption of the Tyson corporation.  The case and publicity force small businesses to close, an additional grievance on top of the exploitation of immigrant workers.  However, I would be willing to bet that you didn't hear about Tyson's transgressions in the news nor did their business suffer as result of their actions.

St. Catherine's Island

St. Catherine's Island is one of Georgia's barrier islands that sits between the mainland and the open ocean.  It has an enthralling history as it was inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years before it was colonized.  In fact, shell circles facing the sea are still visible.  The location of the shell circles has a distinctively soothing atmosphere.  Perhaps this is a relic of the people past or maybe it's the reason they selected this space for their ceremonies.  Additionally, St. Catherine's Island is the site of the first Christian church in the United States.

The island is about 50 miles south of Savannah- the drive takes about an hour.  However, the island is only accessible by boat.  Although it's a private island, I was able to tour the entire thing with a salt marsh ecology class.  Staff from the island picked us up and ferried us across before turning us loose on the island with some antiquated trucks.  If you're not lucky enough to get invited on a tour, don't fret.  Although the island is private, its beaches are public.  You may not be able to check out the interior of the island, but you can still enjoy the beaches if you can find a boat to take you to them.  Any one you can get to it, St. Catherine's hosts possibly the most beautiful beach in Georgia.

Possession of the island changed handy many times, especially in the colonial era.  At one point it was a plantation.  It's rumored that student interns are housed in the old slave quarters.  I found the plantation history of the island especially interested because of my interest in both historical and modern methods for producing food.  Remnants of relics like hog ditches reveal time-tested strategies for maintaining crops.

This photograph shows me looking across the marsh with binoculars.  The beaches at St. Catherine's are surrounded by salt marsh dominated by smooth cordgrass.  Wildlife is abundant in the marsh, and contains a number of unique species like diamondback terrapins.  Salt marshes are characterized by vertical zonation which means that species are found in bands of distribution according to the vertical distance from the water.

St. Catherine's has live oak forests beyond the salt marsh.  Within a very close proximity, you can see 3 distinct ecosystems: the marine environment, the salt marsh habitat, and the hardwood forest.

This is a piece of driftwood that I found on the beach.  I thought it had an exceptionally beautiful pattern.  Because the beaches can only be accessed by boat, they are virtually untouched.

Diamondback Terrapins in the News

This morning, the Savannah Morning News featured an article about diamondback terrapins on the front page.  Diamondback terrapins are a protected species of turtle in the state of Georgia, but TERPS (Terrapin Educational Research Program of Savannah) has observed a rapid decrease in their estimated population size.  The article was written by Mary Landers, who met with me and Andrew Neidlinger to collect some information about the turtles and watch us release 4 captive baby turtles.  The article is available online, and includes a video interview with Andrew.  Here's the link for it.
http://savannahnow.com/news/2013-06-23/crossing-us-80-treacherous-trip-savannah-nesting-turtles#.Uch_G9hByjc

It's a fortuitous day for the turtles for sure.  Not only are they in the news today, Andrew, Samuel Peabody, and I collected a dozen eggs from wild females last night.  We will hatch them in captivity, conduct research on them, and release them next summer.  Here is a photo of one of the clutches of eggs.

We collected data from the wild females that we caught, and marked them before releasing them.  One of the females was actually a survivor of a traffic accident.  We could see damage on her shell, but obviously she is continuing to thrive in her natural habitat.  Click on the link above to read Mary Landers's article and watch a video of Andrew's interview.  You might even see me as I release some of the baby turtles.

Guide to Savannah Area Farmers Markets, Part 2: Bethesda Farm Stand

The next market I want to talk about for my Guide to Savannah Area Farmers Markets is a very stark contrast to the Forsyth Farmers Market.  The Bethesda Farm Stand is a totally different pace from the Forsyth market; it's way quieter and more remote.  The Bethesda Academy for Boys originated as an orphanage in 1740.  Now it is a boarding school where kids come for classes and live during the week, but go home on weekends.  One of the school's programs includes an on site organic farm that grows produce, raises free-range egg-laying chickens, and breeds Nigerian dwarf goats.  They use the goats' milk to make soap through a partnership with Nourish.  They sell produce, eggs, soap, and fresh flowers at the farm stand.

Bethesda's prices are reasonable and the quality is exceptional.  Another advantage of visiting the farm stand is that it's usually not too crowded, whereas the Forsyth market is consistently thronging.  At Forsyth, it's nearly impossible to get in and get out quickly with your groceries, but it's easy to shop at your own pace (whether that be in a rush or taking your time) at Bethesda.  Also, you can practically hear the goats and chickens from the stand.  It's refreshing to to be in such close proximity to the source of the food that you're buying.

Another great quality of the stand is that it's in a pretty unique location.  To my knowledge, there are no other markets or organic groceries in this neighborhood.  It's very convenient for people in both Sandly and Southside Savannah.  It's only a 10 minute drive from both Savannah State University and Armstrong Atlantic State University, so it's very accessible to students.  Check out the Bethesda Farm Stand on Thursdays from 3:00-5:30 in the afternoon.  Here's the link.

http://www.bethesdaacademy.org/academics/work-experience/bethesda-farm-gardens/

Why I Killed a Chicken on Friday

I killed a chicken on Friday because I wanted to prove to myself that I really am ok with eating meat.  I recently read a book called Chicken: The dangerous transformation of America's favorite food by Steve Striffler which discusses the commercial methods for raising, butchering, and selling chicken as an industrial product.  After reading this book, I realized that I am uninterested in supporting industrial chicken manufacturers and that I'd rather grow my own or purchase meat from small scale local farmers.  Unfortunately, buying pasture-raised chicken from local farmers can get expensive.  Realistically, I'd like to raise my own.  Before investing in a coop and some birds, I wanted to make sure that I could stomach the process of killing and cooking my own food.

There are many reasons why industrial chicken is less healthy and less humane than free range, organic fed chickens.  Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) certainly don't keep the animals' welfare in mind.  According to Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal Vegetable Miracle, "If you can envision one thousand chickens in your bathroom, in cages stacked to the ceiling, you're honestly getting the picture.  (Actually a six-foot by eight room could house 1,152)"  CAFOs also use methods like antibiotics and hormones to produce plump birds fast.  Operations like these not only exploit the chickens, but also their laborers.  They seem to have neither the animals', laborers', nor customers' safety in mind.

That being said, I love eating meat, especially chicken.  Although the animals obviously have to die to produce meat, I feel better about consuming meat that I know lived a happy, natural existence and died in the least painful way possible.  So I learned to slaughter and dress a chicken from a one year old free range rooster at my job on an organic farm.  He lived with about 300 hens and was the king of the roost until his spurs began growing in.  When his spurs started growing, he became more like the dictator of the roost.  He got increasingly aggressive with both the hens and the people on the farm.  So we decided that it was time to overthrow this dictator rooster.

We put him upside down in a cone and cut the arteries in his neck so he would bleed out quickly.  If you sever the esophagus by cutting too deeply or removing the head, they struggle to breathe while they bleed out and this causes additional pain and panic to the bird.  While he died, I felt a distinct sadness for the animal and the process that I was apart of.  It certainly wasn't a pleasant experience, but it was a respectful and peaceful one.  We'll be cooking him in a coq au vin recipe this week.  After having this experience, I will not stop eating meat, but I will have a greater appreciation for the animals that produce it.