Are the USDA & Monsanto the same organization?

I would argue 'yes'.

For many years, there has been a very cozy relationship between industrial agriculture and the management of the USDA. The most obvious example of this has been the movement of executives between industrial-farming corporations like Monsanto and the USDA.

Back in 2008, when Tom Vilsack was nominated as the new Secretary of Agriculture, he came with a resume that spoke volumes as to what the USDA might look like under his watch:

1. Former governor of Iowa with a track record of supporting genetically-modified crops.

2. Awarded the 'governor of the year' award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, an industrial-farming lobbying group.

3. Founder and former chair of the Governor's Biotechnology Partnership.

4. Supporter of cloning of dairy cows as a vehicle for economic development.

5. Originated House Bill 671 and Senate Bill 631 in 2005 whose purpose was aim to prevent towns, counties or cities from passing any ordinance, regulation or resolution to control any kind of plant or plant pest (including invasive plant species).

These bills became known as the 'Monsanto Bills' because they usurped local government's right to try and regulate GMO products if the USDA did not. Representative Sandy Greiner, the Republican sponsor of the bill, bragged that Vilsack had put her up to writing this bill shortly after he was elected governor.

6. Vilsack has always been a strong supporter of Monsanto and commonly traveled on Monsanto jets during his 2006 presidential bid.

7. Vilsack strongly supports the use of corn and soy to produce biofuels, even though their production uses as much fossil fuel as they generate. This is a huge money-maker for factory farming in the U.S. and also drives up food prices unnecessarily. Former chair of the Governors' Ethanol Coalition.

On Thursday of last week, the USDA announced approval for unrestricted planting of GMO alfalfa produced by Monsanto and Forge Genetics throughout the United States. As one of the leading feed crops produced, if you eat meat or dairy, you will indirectly consume alfalfa.

Aside from being the fourth largest feed crop in the U.S., alfalfa is notoriously promiscuous with pollen being carried for up to 5 miles by pollinating insects. This means there will be no functional way to prevent GMO genetics from spreading to non-GMO products, the genetic leak that I have discussed in previous postings.

USDA-certified organic products do not allow the intentional or unintentional use of GMO products in their production.

Recently, Sharon Bomer, an executive vice president with the Biotechnology Industry Organization, stated that while there was a 'deep appreciation' within the industry to minimize the spread of genetic material, 'the burden is on them' (organic producers) to protect their crops.

Previous experience with copyright-protected crops have shown that when genetics leak into adjacent fields thru wind and other natural processes, companies like Monsanto do not hesitate to sue for copyright-infringement and theft of genetic materials.

For two years, Vilsak has been promising a way for organics and GMO plants to coexist.

Earlier, the USDA had said that it was considering one of three options:

(1) complete deregulation of GM alfalfa

(2) allowing its planting but requiring five-mile buffer strips between it and non-GMO alfalfa

(3) allowing unrestricted planting except in seed-growing regions to prevent contamination.

When news of Vilsack's considerations made their way to the halls of Congress, Republican lawmakers and conservative organizations were highly critical. On Jan. 19, congressional Republicans told Vilsack that the idea of restricting GE alfalfa was “troubling" and on Jan. 20, there was more of the same from the House Agriculture Committee.

During the 3 weeks that followed, the USDA approved the use of GMO alfalfa, beets, and corn.

GMO alfalfa has been designed to resist the effects of the herbicide Roundup. Previous experience with this overuse of herbicide has been the proliferation of superweeds, or weeds similarly-resistant to the effects of Roundup, in a relatively short period of time. With the release of GMO alfalfa, it is estimated that an additional 23 million pounds of Roundup will be applied to the environment per annum.

Consumer protection, environmental, organic producer, and food safety organizations have filed suit to prevent the release of these products. However, given the certainty and speed of genetic leak, once GMO-alfalfa is released, there is no way to take back what we have put into the genetic swimming pool of our environment.

The season of mud

One thing you learn quickly when living and working on the farm is to not only to read the weather but also the soil. The weather, aside from affecting your personal comfort and what you should wear, also affects the soil.

You spend a lot of time deciding what your soil will be doing on any particular day based on the weather and what you are hoping to do.

We are currently entering what we call the 'season of mud'.

The red clay of Frederick County, while rich in micronutrients and minerals, has all the negatives of most clay soils. When wet, the small molecules lay flat and hold water between these layers. This slippery, gooey mess is what most people refer to as mud.

Later in the summer, when the heat and droughts that have plagued us for the past 5 years have removed all the moisture in the soil, we have what most people would refer to as a brick.

We learned this lesson the hard way a few years back when we were trying to drive fence posts in the summer. ' You can't build fences this time of year' said one of our neighbors, 'It's not fence season.'

Fence season !? Huh? Did we need a permit?

Not sure what they were talking about, we merrily went on with our plans to knock off a large section of fencing using an auger and some really nice black locust posts we had to order to West Virginia.

[As an aside, in olden times, posts were commonly made out of local rot resistant woods like black locust, osage orange, and eastern red cedar prior to the advent of pressure treated pine. Pressure-treated lumber has been on the market for about 60 years and for most of that time, was treated with arsenic to preserve the wood, obviously unacceptable to us as organic, all-natural producers. In 2002, to address the dangers of arsenic leaching into soils and exposure from direct contact, pressure treatment was converted to a highly-concentrated copper or ACQ compound. These compounds address the dangers of arsenic poisoning but have other issues related to corrosion of metals coming in direct contact with them]

Two auger bits and about an hour later, we had successfully placed one post - only 2000 more to go! Clearly, this was not going to work!

So we waited, and in the fall, after a few good rainfalls, when the air was crisp and the ground had softened but was dry enough to take heavy machinery on it, we rented a fence post driver and tried again. The pounder, a beautiful piece of machinery, held the post in position behind our tractor and then slammed down onto the top of the post over and over again.

We watched with amazement as the post slid gently and smoothly into place in a matter of about 15 or 20 seconds! A day later and we had placed hundreds of posts without so much as breaking a sweat (or an auger bit).

A few years later, I was talking with one of my sheep customers on a hot August day. 'Anything interesting planned for the weekend?' I asked. 'Oh, I plan on doing some fence posts', he replied.

Farm Bureau and the Chesapeake - good steward of the land?

I read with dismay the Frederick News Post’s January 23rd article announcing the American Farm Bureau Federation’s (AFBF) lawsuit to block EPA’s plan to restore the Chesapeake Bay. The Farm Burea’s plan: to continue the status quo of voluntary, non-binding best management practices (BMPs), that after 26 years of implementation have resulted in a watershed that only scores a 31 out of 100 in the 2010 State of the Bay report.

What does AFBA’s action say? It illustrates how closely the organization has aligned itself with industrial agriculture and at the same time alienated both consumers of their products and the sustainable agriculture community. As a farmer it is disheartening to see the Farm Bureau distort the facts and stand by industrial farms thereby soiling the reputation of the rest of the agriculture community. The thrust of AFBA’s lawsuit challenges the scientific validity of EPA’s pollution diet. You can tweak the input parameters in EPA’s complex model all you want, but the story won’t change: agriculture is a major contributor of damaging nutrients and agriculture needs to do more.

All you have to do is take a drive in the country to see examples of farms that are not doing their fair share to reduce runoff of nutrients from their fields. This is a good time of year to see barren fields without any green winter cover crop. You can also see some farmers spreading manure on frozen ground. Come spring, the drainage ditches around those fields will run orange/brown, transporting sediments laden with nutrients into the Bay. When summer arrives, take another drive in the country and you’ll likely come across cows standing in streams. Unfortunately, they don’t hold it like humans in a swimming pool would. You’ll also notice some crops growing right next to stream banks with no buffer strips. Buffer strips filter the flow of nutrients into the Bay.

In October of 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a draft report on the “Assessment of the Effects of Conservation Practices on Cultivated Cropland in the Chesapeake Region.” This exhaustive report represents the most comprehensive evaluation to date of farm activities as they relate to nutrient loadings to the Bay. This study found that “81 percent of the cultivated cropland acres require additional nutrient management to reduce the loss of nitrogen or phosphorus from fields.” In other words, farmers are implementing all the recommended, voluntary best management practices for only 19% of cropland. Only 1 in 5 acres is being managed responsibly. This is not what I would call “good stewardship” of the land.

I am a farmer in Frederick County, Maryland. Our farm is bordered by a tributary on two sides, which feeds any runoff into the Monocacy, the Potomac, and finally the Bay. Our watershed is one of many in the region that are exceeding water quality standards for nutrients. We have been implementing all the voluntary BMPs recommended by the MD Department of Environment. Although there is some financial and technical assistance from the state, implementing these BMPs still cost us in time, money and some land is taken out of production. We view it as the cost of doing business. All the organic and sustainable farms I know follow similar practices, but then again, we aren’t members of the Farm Bureau.

Editorial Section, Frederick News Post, Sunday, by William.

Action Alert from Organic Consumers Association

I wanted to encourage everyone who is in favor of protecting small farmers to comment to the USDA on their pending decision to release GMO alfalfa onto the market:

http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/alert/?alertid=14469696

In an earlier post, I talked a lot about the dangers of GMO products and the inadequacy of safety testing requirments on those products.

In another, problems with the overuse of, dependence on, and persistance of herbicides and pesticides in the environment.

This decision kind of brings all of those ideas to the forefront.

Some people say 'what's the harm' in releasing a product like this onto the market - 'it can always be pulled backed off the market if need be'.

But, what our previous experiences with other GMO products have shown us is that there is 'leakage' of GMO genetics into non-GMO seed banks and even into the natural environment around us.

This is one problem once created that cannot be easily reversed.

Please urge the USDA and your representatives in Congress to ban GMO products in the United States!

Hardy PALMS and CACTI update

On an earlier post, I described some experiments I've been conducting on the farm testing the cold hardiness of two genuses of plant not normally thought of as cold-hardy in our zone 6 area: the hardy palms and agave.

I brought along an interest in this subject after living in Washington, D.C., where microclimates allowed us to grow plants normally found in more southern climes like ficus pumila, southern jasmine, voodoo lillies, and a host of other plants 'that don't grow here'.

Of course, the hardy palms and agave were part of this tradition.

Last winter was pretty harsh with very cold temperatures and heavy snowfall. We had two trachycarpus fortuneii that wintered over with significant protection and several colonies of echincereus, the claret cup cactus, which did very well with no protection in pots.

Here are two Trachycarpus that wintered over with minimal trouble last winter. This season, I decided to try them with no protection.

The top specimen is a generic plant I picked up at a local garden center here in Maryland.

The lower specimen is smaller and is one of my original 'Bulgaria' Trachycarpus, originally one of 4 growing in my Georgetown garden, and the only one that survived multiple transplants before settling into its current location on the farm.

These Bulgarian palms are offspring of fortuneii palms growing in Sofia, Bulgaria, that have survived very cold temperatures. They are thought to have originated from Soviet-era breeding programs north of the Black Sea working to develop more cold-tolerant strains of palms, citrus, and the like.

As many gardeners who have experimented with these cold-hardy palms, one thing that tends to kill them off is fungal disease, in particular affecting the crown of the plant. So, in theory, they may perform better despite the cold with the better air circulation provided by NO winter protection.

Certainly, the larger the specimen, the greater their cold tolerance appears to be.

In addition to my original specimens, I added several Trachycarpus fortuneii and Chamerops humilis 'cerifera', the Morrocan form of the European Fan Palm, to the front garden of our house. Previously, the standard green European Fan Palm had proven NOT to be hardy in our protected Georgetown garden in Washington, but the cerifera (blue Morrocan) form is felt to be more cold-hardy.

While in Morroco on vacation, we witnessed 20 foot specimens of the Morrocan Blue Palm growing in the Atlas Mountains outside Marrakech at high altitudes in very cold conditions (maybe 20's with heavy snowfall and no protection). I love the blue color and found these to be very cold-tolerant in D.C.. The ones we have grown seem to be more of a clump forming palm, but all the specimens we saw in Morrocco, were single trunked and quite tall.

The last palm we have on the property, the needle palm or Rhapidophyllum hystrix, is native to the Southeastern U.S. and is one of the more well-known cold-hardy palms. It is definitely a clump-former and there are large specimens of this palm in the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. I expect this species to be very reliably hardy on our farm.

It does require hot, humid summers and does well in our area. It has been reported to tolerate temperatures as low as -15 to -20 degrees celsius (~ 0 to -5 degrees F).

It is also commonly known as the porcupine palm for the 2 inch, needle-like projections around its trunk!

On the Agave side, we are trialing species including Agave parryi and a cultivar, Agave 'sharkskin' (shown immediately below).

So far, we have had a very cold December with lows hitting 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Many of these days have been associated with high-winds and wind-chills around 0 degrees.

I'll keep you posted as to how my little friends do this winter along with minimal temps and other findings.

If you're interested, many of these plants can be ordered through Yucca-Do Nursery http://www.yuccado.com/ and Plant Delights Nursery in North Carolina http://www.plantdelights.com/.

K

Geography and factory farms.

I found an awesome website recently that does a really nice job of showing people how the numbers of animals in factory farms has changed over the past 15 years or so:

http://www.factoryfarmmap.org/

Texas, Iowa and California lead the race towards unhealthy food, animal abuse, and just general nastiness in the 1, 2 and 3 positions in terms of absolute numbers.

However, California counties holds 3 of the top 4 spots for sheer numbers overall on a county level.

The website is packed full of interesting factoids such as:

-there are 4 factory farmed broilers (chickens) for every American alive today.

-US beef feedlot operations added ~1100 cattle overall per day to their operations between 2002 and 2007.

- in Maryland, the nearly 31 million broiler chickens, mostly concentrated on the Eastern Shore, produce as much untreated manure as the sewage from 10 million people, nearly twice the state’s population.

The great thing about this website is you can actually zoom in on your own home state (or neighboring states if you live in a bi-, tri- or quad-state area like we do) and find where the concentrations of feedlot/confinement operations are concentrated in your back yard!

Check it out! Nice work!

K

101 Dalmatians...er, I mean piglets!

We were anxiously awaiting the arrival of our first round of Gloucester Old Spot piglets in November and I can happily announce that we are proud parents to 14 beautiful, black and white spotted piglets!

All births went smoothly and so far, the piglets have been thriving in their nursery in the barn. We had a total of 4 sows with piglets born including one hereford, within a matter of 5 days. The result has been an absolute mosh pit of legs, snouts, ears and eyes peering up at us! lol

The moms have been doing a wonderful job so far, lying leg to leg in a circle. This has helped to keep the piglets warm as they bounce back and forth from one set of teats to the next!

Too funny!

Here, our hereford sow shows the other girls how its done!

Anyone interested in purchasing registered breeding stock can contact me via the website for more information.

Best,

Kent
www.whitmorefarm.com